MeeGo tablet UX’s, the future is bright
It’s been a while since I last posted, for numerous reasons of course, but now with a bit of time on my hands, I figured I’d post a couple videos supplied to us by Jim on a few of the MeeGo UX’s currently being worked on by dev teams around the world.
First up is a video of XBMC being demo-ed on the Lenovo ideapad running an undisclosed version of MeeGo. XBMC is a cross platform media player with some of their work being seen in high-profile devices like the original Xbox. While I’ve never been one to consider flashy visuals over an easy and functional interface, this video here definitely deserves a mention. Video after the break.
More information on the XBMC project can be found at xbmc.org/ and instructions for installing to MeeGo can be found at the following link. http://www.madeo.co.uk/?page_id=605.
The second video up is of the Alpha version of RDUX 2.0 being developed almost exclusively using QtQuick.
Pretty cool huh! Give XBMC a try and let us know how you feel about it!
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Thx for posting the videos 🙂
No prob they were pretty cool
I must say, I’m a bit confused about the ENDLESS stream of stories about minor MeeGo updates on this site.
First off, most of it is irrelevant to what Nokia will deliver – a customised MeeGo, with a highly customised and unique UI different to anything on the bog standard releases people have currently seen, all running on unique Nokia hardware. So in other words, this endless stream of updates gives little insight into what we’ll all be using from Nokia when they release their MeeGo based handsets (etc).
Secondly, the amount of airtime for an OS that has precisely ZERO relevance to anyone on this planet right now outside of Nokia’s labs. Why? Because no one has one. We should be focussing on what people have in their hands right now, and will continue to have, en masse, for years to come. Which is actually mainly Series 40 based. Something you guys should cover more of as this site is “mynokiablog” not “mysymbianblog”. And secondly, it’s about Symbian.
People need to stop getting dragged into the bullshit American-sourced worldview that phones, and smartphones, are about UI, the browser, Android and iOS. The way people are using phones across the world, and the phones they’re using, are so much more than that.
1.3 billion people around the world are using Nokias today. How about more focus on them, their needs and their wants? A grand total of zero of them are MeeGo. MeeGo will be a minority platform for many months to come in the grand scale of things.
I am not saying kill the MeeGo coverage, it is great to have some. But let’s be realistic about how it relates to what we’ll actually end up using, and also be realistic about what people have now.
I’ll address your points in the sequence your comment provided them.
1.
The fact that the base interface can be tweaked to the extent presented in these videos should be taken well into consideration when looking at what we can expect NOKIA’s implementation of MeeGo to be in terms of deviation from stock MeeGo.
2.
The amount of airtime received by this OS will have significant knock-on effects on the amount of developer attention/value-add investment on BOTH the Symbian and MeeGo platforms which oddly enough is likely the OS of choice of the majority of readers of these blogs. I’m almost certain that if we were to survey the OS use by our readership here we’d see that the majority use some sort of smartphone operating system and most would emphasize the importance of these in their lives.
Not to say that we have or intend to disregard the importance of these mobile devices(S40), on the contrary we provide news on these devices provided they are significant or exciting developments. Case in point being the X3-02 camera samples, hands-on videos and associated material Jay himself published in early October.
3. This world-view that phones and smartphones are about UI and the browser is fast becoming the reality, in spite of the fact that the majority of the world do not and cannot use these devices in the ways mentioned- YET.
4. 1.3 billion people use Nokia’s, possibly 200 million use Symbian and an order of magnitude less use Maemo/MeeGo, that doesn’t change the fact though that the people likely to read this blog and be interested and remain here are those more likely to be using smartphone operating systems, a fact that cannot be denied.
5. Your final point and easily the best, is spot on and I’d say we agree with you on covering things that’ll affect a wider number of people. What must be considered though is the fact that we’re not being paid for this and the things that interest us the most are the things we’re most likely to spend the time outside of our school/work/personal life schedules to share with you all. Could we do better on this front? You bet ya, but some context is definitely required.
Appreciate the feedback Smith, keep coming back if there’s anything here that interests you.
Needless to say, this blog has been providing valuable information for Nokia users. In addition, this site is for enthusiast, so it needs to provide exciting materials and latest tech trends… I think it cares about Nokia users as well as Nokia’s future users.
you do have to wonder why people read these FREE blogs and tech sites when all they do is complain..
simple solution, start your own
Oh do shut up. As usual there’s a bunch of short sighted folk that are determined to see everything as a complaint.
I’m not complaining about mynokiablog. It’s great, and very valuable. Does this even need saying? Obviously it has a huge contribution to make to Nokia news sources.
My frustration is more to do with MeeGo and it’s current mindshare generally rather than mynokiablog per se.
Symbian and Series 40 are heavily undervalued. iPhone and Android are heavily overvalued.
Most commentators and developers these days haven’t got the guts to face up to developing for the platforms people have in their pockets, and instead follow fantasy land with minor high end platforms.
In this regard I have to agree with Smith
“Most commentators and developers these days haven’t got the guts to face up to developing for the platforms people have in their pockets, and instead follow fantasy land with minor high end platforms.”
People who own an S40 device are not so interested in installing 3rd party apps, so creating applications for this devices will not make many downloads, regardless the huge market share.
S60 are not so touch friendly , so people are not encouraged to play more with the device and install different applications. another problem is that huge part of nokia market share is in not so developed countries , where people are not willing to spend a lot of money buying applications.
The only OSs that are app firendly are Maemo5 and Symbian^3.
Maemo5 was not promoted by nokia and is available only on 1 device:N900 while Symbian^3 is new, with a new SDK called Qt and we already see that apps are being created but it takes time to create/port an application from 1 to a few months(maybe a year) depending on the application.
Also a lot of developers are from USA and they create applications for USA market where Nokia is not so strong, so iPhone and Android are their choices.
In conclusion when a developer is choosing a platform to develop it will first look at market share: iphone vs android vs Symbian^3 and I think Symbian^3 is sadly on the last place.
We are talking about meego because this is from the start seen as an app centric OS. And I 100% sure that people who will buy meego device will be 100% interested in installing 3rd party apps. Not the same thing I can say about S40 or S60.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
you are a contradiction in terms;
“Something you guys should cover more of as this site is “mynokiablog” not “mysymbianblog”. And secondly, it’s about Symbian.”
“Symbian and Series 40 are heavily undervalued. iPhone and Android are heavily overvalued.”
Also, Seen as MeeGo is a joint venture – with Nokia as one of the sole creators of this platform – surely any iteration of MeeGo would be relevent to a nokia blog?… I’m just saying…
I say why not? It’s about time Nokia had a product that built up loads of positive hype before it’s launch – It’s something they’ve not done successfully for a while – Also, let’s remeber why all of these third party UX’s and platforms are relevent to nokia future – the idea of the cloud. Obviously if you have everyone on the same OS/Framework then it’s much easier to implement – wouldn’t you say?
As for developing for S40 goes – yes it’s a bit bare at the moment, but the more these high end devices are push and developed, the cheaper the basic forms of those technologies become. ie 5 years down the line – dont be surprised to see something like the N8 costing you £50 on PAYG.
it’s not that they dont have the guts – it’s that the feature set of those devices vary from nothing, to almost smartphone-like.
once these features become cheaper and more common people will start to develop for the low end.
Patience is required – I for one appreciate all the news I can get revolving around how quickly this future is implemented.
I agree with the OP to some extent.
These third party UI concepts are so early prototype stage and often so uninspired that they don’t contribute any real value to this blog. Instead, I’d love to see more updates on other Nokia products or services that are on the market or about to be released.
Appreciate the feedback.
I don’t understand your disappointment. You should be perfectly able to skip the post you aren’t interested in reading; the editors can’t know in advance what people will like to read, so they post all the news they can get, which IMHO is the right thing to do.
Since S40 is a closed platform, which can only be extended via Java applets, you’ll understand that there’s less news to report about it, because there is just less happening. The most interesting events about S40 are new phone launches, such as the touch’n’type series a few months ago, and this site does cover them. And by looking at the number of the comments that these articles get, you can understand that people are more interested in announcements of new features for Symbian and Meego.
What does it mean that nobody uses Meego yet? Nobody used an iPhone until a couple years ago, and nowadays it is a major player in the (high-end) phone market. So why shouldn’t people be interested in something that, although isn’t there yet, they might end up using in the near future?
good news everyone. you may realized on almost all meego demos the touch is not so responsive. that’s because it wasn’t very good implement on X (more detailes on x.org). but now it seems that is work in progress and qt already is making is move: http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2010/12/15/touching-the-x11-2/
Andre maybe complete you post with this one so people will understand why this samples are not so responsive since I read a lot of comments about this issue .
Thanks
I wouldn’t say that you’re wrong because I have nothing to proves that I’m right.
From what I have seen, there is two kind of people who would buy S40 touch. The first section are those people who just one something that looks trendy yet capable. The other section are frustrated S60 user due to the unstable nature of Symbian.
And both of these user can be potential apps hunter. In my community (Malaysia, 18 years old, typical teens), there is a majority of people of brought the iPhone, they are not tech geeks, they buy it because they thought iPhone would make them look cooler, trendier while downloading apps will make them appeared to be high-tech-ish (in fact not).
However, many of use knew that the cost of an iPhone can sometimes drill a hole in someone’s pocket, so they might purse for some cheaper alternative of touch phone that make them looks cool indeed. (That’s why touch screen feature phone can get some sales) This is when S40 touch get their customer. It’s more simple than Symbian(a lot of people struggling with the control of S^1 and S^3) yet has the illusion of being trendy. These people will actually buy apps for their phone if the process of buying wouldn’t be too hard. (these non-techie guy will not spend hours and hours googling for free content) The existance of Ovi Store will solve their problem.
However, I can’t help but agree to your point of most region where Nokia held the highest marketshare are region that most citizen are not capable of affording mobile phone apps. Except region like Southeast Asia, China and part of India.
As a long-term tech enthusiast I can tell you that my favourite mobile OS is MeeGo, and it hasn’t even been officially out yet!
My next favourite is Android (actually the MIUI ROM, its a beast).
Then the iOS platform.
Followed by WP7, Maemo5, WebOS, Symbian3, WM6, BBOS.
/rant
MeeGo was designed to be optimised for nextgen (round’the’corner) processors (Cortex A9/Oak Trail).
The others were designed for the current gen (ARM11 and Cortex A8), and require a major work to eek out the potential of these near-coming processor family.
I own an iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy S, and the iPhone 4 is a better phone simply because it is super polished and does what you want and what youre doing. With the Froyo update my Galaxy S is now worse off. An official upgrade has given me the Flash10 capability and now fixed the GPS (non working before). However the touchscreen is unresponsive too often, the phone lags a lot (slower than the Moto Milestone), the camera now takes blurry shots (before they were better than the N95) and multitasking no longer works (I’m serious). I nearly purposely destroyed the SGS several times due to sheer frustration, the software needs major rework.
The phone (hardware) although cool is worse than the iPhone 4 also because the plastic touschscreen feels cheap and leaves marks, the plastic housing of the phone is cheap, its lightweight makes it feel cheap, and they purposely removed the LED flash.
But I do love the benefits that Android gives which iOS users can only dream of, and the availability of choices. So I am eagerly waiting for the Nexus S (source of kernels and code) and the MIUI-Team to get a custom ROM that resolves all my lame issues.
In short, iOS deserves the most success (Apple’s perfectionism helps drive competition),
Followed by MeeGo (native Apps that are crosscompatible, low fragmenting chance),
WP7 deserves slightly more success than Android (tries to do what iOS does on varrying hardware)… followed by the other guys (Symbian3/Android/Maemo5 etc).
The main problem that Meego devices will face, is exactly the same issue that Samsung and Sony Ericsson faced when they released Symbian devices.
Nokia used Ovi Services and Maps, on top of Symbian to push their phones. Samsung and S-E don’t have a service layer; in fact, they had to effectively get it from an outside source, Google services, in the form of Android.
Again, Nokia can push Ovi with Meego, but what’s everyone else that would release a Meego device going to use? Yeah, that’s a huge problem for the platform.
Intel App-up takes the place of P-O-S for applications etc.
Not talking about a place to get applications; you missed the point.
Apple ‘sells’ the iTunes ecosystem. Android sells tight integration with Google services. Nokia, sells Ovi Maps and Messaging.
Last time I checked, Intel wasn’t a software services provider. They offered neither a content store, a messaging service, their own proprietary mapping service (Google reserves voice directional driving to Android).
Also, Intel doesn’t exactly have a history of providing consumer relevant software, at all. They’re chip guys, first and foremost.
Nobody’s going to go: I want the Intel Pad to get the cool Intel apps. That’s a fantasy that even Intel doesn’t harbor.
Why should I want to get cool “Intel” apps? Do Android people get “HTC” or “Motorola” apps?
Google services can be accessed by non-Android platforms (actually, many of them use open protocols); in fact I use Google Sync, Gmail and Google Maps on my Blackberry. So I don’t understand why this shouldn’t be possible with MeeGo.
And about mapping services: what mapping service does Apple offer on the iPhone? None, you get it from a third party. Exactly as Samsung does, for example, on Bada handsets. This didn’t prevent their devices from being successful. Why should this be a problem for non-Nokia MeeGo devices?
All good points.
You’re up Johnny 😛
I think what johnny is trying to say is that for non-nokia companies will cost them much money to release a meego device than an WP7 or android device. One of the problem is that they need to have their own app store.(intel apps are for atom cpu applications), then they need to provide a navigation service and so on.
You could have said all the same things about the S-E Vivaz and the Samsung i8910.
And yet, they suffered from a lack of a unified ecosystem.
Open source Linux fans won’t like to hear this, but customers, Joe Average, *likes* a full-on ecosystem that they can ‘live inside of’.
Apple doesn’t have mapping….but they do have an entire iTunes ecosystem, besides apps, including exclusive content, third party accessories of every option, etc., etc.
Microsoft is pushing the Zune experience in WP7 and Windows Live for email.
Say, an Acer Meego device is going to be an orphan. Only people reading blogs like this, like me, would enjoy playing with and finding stuff for a device. Everyone else wants to buy something, hit a button and have everything “just work”.
It’s why the iPod ecosystem as closed as it is, succeeded over the Creatives, Cowons and iRivers of the world.
I think that even a Nokia Meego tablet, without a Kindle reader or a deal with Netflix, is going to be a limiting experience for many. Nobody, aside from us, likes to sit and convert their movies; the Kindle format is now the standard, next to EPUB and yet you won’t be able to read popular ebooks, the latest best-sellers, on your Nokia Meego tablet.
If its only features include a web browser, a word processor and a media player, guess what….it’s the JooJoo tablet.
Also, has anyone looked at the Ovi store lately? Aside from Ovi maps, an Opera browser and a Twitter feed, can anybody point me to a single application that would be a joy to use on a 7-10 inch tablet, that would even scale up? It stands at ‘0’, yet they plan on releasing something, or so say the rumors, in 2011? Nokia is off their gourd.
While on a Tab or an iPad, I’ll bring up an issue of the latest The Economist, then watch a streaming film, the latest release from Netflix, then open the Marvel Comics app and read the latest issues just released.
@Johnny Tremaine true. people are more interested in ecosystems. that why I said that for most of hardware manufactures it will be easy to create android and wp7 devices than meego, because google and microsoft are pushing they own services.
However from what I understand meego will have something like a meego warehouse (not a store) where developers can push their meego apps, and from that 3rd party stores can take applications and sell them through their own stores(ovi ,intel appup…).
I’m curious how this will be implemented. Also I read somewhere that acer and asus start building their own application stores based on some website template created by intel, but branded as asus and acer.
But you want to know the problem? Among all the names you mentioned–Intel, Acer or Asus–there isn’t a single software company among them. They’re all just hardware guys, as is, really, Nokia.
I really see Meego development as a group of older-line hardware firms feeling threatened that the focus, to customers, is now on software and that companies specializing in software–Google, Microsoft, Apple–are taking the lead.
(Intel also doesn’t do consumer products very well. Remember four or five years ago, when they tried releasing a handful of Intel branded electronics gadgets? I think one included a Creative/iPod type mp3 player. Most of those products sold so little that they’d probably be considered collectors items, like the Microsoft Kin.)
@Johnny Tremaine
There is so much that can be added MeeGo because it is x86 based and also fully Linux. It doesn’t need Ovi services to be successful. There were many tablets before the iPad and I don’t think the market is saturated yet. If they have gesture-based, non-touch the screen UI that could be remarkable.
Because Jane SoccerMom is going to load and run full Linux apps on a tablet.
Really? That’s going to be Meego’s sales pitch?