maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - N900: The Great "It's a phone!" vs. "It's not a phone; it's a mobile computer!" Debate

	ysss	2010-11-23 , 14:51
	Posts: 4,384 \| Thanked: 5,524 times \| Joined on Jul 2007 @ ˙ǝɹǝɥʍou	#244

Originally Posted by Kamen

In theory the only reason why pople call it a phone and a smart phone and a mobile computer blah blah. Is because they look at 2 things, what the OS is and then the screen size. (Some people take into acount a full qwerty keyboard too)

Honestly though it is more of a mobile computer if it has to catogery. I mean you'd think most people would be happy with the the "product" and not need to debate what the hell it is. Although I strongly do agree with a lot of you that it is not (Just a phone)

The reason why it put it in that catogery is because it can do all the things the Nokia Booklet 3G can. Except for run Win7 and do all the processing. Simply because if the N900 was made to do all that it would have a bigger screen and the battery would be the same size as the device lol

So there is my take on things.

You tell me a "phone" that can run Maemo, Android, Meego, Ubuntu, Windows 95. Most of them on a multiboot configuration.

Also you tell me a phone that you can make and receive calls not using any credit, if you insert a mobile broadband sim card you can with this via all the voice services intergrated with the device... Better still, no sim card just connected to a wirless network. In town or at home.

& remember "Mobile" does not mean its a phone. Mobile meand it's smaller and easier to move around, more efficient.

Mobile CPUs, Mobile Homes, Mobile Missiles, Mobile Phones, Mobile Netbooks, but yes Most of those are related to "Mobile Tecnology"

Keyboard is bs...
There's been numerous phones with 'phone-only OS' sporting keyboard way before the n900.

Screen size is bs...
There are phones with smaller and larger screen compared to n900. Both with lower and higher pixel density.

Multiboot is bs...
Due to the limited number of popular chipsets for smartphones, 'porting' one 'mobilized embedded OS' from one 'smartphone' to another is not that uncommon. See also: xda dev

VOIP is bs...
Any smartphones (and many feature phones) have access to voip clients..

Now, OS is the only single valid point that I think people can/should debate on, on n900's categorization. BUT even then:

1. Lineage: The competitors also make use of existing available technology from desktop/server OS (linux kernel, *bsd core) for their mobile OS. The degree of modifications and bastardizations differ, but more on that.

2. Features and capabilities: From the (non technical) 'features and capabilities' checklist, between smartphones and the n900 have probably 80-90% overlap. Neither is a complete superset of the other.

3. .... what am I doing.

At the end of the day, all current mobile phones are 'computers'. Whether they're 'more like' the x86 commodity desktop 'scene' or not, and in what ways; that's another story. Very subjective and there are too many parameters to make it a conclusive categorization.

Ironically, i personally think Android and iOS are the ones truly shifting the perception of what 'mobile computers' should be like. We will be seeing so many more simplified 'computers' like Android tablets and Apple's iPad in the hands of everyday Joes.

And they will think those are what computers should be like.

And that's not really a bad thing either.

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