Why Linux Is Good For Low-End Smartphones 163
jfruhlinger writes "Nokia's announcement that it was developing a Linux distro for low-end smartphones, shortly after abandoning the Linux-based Meego OS for Windows Phone 7, was a little puzzling. But it actually makes good business sense in the smartphone world. While WP7 aims for the high end, there's a market for cheaper and less complex phones that still beat boring old feature phones, especially in emerging economies. And, unlike Symbian and the heavily tweaked Meego, Linux can be quickly and cheaply brought to market as a low-end smartphone OS."
Here's hoping (Score:4, Interesting)
I would love to see a very small version of Linux on a smartphone. Think kernel less than 1MB (less than 500kB ideally), and a very lightweight graphical library. This could easily be made to boot in under 5 seconds and run on put-put hardware. I've done it myself with a system with pretty old Arm v5 at 300MHz, with 32MB RAM and 64MBytes of ROM it's capable or running a lot of goods - certainly any simple smartphone task.
I wish them luck!
Android is better (Score:5, Interesting)
If a phone manufacturer wants to make a low end smart phone, Android is the way to go. It comes with a huge app ecosystem, more polished and cheaper to implement than any new Linux solution. I don't see how anything Nokia produces can compete with a $150 Android phone.
Nokia is probably only considering Linux after they realized that WP7 does not scale down to low end smart phones. They are covering up poor strategic decisions.