meltemi
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Nokia reportedly scraps Meltemi, decides it's Series 40 or bust in basic phones
O Meltemi, we hardly knew ye. In fact, we didn't know ye much at all, since Nokia never made the OS official. Nonetheless, claimed insiders have told AllThingsD that the reputed Linux-running alternative to S30 and S40 won't ever see the light of day. Nokia's deep structural cuts are to blame, and we imagine Nokia's previous drive to whittle down its OS portfolio will have come into play. CEO Stephen Elop and other executives never directly acknowledged Meltemi's existence during the cutback-related conference call, although Elop did admit that some projects were screeching to a halt behind the scenes -- possibly the closest Espoo will come to saying that the platform was ever real. Sad, to be sure, but between the new Asha Touch line and ever-cheaper Lumia models, we're not too worried about whether or not Nokia has the low end covered.
Nokia 306 manual hints at keyboard-free Asha handset
The team at Unwired View has bagged a PDF that purports to be the user manual for Nokia's 306, the first full-touch member of the keyboard-loving Asha family. None of the images in the document (we've collated a handful above) show a handset with a hardware keyboard, but it's not clear if it's running S40 either. The images show that the device can support multiple home screens, an Android-style notifications bar and pinch-to-zoom, but this could either be evidence of the S40 re-skin (codenamed "Sonic") or, fancifully, the first appearance of Espoo's Linux-based Meltemi OS for low-end phones. The big question now is, will Nokia confirm its existence (perhaps at its Asian conference in June?), or will the secretary deny all knowledge?
Nokia developing 'Meltemi' OS for feature phones?
Although Nokia still hopes Windows Phone will round out a "three-horse race" with iOS and Android, it's said to be cooking up an entirely new operating system aimed at lower-end handsets. According to the Wall Street Journal, the OS (codenamed "Meltemi") is meant to cement Nokia's top dog status in emerging markets, where feature phones remain king. Makes sense: low-end phones accounted for 47 percent of the company's device-and-services earnings in the second quarter. We're not sure if the adage "when one door closes, another one opens" exactly applies here, but either way, it looks like we've hardly seen the end of software updates out of Suomi.
