Nokia N8 to be final Symbian N Series device, all MeeGo from here on out

Whoa. Nokia's premier range of devices, the N Series, will bid adieu to the Symbian operating environment and go MeeGo full time after the introduction of the N8. That's what we've just heard directly from the Finnish horse's mouth. Nokia will naturally keep Symbian around -- of course there's a whole Symbian^4 to come -- but will utilize it on more mass market devices as it seeks to push smartphones further down the product hierarchy. So it's not necessarily bad news, as such, it means we'll likely see Symbian trickle down to handsets priced more like featurephones and less like miniaturized laptops. What it does mean, however, is that Nokia is pushing forward with its modernization plans, and doing so more aggressively than previously thought. Which we consider to be a pretty awesome (and necessary) thing.

[Kabs Posted Jun 23rd 2010 5:03PM]

@dougbeebe

Although it would be great to wait for the N9, you will probably be waiting a long time.

[JonHolstein Posted Jun 23rd 2010 11:35PM]

@Kabs
As he said, he believes it will be out in Q4.
I think nokia has confirmed plans for a MeeGo device in Q4. N9 is the rumord name.
The OS will show up in october, and the device perhaps november or early december, but perhaps not all over the world.
So it seems he can wait til Q4, and then he could either get it in Q4 or have to wait til january, and thats not a big wait.

[Maybach Posted Jun 23rd 2010 3:58PM]

Good. Symbian was horse shit.

[JonHolstein Posted Jun 23rd 2010 11:37PM]

@Maybach
It will sill be around
And its actually quite good!
It does not look flashy. But it does things... real multitasking on low speced hardware.

[Wharoll Posted Jun 23rd 2010 4:10PM]

is Meego open source like Android?

[2beers Posted Jun 23rd 2010 4:21PM]

@Wharoll yes. hosted by the linux foundation

[lockstockedd Posted Jun 23rd 2010 5:35PM]

@Wharoll

in some ways, more open

[EmGee Posted Jun 23rd 2010 4:40PM]

Awesome! I hope MeeGo makes it up there. The more competition the better as so many say. I have a Nokia n810 and it was pretty awesome for its time. I wish I could get the MeeGo OS onto the n810 but even if it can it would take to much to do lol Im sure there are others who can do it with no problem but it would be a pain for me to do it lol. Anyway kudos to Nokia.

[MrLinux Posted Jun 23rd 2010 4:57PM]

Nokia 9" tablet with MeeGo = Win, just hope they can throw in a Cortex A9 dual core cpu and 1GB of rom and 64Gb or storage, sigh, we can dream.

[IMarius Posted Jun 23rd 2010 5:52PM]

@MrLinux

i think all the Nokia tablets would be running on a mooretown ( i mean they are partners with Intel kinda , but there has been a rumor of them using ARM too , so who knows a A9 processor would be sweet.

[dougbeebe Posted Jun 23rd 2010 5:14PM]

@Kabs Probably true, at least for a good working model, figure at least Nov/Dec 2010 at best. The $369 price drop for the N900 is only good for a few days. So tempting a price compared to its original $600-ish.

[Patje1968 Posted Jun 23rd 2010 5:16PM]

After reading all comments i come to this conclusion; i'm still gonna buy my "electric blue N8". It is mass value for it's price, i love the design and i'm using Symbian based phones like half my life so i know where and how to find things in Symbian. With all respect for those prefering "Meego", even if most of you don't know where it's heading at and not sure what to expect, i'll stick to my N8 with the Symbian^3 OS. I'll be one of those "at least five million" ;-)

[Lucky Businessman Posted Jun 23rd 2010 5:22PM]

NOKIA go go forever!:)

[dougbeebe Posted Jun 23rd 2010 5:25PM]

@Patje1968 I haven't experienced any Symbian based system yet, though I've always read good reviews from those with one. I currently have an old at&t backjack ii, with MS 6.0 os, so I find it very limited in apps, so not much use other than to make calls. I guess my only other concern with going to the N900 is switching to T-mobile and trying to find an affordable data plan. (more research to go)

[LessThanDug Posted Jun 23rd 2010 6:05PM]

This just hit me. You know, the N8 technically isn't just a single phone. Like the new C1, there are going to be different versions of it (C1-01, C1-02...). So to say the N8 is going to be the last Symbian device ever for the Nseries is misleading unless you understand that the N8 we know is actually the N8-01 and others will follow for who knows how long. The N9 will be your MeeGo line of devices.

That makes complete sense now, and like I said earlier, Nokia would never alienate a large group of users by cutting out Symbian altogether from the Nseries. Making one line Symbian and the other MeeGo is a very smart move on Nokia's part.

[JonHolstein Posted Jun 23rd 2010 11:44PM]

@LessThanDug
Cutting Symbian out of N-series would mean nothing.
It would still be in X series, with same kind of multimeda approach as we are used to se.
C, E series are there as well.
N-sereies is said by nokia in 2009 to be a line of mobile computers, so MeeGo seems like the logic choice.

[LessThanDug Posted Jun 24th 2010 1:47PM]

@JonHolstein

Maybe to you it would mean nothing, but obviously since I made a big stink about the headline, it means a lot to me. The X, C, or Eseries isn't the Nseries. Neither of those series combines all of the features of an Nseries. That's what makes the Nseries what it is. You get where I'm going with this? It's not just about the fact that they have Symbian. It's about the fact that the Nseries has Symbian AND the best Carl Zeiss camera's in Nokia's lineup, the biggest touch screens, much better industrial designs, and they had the widest array of fully featured devices. Can't get that from any other series. If you want high end stuff, you don't buy a midrange product.

[JonHolstein Posted Jun 23rd 2010 8:53PM]

In reality, this doesnt mean anything.
N-series focus shifted last year, as nokia started to talk about N-series as mini computers. So its really not a multimedia brand anymore.

the N-series brand, does not mean that we can expect at least a ceratin amout of products per year. The N-series really has been slowing down lately.

So what does this mean?
Nothing really.
Why did they do this?
No idea, they could simply have started a new series and dropped the N-series, or just never moved multimedia from N-series to X series.

Sure, Nokias top of the line units will use MeeGo, but the N-series has had quite a range.

This in fact does not even mean that Nokia is aming for MeeGo to be the next smartphone OS, at all.
But we know they do think of MeeGo as the next smartphone OS, and we know that they will make more mailstream devices with MeeGo, and just not N900 follow-ups.. But that has nothing to do with the N-sereies branding.

[zob Posted Jun 24th 2010 7:28AM]

I think we might still be quite a few N95 owners who are bored of the keyboard (its a phone keyboard 1-9 keys not qwerty), battery life (to be honest its pretty good, but its not as much as the new phones) and speed (well, it's slow even to take pics and browse the gallery.. hey, 2007.)

Certainly.. if it had a real keyboard integrated i'd keep it til the N9.

But can i wait 8 month more? Pff that's too much.

There's the iPhone 4, crippled with issues, and so closed up..
There's the droid x.. in 2 month probably.
Evo.. no, evo is USA only.

Then there's the N8. It's twice cheaper than competition. It's fast. The interface ir boring.

Well I don't know, but if the N900 ebay price does go well under the N8 *new* price i'll just get one and resell it later for a N9.

Plus, it comes in colors.

[hahnchen Posted Jun 24th 2010 9:57AM]

I cannot believe they have invested so much in Symbian, just to give up. Symbian 4 was going to be Nokia's saviour, it was going to be competitive with Android and iOS, it was meant to revive a giant.

But no, let's kill that off, and use an Intel netbook platform for Atom.

Yeah, great going there Nokia. Maybe in 2012, when Nokia give up on MeeGo and adopt Android, I'll pick one up.

[RayH Posted Jun 28th 2010 3:41AM]

@hahnchen Nokia is not giving up on Symbian at all. Symbian will be the core OS for our Smartphone range of devices, E, X & C series. It's only our N series, post N8, that will then use the MeeGo platform as it's core OS. This will let us expand our Smartphone accessibility to a wider range of customers and ensures scale for our Ovi services and wider reach for our developers.
Ray H (Nokia)

[dougbeebe Posted Jun 24th 2010 6:14PM]

Coupon use is over, but you can still get the N900 for about $390 at Dell.

[MilX Pro Posted Jul 19th 2010 12:09AM]

Personally I welcome any phone OS's that doesn't limit it's user, and Symbian does it, (I'm not talking about hardware). ;-)