MeegoForHandsets
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Aava Moorestown phone running MeeGo hits the wilds
If you don't understand the significance of what you're looking at then you're probably not paying attention. First off, that Aava slab of WoW slaying smartphone is underpinned by Intel's Moorestown processor. Yes, Intel, not ARM, as Chipzilla gets serious about taking its silicon mobile. Second, that's the freshly minted MeeGo OS for handsets that just made its first alpha appearance last week. And it just happens to be the OS that Nokia, the world's largest handset manufacturer, will be building its future generation of super smartphones upon. We'll give you a second to take it all in. Fortunately for us, the device is in the hands of Steve "Chippy" Paine over at Carrypad / UMPC Portal. As such, this is just the first of many revelations to come. Hit the man up on Twitter if you want to follow his adventure first hand.
MeeGo for handsets makes its first appearance
As promised, Nokia and Intel have revealed the pre-alpha version of MeeGo for handsets today, supporting the Intel-powered Aava reference phone and the Nokia N900. What's most interesting at this early stage is the UI, which appears to have taken a big Nokia-influenced step away from the Intel-designed MeeGo netbook and tablet UI -- and we're definitely detecting some hints of Android and webOS here and there. Seriously, just check out that task switching interface. Of course, MeeGo is open-source, so we're sure Nokia has some deeper UI customizations in store -- like homescreen widgets, which are notably missing here. On a deeper level, this build of MeeGo includes the base MeeGo APIs, including Qt and the MeeGo touch frameworks, the Firefox-based browser, a photo viewer, and some basic UI elements like the status bar, app launcher, and virtual keyboard. There are pre-built images for the Atom-based Aava handsets available now, but N900 owners will have to do a little building until someone makes an image available. Be warned, though: there's a long enough list of known bugs, and while that's totally fine for pre-alpha code, it might not be too fine for your device. That's not going to stop us from installing this thing, but you be careful, alright? And let us know how it goes. Video of the UI after the break. P.S. Given that the N8 is destined to be the last Symbian N Series device, we can't help but feel it's being overshadowed by MeeGo before it's even out. Can we pre-pour one out? Is that a thing? It is now.%Gallery-96645%
Nokia: pre-alpha release of MeeGo for handsets coming June 30th
We've already gotten an early peek at what's in store for MeeGo on handsets courtesy of some leaked UI guidelines, and it looks like folks now won't have to wait too much longer to try it out for themselves -- Nokia has confirmed that the pre-alpha release will be available on June 30th. That will be followed by the "fully productized" version sometime in October, which should also coincide with the release of some actual MeeGo-based handsets. No further details beyond that just yet, but N900 users should be the first to get a taste of a true MeeGo handset experience -- despite Nokia's lack of official support.
