Tag Archives: n900

Nokia N900 Hacked With Froyo, While Androids Are Still Waiting [Android]

By shervin | Published: June 28, 2010
Nokia would be doing much better if they'd announced last week that along with ditching Symbian for high-end devices , they were adopting Android too. Sadly, they're sticking with MeeGo—but as this video demonstrates, you can Androidize it yourself. More
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Hacked N900 blazes through Froyo

By anthony | Published: June 27, 2010
While the various and sundry Android manufacturers are all scrambling (or casually strolling) toward official Android 2.2 updates for their manifold handsets, someone managed to get Google's Froyo running on the Nokia N900 . Turns out, the two are a pretty great pair, with some super speedy browsing (like, really fast) and decent hardware support outside of an unfortunate lack of memory card support. Hit up the video after the break to see it in action, the browser starts kicking around the 4:45 mark. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Continue reading Hacked N900 blazes through Froyo Hacked N900 blazes through Froyo originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Jun 2010 05:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Google’s Chromium project ported to N900

By anthony | Published: April 9, 2010
Web browsing fiends of the world already have enough reason to envy N900 owners on account of the built-in browser's excellence and the availability of an official Firefox release -- both with full Flash support -- but if that's enough, there's now another name-brand option in the works. Well, sort of. You see, Chromium for Maemo isn't an official port -- but the Maemo community is filled with tinkerers, and that has inevitably led to the availability of a hacked version of the Debian release that apparently works quite wonderfully on the N900 (yes, including Flash) with a 100 score on the elusive Acid test. It's said to be a little buggy at the moment, so hopefully that'll improve over time; you've got to download and install the package manually rather than going through a repo, but as an N900 owner, odds are pretty good that you're familiar with the tactic already. Perhaps Google wants to take this little project over? [Thanks, Sp4mer] Google's Chromium project ported to N900 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Nokia N900 Maemo / MeeGo dual boot ‘will come at some point,’ but not next firmware

By melissa | Published: March 27, 2010
Quim Gil of Nokia's Maemo team has dropped some knowledge on the folks chatting up the upcoming MeeGo release in the official Maemo forums, and it sounds like there are at least a couple critical points to be aware of for N900 owners and would-be ROM flashers when the first developer preview drops next week. To quote Gil, "nothing beautiful, stable or fully featured" will be a part of that initial release -- and to be more blunt about it, "99% of you don't want to install that release in your N900." The good news, though, is that Nokia seems to be aware of the importance of a dual-boot solution to MeeGo devs working with N900s in the long term, and Gil reports that a proper setup for that "will come at some point" -- it's just not on their short-term radar. We can totally understand that; we've no doubt there's still tons of reconciliation to manage between the legacy Maemo and Moblin ecosystems, and that's presumably priority one as they march toward a May release of what's being billed as a MeeGo 1.0 release. Speculation had been building that the next cut of Maemo 5 -- PR1.2 -- might have MeeGo dual boot capability, but it's not to be. That said, PR1.2's still got plenty of tweaks that should be of interest to N900 owners, including a totally revamped landscape on-screen keyboard, onboard memory wipe capability (thank goodness), and an option to enable auto-rotation in the device's settings. The forums are all abuzz over both topics, naturally -- and since a proper PR1.2 release for N900 is still just a twinkle in Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo's eye, you may as well have a peek, right? [Thanks, Akinwale] Nokia N900 Maemo / MeeGo dual boot 'will come at some point,' but not next firmware originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 01:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Niko, the N900-powered Lego robot, looks poised to take over Twitter (video)

By melissa | Published: March 19, 2010
While we've seen no shortage of smartphone - powered robots in the past, the Nokia camp has been sadly under-represented. But, there's a new one coming to balance things out, a machine called Niko that has Lego Mindstorm NXT 2.0 components for a body and an N900 for a brain. The bot has been under construction for a few weeks but it has just made its YouTube debut with the short video posted after the break, showing it roving around and taking a photo whenever it bumps into something. When all systems are go and the machine is set free Niko will be posting messages and pictures to Twitter describing its every move in thrilling detail. We can't wait for it to start picking fights with @CourtneyLoveUK. Continue reading Niko, the N900-powered Lego robot, looks poised to take over Twitter (video) Niko, the N900-powered Lego robot, looks poised to take over Twitter (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Nokia: MeeGo "door is not closed" on N900

By shervin | Published: March 16, 2010
Now that we have clarity with regard to a Windows Phone 7 update on the HD2 ( sorry, folks ), let's move on to the next contentious platform: Nokia's N900 and MeeGo. As Nokia's only Cortex-A8 handset, there's plenty of hope that Nokia sees fit to upgrade the N900 to MeeGo once the unified Maemo and Moblin OS is ready for consumers. Hope all but crushed yesterday after CNET reported the following from an unnamed, but apparently official Nokia source: "Maemo on Nokia N900 is not upgradeable to MeeGo." We ran this past Ray Haddow, Senior Manager within Nokia Communications who took the quote back to the project team in Finland. According to Ray, the "the door is not closed" with regard to MeeGo on the N900 -- a final decision has not been made. This also echos the words of Valtteri Halla when he announced the MeeGo repository in early March. In response to questions at the time, this one-bodied half of the MeeGo Technical Steering Group had this to day: "N900 is a natural tool for Nokia to drive MeeGo support for our designs and for the ARM CPU architecture in general. We want to have baseline HW that is powerful, easily available for anyone and form-factor stuff so that one HW works for most platform and application development needs. That said, please do not take this yet as a commitment to fully productise MeeGo on N900. I am quite confident that we will end up having a really good developer distro for N900 already but committing to stabilise a consumer-grade MeeGo 1.0 (first half this year) for N900 is another story. That is a product business decision beyond my scope. Also, we do not yet know about MeeGo 1 release content. I am not yet sure if I would be personally ready to let my Maemo5 go for the first MeeGo release in my daily N900 use. Let's see." So, looks like another long game of wait and see, eh? Nokia: MeeGo "door is not closed" on N900 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Nokia N900 Hack Turns the Phone Into a Remote Trigger Flash For the Nikon D40 SLR [Nokia]

By admin | Published: March 1, 2010
It's subconsciously getting drummed into us from all sides, but just in case you haven't heard it yet: the Nokia N900 is the most hackable phone around. It may not be the best phone, but it sure is open source. A blogger at DoItDifferent created a widget for the N900 using Shutter—which uses LIRC to control the Nikon remotely—and Flashlight, which turns the N900's flash into a torch. Then, using the IR transmitter in the phone, it paired up with the Nikon D40's IR receiver for the remote shutter release . When the widget was clicked on the N900, the LED flash strobed and the D40 was triggered, taking a photo instantly. The video below shows the hack at work, but for a more detailed explanation head on over to the blog. [ DoItDifferent via NokNok ] Using an N900 as a remote flash with a D40 from Iain W on Vimeo .
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Nokia’s Explore and Share concept uses super fast, mystery wireless

By admin | Published: February 23, 2010
The Nokia Research Center has another tech tease that gives us a glimpse into one of our many possible mobile computing futures. The so-called, Explore and Share concept starts by placing an N900 onto a "writer" that's tethered to a PC at a retail store. At that point, the PC recognizes the handset and serves up a number of options to the purchaser. For the purposes of the demo, an unnamed Finn selects an album that downloads to the handset in less than 10 seconds. Less than 10 seconds , wirelessly! If we assume that the 18 track Bruce Springsteen album is somewhere between 100MB and 200MB then we're looking at a 10MBps to 20MBps transfer rate. Nokia doesn't admit to what tech it's using, referring to it only as "a new radio technology." It's certainly not NFC which tops out at 424kbps, or Bluetooth 3.0 + HS which tops out at 3MBps. It also negotiates much faster than WiFi (though that could just be editing trickery). It's closer to Wireless USB's real-world data rates of around 15MBps or TransferJet 's 375Mbps effective throughput. Or as a long shot, maybe Bluetooth 4.0 which targets 60Mbps (theoretical) transfer rates. Regardless, it's fast so we have to agree with Nokia when it deadpans: "Sounds great. Doesn't. It." Check out the action after the break. Continue reading Nokia's Explore and Share concept uses super fast, mystery wireless Nokia's Explore and Share concept uses super fast, mystery wireless originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Nokia N900 micro-USB connectors prone to failure?

By anthony | Published: February 10, 2010
The N900's well on its way to developing a solid reputation as a hacker's dream, but here's the thing: hackers need a way to charge their device. Actually, we all do, which makes a trending problem with N900s in the field particularly worrisome. It seems that the micro-USB connector's surface mount design is causing it to become misaligned or disconnected completely, and affected users seem to be having mixed results getting the issue covered under warranty. One of the symptoms of a misaligned connector is that it's unusually snug or difficult to connect, and thinking back to our review unit , we did have some minor issues there but didn't really think anything of it at the time. Anyone out there run into this nasty little issue? Nokia N900 micro-USB connectors prone to failure? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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