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PlayStation 3 controller used for N900 gaming (video)

Is the N900 the most hacker-friendly phone ever created? All sources are pointing to “yes.” Just two short months ago, we saw one determined code monkey turn his N900 into a PS3 controller; today, we’re looking at someone who did the exact opposite. If you’ve memorized the Debian source code and aren’t afraid to dabble in the wild and murky world of N900 modding, you too can one day use a spare SIXAXIS controller in order to dictate gameplay on your Nokia handset. All the instructions you need are there in the source link, and for everyone else just looking to have a watch from the sidelines, hop on past the break and mash play.

Continue reading PlayStation 3 controller used for N900 gaming (video)

PlayStation 3 controller used for N900 gaming (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 10:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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N900 gains PS3 Sixaxis control over SNES gaming (video)

Continue reading N900 gains PS3 Sixaxis control over SNES gaming (video)

N900 gains PS3 Sixaxis control over SNES gaming (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac OS X 10.3 installed on Nokia N900 via PearPC, barely usable for impatient geeks

Curious folks around the world enjoy a bit of hackintosh every now and then (although once is enough for many), but no geek has successfully ventured as far as Toni Nikkanen of Finland, who became the first person to run OS X on a phone — the Nokia N900. As you can see in the video after the break, Toni’s hack relies on PearPC — a PowerPC emulator — to install good ol’ OS X 10.3 (Panther), but the mammoth sluggishness means it’s far from usable. Still, if you can spare 90 minutes for each boot-up plus plenty more for the snail-paced cursor, then head to the source to learn from Herra Nikkanen.

[Thanks, Matija]

Continue reading Mac OS X 10.3 installed on Nokia N900 via PearPC, barely usable for impatient geeks

Mac OS X 10.3 installed on Nokia N900 via PearPC, barely usable for impatient geeks originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox for Mobile makes Maemo its first home

As if you needed any more evidence of the tech supremacy of your Nokia N900 or N810, here’s Firefox making its official mobile debut on the most righteous Maemo OS. Available for download right now, version 1.0 will come with a pretty sweet feature named Weave Sync, which harmonizes your bookmarks, tabs, history and passwords across devices, making for a seamless transition between your desktop computer and your mobile one. We reckon we could get used to that. Alas, Flash support is still somewhat shaky, and does not come enabled by default, though you’re free to flip the switch and ride the lightning as it were. We’re sure Mozilla will appreciate any crash reports you might want to throw its way as well. So come on already, download the darn thing and let us know if it improves on the already spectacular browsing experience of the N900.

[Thanks, Ross M.]

Firefox for Mobile makes Maemo its first home originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android dual-boot could make Nokia N900 jack of two trades

Maemo’s already pretty open as open platforms go, but what’s better than a single open platform on your open phone? Two open platforms, of course, creating a vortex of pure, unadulterated openness the likes of which the world has never seen. Hacking is par for the course with Nokia’s N900, so it comes as no surprise to see that a motivated individual has managed to get his unit set up in a trick dual-boot configuration with Maemo on internal storage and Android on a separate partition loaded from the microSD card. He says it’s “proof of concept” for the moment — but to steal his words, “its [sic] real and it could be spectacular.” We couldn’t agree more, and as much as Nokia loves its own code, we can’t help but think this precisely the sort of tinkering the N900 was made for. Check video of the magical boot after the break.

Continue reading Android dual-boot could make Nokia N900 jack of two trades

Android dual-boot could make Nokia N900 jack of two trades originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia N900 review

Today, Nokia stands at a fascinating fork in the road. Let’s consider the facts: first, and most unavoidably, the company is the largest manufacturer of cellphones in the world by a truly sobering margin. At every end of the spectrum, in every market segment, Nokia is successfully pushing phones — from the highest of the high-end (see Vertu) to the lowest of the low (the ubiquitous 1100 series, which as far as we can tell, remains the best selling phone in history). The kind of stark dominance Nokia has built over its competition certainly isn’t toppled overnight, but what might be the company’s biggest asset has turned out to be its biggest problem, too: S60. In the past eight years, Nokia’s bread-and-butter smartphone platform has gone from a pioneer, to a staple, to an industry senior citizen while upstarts like Google and Apple (along with a born-again Palm) have come from practically zero to hijack much of the vast mindshare Espoo once enjoyed.

Of course, mindshare doesn’t pay the bills, but in a business dominated by fickle consumerism perhaps more than any other, mindshare foreshadows market share — it’s a leading indicator. Put simply, there are too many bright minds with brilliant ideas trying to get a piece of the wireless pie for even a goliath like Nokia to rest on its laurels for years on end. Yet, until just very recently, it seemed content to do just that, slipping out incremental tweaks to S60 on refined hardware while half-heartedly throwing a bone to the “the future is touch!” crowd by introducing S60 5th Edition alongside forgettable devices like the 5800 XpressMusic and N97. A victim of its own success, the company that had helped define the modern smartphone seemed either unwilling or unable to redefine it.

Not all is lost, though. As S60 has continued to pay the bills and produce modern, lustworthy devices like the E71 and E72, the open, Linux-based Maemo project has quietly been incubating in the company’s labs for over four years. What began as a geeky science experiment (a “hobby” in Steve Jobs parlance) on the Nokia 770 tablet back in 2005 matured through several iterations — even producing the first broadly-available WiMAX MID — until it finally made the inevitable leap into smartphone territory late last year with the announcement of the N900. On the surface, a migration to Maemo seems to make sense for Nokia’s long-term smartphone strategy; after all, it’s years younger than S60 and its ancestry, it’s visually attractive in all the ways S60 is not, and it was built with an open philosophy from the ground up, fostering a geeky, close-knit community of hackers and devs from day one. Thing is, Nokia’s been absolutely emphatic with us — Maemo’s intended for handheld computers (read: MIDs) with voice capability, while S60 continues to be the choice for purebred smartphones.

So, back to that fork in the road we’d mentioned. In one direction lies that current strategy Nokia is trumpeting — continue to refine S60 through future Symbian revisions (with the help of the Symbian Foundation) and keep pumping out pure-profit smartphones in the low to midrange while sprinkling the upper end of the market with a Maemo device here and there. In the long term, though, running two platforms threatens to dilute Nokia’s resources, cloud its focus, and confuse consumers, which leads us to the other direction in the fork: break clean from Symbian, develop Maemo into a refined, powerhouse smartphone platform, and push it throughout the range.

Our goal here is to test the N900, of course, but fundamentally, that’s the question we tried to keep in the backs of our minds for this review: could Maemo ultimately become the platform of Nokia’s future? Let’s dig in.

Continue reading Nokia N900 review

Nokia N900 review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia N900 coming to Vodafone UK in January 2010

Quick and dirty bit of news for you lovely subjects of the United Kingdom and independent spirits of Ireland: Vodafone’s online store is showing the much hailed N900 as an option, with handsets expected at some point next month. The Irish arm of the carrier had already admitted it’ll be offering the device, and we foresee the two launching the handset simultaneously early in the new year, with regrettably little competition from the other UK carriers. As Electric Pig reported when the N900 first started shipping, only O2 replied with a “not yet,” while Orange and T-Mobile were presumably too busy making out to respond.

[Thanks, Rock]

Nokia N900 coming to Vodafone UK in January 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia taking Ovi Store criticism to heart, planning revamped version to rival App Store

Not quite sure if you’ve noticed, but some pretty significant shifting is going on in the heart of Espoo. Just days after Nokia announced that it would be closing up its flagship shops in London, New York and Chicago, in flies this: a new Ovi Store is already in the works, and if all goes well, it’ll be available for public use as early as next Spring. For those keeping tabs, that’s right around a year after the (admittedly tumultuous) launch of the existing platform, which has yet to live up to the firm’s own expectations according to George Linardos. In case you’re wondering (and c’mon, you’re wondering), Mr. Linardos is the head of products at Nokia’s media group, and in speaking with the Financial Times, he confessed that the Ovi Store “had been outpaced by Apple.” He also admitted that the chorus of complaints from end-users were driving the next version, noting that his company has “screens up in [their] offices running Twitter feeds [of gripes] all day long.” In fact, he likened the act to “sitting there and getting punched in the face.”

As for the next go ’round, he’s looking to take a “tortoise and hare” approach when it comes to competing with Apple, who he himself claims “radically changed” the world around us when the App Store was introduced. As it stands, George sees the Ovi Store as a “jambalaya” of services, with Ben Wood — an analyst at CCS Insight — proclaiming that “none of those [work] properly.” In the future, Ben has confessed that Ovi needs “to get all their ducks lined up, including hardware, software and services.” So, what exactly will said ducks look like early next year? We’re told that new features will include “in-application payments, a redesigned user interface that makes apps easier to discover and faster operation,” and beyond that, the outfit is also looking to toss in recommendations based on the app purchases of their friends. This is definitely stirring stuff to hear from someone deep within Nokia’s lairs, and it certainly makes us all the more excited to see what the next generation will bring. Nothing like a little competition in the market place to really light a fire up under someone’s posterior, right?

Nokia taking Ovi Store criticism to heart, planning revamped version to rival App Store originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia N900 now shipping in the land of Ford freedom trucks

Love to tinker and tweak your smartphone? Find running beta apps a challenge, not a burden? Then you’ll be happy to hear that Nokia’s N900 running Maemo 5 is now shipping in the US, a week later than the press release suggested. This Cortex-A8 phone with 32GB of on-board storage is ripe with potential and the perfect holiday gift for grandma as long as she’s comfortable dropping into the X Terminal for the occasional “rm -R /home/user/.microfeed” command. It’s still listed for $649 unlocked from Nokia direct though that price will be dropping soon enough.

[Thanks, Alex]

Nokia N900 now shipping in the land of Ford freedom trucks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia’s Maemo 5-equipped N900 on sale in America for $649

We’ve already given you a glimpse at the N900, but as of today, you Yanks in the crowd can wrap your own limber paws around Nokia’s hero device. Admittedly tailored for enthusiasts and developers to use while the company maneuvers Maemo into its product line, the N900 is now available through Nokia Flagship stores in New York and Chicago, the firm’s website and “various independent retailers and e-tailers.” A tidy sum of $649 (or $510 if you’re smart enough to check Amazon) nabs you an unlocked version with a 5 megapixel camera, 32GB of internal storage and a bombastic, Flash-lovin’ web browser. Ain’t no shame in lusting after one, but tell us earnestly — are you forking out nearly seven bills to bring one home?

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia’s Maemo 5-equipped N900 on sale in America for $649 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia abandoning S60 for Maemo on future N-Series devices?

Confused by Nokia’s dual-platform, Maemo 5 and S60 5th Edition smartphone choices? You’re not alone. Fortunately, things are starting to become a bit more clear thanks to some loose-lipped members of Maemo’s marketing team attending an official N900 meet-up in London last night. According to The Really Mobile Project, Nokia will drop S60 from all of its flagship N-series consumer devices in favor of Maemo. Apparently, Nokia has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to the N900 OS even though the enthusiast package is not quite ready for mass-market appeal. Mind you, the transition won’t be instantaneous as anyone with an N900 (and a clear mind) can attest — the OS, services, and apps just can’t compare to the mature S60 platform regardless of Maemo 5’s superior user experience. As such, we’ll continue to see N-Series handsets already in development pop with S60 on board alongside mass-market Maemo devices as the platform matures to the point that Nokia can make the full switch by 2012. Assuming, of course, Nokia doesn’t end up adding webOS to its portfolio somewhere along the way.

Update: The Nokia Blog has what it claims is an official response from Nokia on this delicate matter. As you’d expect, Nokia says it remains “firmly committed to Symbian as our smartphone platform of choice.” It then added this little gem: “Maemo is our software of choice for devices based on technology that you’d typically find inside a desktop computer. It delivers a different user experience and enables us to widen the market we can address.” Perhaps you’re even reading this on an ARM Cortex-A8 desktop PC right now?

[Thanks, Sockatume]

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Handhelds

Nokia abandoning S60 for Maemo on future N-Series devices? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia N900 quick hands-on

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/gadgets/Nokia_N900_quick_hands_on’; We’ve finally had a chance to play around at length with a very late pre-production version of Nokia’s N900 (retail units are already shipping, but not to our neck of the woods just yet) and we wanted to scribble out a few notes for you before taking delivery of a final build for a full review hopefully in the next week or two. Here are some highlights we’ve noticed so far:

• Processor, processor, processor. Oh, and did we mention the processor? The N900’s Cortex A8-based core yields significant improvements in day-to-day usability over the N810’s ARM11 unit.
• Though it’s still quite raw and feature-incomplete, Maemo 5 is by far the most user-friendly version of the platform to date, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s very pretty. Screen transitions are smooth and look great, the home screen is as attractive and versatile as any widget-based home screen on the market today, and the Expose-style task switcher is a welcome addition.
• The N900 may very well offer the best browsing experience of any smartphone on the market today (yes, including the iPhone). What little ground it gives up in user friendliness is more than countered by the fact that you have the closest thing you can get to a desktop-class browser in a device of this size and form factor; it’s straight-up Mozilla, after all, and everything renders faithfully. Flash doesn’t blaze, but at least the Cortex A8 makes it usable.

Follow the break for more impressions and a quick rundown on video!

Continue reading Nokia N900 quick hands-on

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia N900 quick hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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