Highlights:

• 3.5 inch screen
• 3.2 MP camera plus 1.3MP front-facing camera
• Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
• 1GHz processor
• 2GB microSD card (upto 32GB)

See

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This is somewhat strange news coming just a day or two after Motorola announced it would be charging royalties on Android phones for use of its patents.

My comments

Well, I guess this is one (expensive) way to avoid paying royalties on Android.

Given the reactions of HTC, Samsung, Sony, and LG (which we’re all versions of “We’re glad Google’s defending Android”), it seems Google’s reassured vendors that their intention isn’t to be the one and only Android manufacturer, but rather to have a stable basis to defend Android from Apple and the rest of the anti-Android gang.

Secondly, Nokia looks even more pathetic. Here’s their reaction:

“This further reinforces our belief that opportunities for the growth of Nokia’s smartphone business will be greatest with Windows Phone. This could prove to be a massive catalyst for the Windows Phone ecosystem.”

Uhm … what?! Google strengthens Android, and that’ll be a catalyst for Windows Phone? The fact that Google was willing to pay so much for Motorola seems to discredit Nokia’s line that they couldn’t come to a deal with Google (regarding whom they’d partner with). Their CEO, Stephen Elop, was just too much of a Microsoft fan to do anything else than hand the company over to Microsoft.

So… Winners: Google, Android, Android manufacturers. Losers: Microsoft and Nokia. Also Apple to the extent that there are a bunch of patents out there that can be used to prevent slow their patent war on Android.

What do you think?

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So what does this mean for Google’s Android, the Apple iPhone, and Windows Mobile?

Well, for one thing, MeeGo is an open platform, just like Android, but unlike the iPhone and WinMo. Also like Android, MeeGo is Linux-based.

But unlike any of the other platforms, MeeGo is also suitable for cars, landline phones, netbooks, cellphones, and other appliances. So you can have the same platform on all of your computing/communications devices.

Some of the complications with MeeGo, though, include:

• Intel wants to sell its chips, but MeeGo can work with non-Intel chips, and Nokia hasn’t committed to using just Intel.
• Nokia will continue to use Symbian for some of its smartphones.

So, despite Walter Meego’s song “Forever”, it’s unlikely that Nokia and Intel will be joined at the hip, but they can be frenemies in coopetition.

My comments

The nice thing about Maemo and Moblin was the fact, that, underneath, they were basically a Linux distribution. So you can install and run just about any Linux software you want. To me, that’s a lot better than trying to jailbreak an iPhone to get it to do what you want. Despite the geeky name, MeeGo continues this advantage.

Resources

Meego
Bits blog article
Slashdot discussion
Walter Meego “Foreever”

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