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Nokia talking homegrown 'Harmattan' release of MeeGo at May conference, but it's nothing new
Some noise has been made today over the news that Nokia is going to be chatting up its Harmattan platform at May's MeeGo conference in San Francisco, suggesting that Nokia will be releasing Harmattan devices as a precursor to its MeeGo offerings -- some sort of postmortem Maemo 6 sendoff before Espoo starts to take MeeGo seriously. In reality, there's nothing new here: it's been known for the past year that Harmattan was happening -- and it's looking more than ever like it's Nokia's full-on MeeGo play, having pulled the code over from the work it had already done on Maemo 6. The abstract for the Harmattan session at the conference says that Nokia will "clarify" the relationship between the project and MeeGo proper, but at no point has Nokia skirted around the fact that Harmattan was still in the works -- and with the company's commitment to MeeGo beyond its 2011 product line a big question mark right now, we wouldn't be surprised if Harmattan was as far into the MeeGo ecosystem as Nokia ever got.
Nokia N9 to bust loose with MeeGo on Intel Atom power?
Nokia has to do something big if it wants to crack the US smartphone market. We can agree on that, right? And believe us, Nokia wants this -- nothing will make the mighty Finns (and the company's global investors) prouder than to gain some traction in the home of Apple pie and Google desserts. So how will the company do it? With Symbian? Oh, hell no. By introducing another MeToo handset? Nope, with MeeGo on a rockin' platform like the rumored N9 slider pictured above. Nokia announced its hardware plans for Maemo 6 a long time ago. At that time, the company was clear that it would continue using TI OMAP processors. Much has changed since then, however. In addition to several key leadership changes including a new Canadian-born CEO who spent much of his time working in the US, Nokia has joined Intel to roll up Maemo 6 and Moblin into MeeGo with Nokia's first Maemo 6 MeeGo/Harmattan handset pushed into 2011. Simultaneously, Intel has also been doing its best to show its new Moorestown platform as a powerful ARM alternative, even showing off MeeGo handsets exploiting a Lincroft SoC and Atom processor core. And Intel has said that Medfield-based smartphones (Moorestown's successor) would arrive in the middle of 2011. So why the build-up? Well, we've just been tipped to a claim by Prosessori, a respected Finnish technology magazine, that the Nokia N9 will launch with a 1.2GHz Atom processor. Better yet, it could be unveiled as soon as Mobile World Congress in February, presumably during Stephen Elop's keynote. Do we believe it? Not entirely, but it is possible given the chain of events that have taken place. And you can bet that the first commercially available Intel smartphone with a brand new Nokia user experience would certainly grab headlines in the US and around the world. Something that should translate into high-end market share (and profits) if it's as "exciting" as Elop claims. [Thanks, Janne]
Intel says no MeeGo phones until first half of 2011, Nokia just shrugs
While Nokia remains mum about the status of its first MeeGo handset, Doug Fisher, Vice President of Intel's Software and Solutions Group and General Manager of Systems Software Division, is being decidedly more talkative. According to an interview published by Forbes, MeeGo phones and tablets are in the works but we'll have to wait until 2011 to handle them. Specifically, Fisher says that MeeGo based cellphones won't debut until the first half of next year, possibly at a large industry trade show. Hmm, could that be Mobile World Congress by any chance, scheduled for February 2011? It's also worth noting that Fisher's timeline coincides with plans for a MeeGo 1.2 release tentatively scheduled for sometime around the end of April. This is of course disappointing -- especially after seeing Nokia's amazing looking MeeGo-based N9 (pictured) in that supposed leak. Though it's hardly unexpected given all the executive level changes at Nokia. Remember, back in December Nokia had promised to "deliver" a Maemo 6 powered mobile computer in the second half of 2010. That promise was then seemingly reiterated when the joint MeeGo initiative was announced in February (MeeGo being the union of Maemo and Intel's Moblin). It was during that announcement that Intel and Nokia promised to "launch" MeeGo devices from Nokia and other manufactures in 2010. We took that to mean retail delivery, not just a product announcement. In fact, we've already seen the first MeeGo tablet -- the WeTab -- ship in Germany. And Fisher says that other MeeGo devices like netbooks and Internet Connected TVs are still on track to ship this year. Regardless of the semantics, we just want to see Nokia get this right, especially as MeeGo looks to be Nokia's big play to win back the US market. If they don't get this right, well, Nokia might not get a second chance -- not with Android rapidly maturing, Windows Phone 7 set to launch, and HP getting ready to put its muscle behind webOS. Let's give Skillman some time to perfect the user experience, shall we?
Maemo 6 UI concept revealed to include portrait mode, capacitive multitouch
Today at the Maemo Summit -- which we like to imagine happens in a lavish, remote mountain fortress somewhere in Finland -- Nokia dropped some interesting hints about what we can expect from Maemo 6. Look for both portrait and landscape support, multitouch, capacitive touchscreens, an "iconic user experience and integrated internet services in one aesthetic package" (as opposed to a user experience that lacks icons, integrated internet services, or aesthetics, we suppose), and a desktop significantly larger than the display, which can be navigated either vertically or horizontally: Nokia is calling this "the canvas principle," although we'd call it "possibly quite confusing" unless the design is particularly well implemented. But the designers have plenty of time for that: Maemo 6 probably won't see the light of day until late 2010. Hit the read link for plenty more mind-blowing slides. [Via SlashGear]
Nokia makes Qt port to Maemo 5 and N900 official (video)
Hey developers, Nokia's got a special treat for you today. It just announced the official port of the community-driven Qt for Maemo project. That means a common framework for writing native applications (and web apps and services thanks to Webkit integration) across Maemo 5 and future Maemo 6 releases, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. That's a broad reach in terms of devices (including the hotly anticipated N900) and marketshare and a smart move by Nokia in an era where devices are differentiated not by hardware and OS but by their ability to run apps and connect to web services. A "technology preview" release is available now and scheduled for final release (based on Qt 4.6) in Q1 of 2010. Click through for a wee taste.
