Meego handset UI guidelines offer details aplenty, suggestion of WebOS, Android influences
By Donald Melanson 
posted June 18th 2010 4:36PM
posted June 18th 2010 4:36PM
Sure, you can already download MeeGo 1.0 and try it out on your netbook or N900, but Nokia also has some grander designs for the mobile operating system, and a new Handset Interaction Guidelines document published on (and then pulled from) the official MeeGo wiki has now offered some more details on exactly what's in store. Among the highlights are confirmation of support for both portrait and landscape keyboards, and some pretty strong evidence of WebOS and Android influences, including a task manager that's similar to WebOS's card system but becomes a grid view with a multitouch pinch, and a notification system and taskbar that are apparently similar to Android's -- not to mention some centralized account management. There's pages and pages of details beyond that, however, so hit up the link below to dive in (courtesy of Google Cache, of course).
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Anyone else dreaming of a MeeGo device, with Samsung Galaxy S hardware + that nokia N8 camera slabbed on, and USB-host.
That would make for a super mobile... all that processing power, and 512MB or physical Ram. Fantastic screen, at a good size compromise for a Phone/MID combine, the N900 screen is a bit small for all that nice webbrowsing. 1500mAh battery. And with the N8 camera, you should get fantastic stills and video.
Too bad it will probably not come true.
@JonHolstein Too bad, I see it coming true!
@o7o
Lets hope.
But at this point, the rumors speak of the weaker 720Mhz processor.
Rumors talk of a 12MP camera, but considering the N900 featured a lesser camera module than N97 and way worse than the N86. I think Nokia, in the case of an 12MP module will unfortunately use their upcoming mainstream 12MP module, and skip Xeon. But lets hope not.
When it comes to screensize, I hope nokia will go for a quite large, but since the rumors talk of only one MeeGo (maemo 6) device this year, and that might mean that they dont dare to go for a 4" or larger screen, since that is to big for many users.
And wishing for a Super AMOLED at this point, seems a bit much to hope for.
The audio-chip used in the Galaxy S produce very good soundquality, almost perfect frequency respons, lets hope for that in the device.
The battery Nokia certainly has to do something about.
If they would put the N8s camera module in there, it uses some space, and stick out, lets hope if they are trying to slim the device down, that they make a back cover that is thicker where the battery is, as well and put a performance battery in their... at least we would like to see this as an accesory.
and this time they should keep the magnetometer.
if they put at least 512MB memory in there, lets hope they stay with virtual memory as well..
I hear that N9 gets the 12MP camera at least - dunno if it has that awesome sensor size that the N8 has though.
I saw the Super AMOLED display - now that is truly magical (Yes, I am looking at you Steve "Retina Display" Jobs).
@naashak
Yes, the screen of the Samsung Galaxy S, is fantastic... I had the chance to play around with a device a couple of months back.
Except for the camera, the Galaxy S packs great hardware...
so there was rumours that leaks were due out this week of "real" pictures, and maybe some basic specs.
What happened to them? :(
referring to n9 sorry.
@GAM3R Yes, fully and truly open.
@GAM3R, not just open source, it's hosted as a Linux Foundation project ( http://www.linuxfoundation.org/lp/page/meego ) which grants it a title of the most Linux-compliant mobile OS out there. Not to mention that, much like its parents - Maemo and Moblin - it truly is a GNU/Linux type of OS, just like any popular desktop Linux distribution, unlike Android which uses heavily stripped down Linux kernel (that's not even upstreamed) and everything else does through a virtual machine (Dalvik VM). Yes, you'll be able to slap MeeGo on your home computer, and with a simple change of a WM (say you add KDE, GNOME or Xfce to it) you even get desktop-looking OS. That by itself is a huge thing as you can, through the USB host mode or USB-OTG and HDMI out, use your MeeGo phone/tablet as a complete desktop/laptop replacement - all you need is to buy peripherals at your home (a nice keyboard, mouse and decently sized screen with a decent resolution) and you carry your computer in your pocket, when you get home you dock it for charging while it serves as a home desktop computer.
However, that's not the prime benefit of MeeGo's approach - the prime benefit is, being completely GNU/Linux compliant, hundreds of thousands of Linux applications out there will be able to run on it, many of them even without redesigning the UI/UX for a small screen. That by itself puts it, as apps availability go, way above Symbian, iOS, Android and WinMo/WP7 combined. Not to mention that 99% of those apps are FOSS. And that's not all, with its native Qt support, developers can actually create software from the same code base that will work on Windows, MacOS X, many desktop Linux distributions, Symbian and MeeGo (and probably WP7, depends on the flexibility of Microsoft), meaning that, as long as Qt is used, even if the developer aimed his app for, say, Symbian, it will be only several clicks away from being ported for MeeGo (or any other of the mentioned platforms). That gives Nokia (and everyone else) ability to develop their software on one code base and have it spread to both of its platforms - think of fully featured Ovi Maps for MeeGo as well, unlike the current situation is with Maemo.
If executed properly, MeeGo has a potential to finally bring GNU/Linux to the masses. It would be a huge boost for the Linux community, and about time too.
@incognito
Also a lot of people has designed applications in Qt for PC ( windows,mac) and that can be easily ported on meego and probably symbian.