Dual boot Android on N900?

via Engadget

Well, that spectacular, to say the least. Wondering if camera/opengl drivers would work.

Openness – Maemo vs Android

A great post from coll900 about comparative openness Maemo and Android for developers and users. Maemo designated as a clear win. The one point missing in the original post is a platform fragmentation. Android try to get around fragmentation using Java virtual machine (albeit with non-standard bytecodes). However native code will not be binary transferable between devices. That is especially relevant for augmented reality and other cpu-heavy apps. Here is a question – will Maemo be any better? For some mysterious reasons Nokia afflicted by irresistible drive to fragment it’s own software platform as much as possible. If Nokia manage to gather enough strength of will to keep Maemo on a single but mass-produced device line, like Apple with iPhone, Maemo could become developers dream and a serious competitor to iPhone. However if Nokia keeps its bad habit of producing zoo of semi-decent not-quite-compatible devices, with introduction of a new just-little-different device every quarter, just to break whatever compatibility still remaining, Maemo, with all its openess will not have practical advantage over Android.

PS. It looks like there will not be any Maemo fragmentation. Source at Nokia told Reuters that there will be one Maemo device, at least for next year. That a good news actually.

Another prospective AR device

Nokia RX-51. It reported having OMAP3 600Mhz CPU with hardware 3D, camera, phone connectivity – it’s not a pure tablet like N800, GPS, accelerometers, and most testy – Maemo 5 Linux
No reports of electronic compass though.

Nokia consider Maemo Linux as alternative to Symbian ?

As cnet point out Symbian is not mentioned in the joint Intel-Nokia press release about 3G and Open Source Software collaboration. Only Maemo and Moblin are mentioned. Symbian, though also open sourced is left out. It could be that Nokia is less enthusiastic about Symbain OS now. Existing Symbain OS UIs are inferior to iPhone UI, Symbian OS third party applications are not getting enough traction and most of Symbian users are not even aware they exist. Symbian Signed restrictions are not helping either. BTW most of Symbian users are not even aware they are Symbian users.
So Nokia seems hedging its bets with Maemo linux. Cnet think Nokia could switch to Maemo for high-end devices and leave Symbian for mid-range.