I have had a Nokia N900 cellphone for almost a year now, and for me, it has been the best mobile device I’ve had yet. There are lots of interesting developments continuing to go on with the phone, even though it and its operating system appears to be reaching the end of its life. So, I thought this would be a good chance to look at what ideas from the N900 and other devices ought to be carried forward to future devices. This is, perhaps, especially relevant with Nokia now selling the N8 and MeeGo developers having a conference right now.
<!--break-->
First, I should note that everyone has different needs and desires of a mobile device. For some, simply making phone calls is enough. Others want texting, the ability to take pictures and videos, the ability to play music and games, the ability to run various apps, and some even want a device that is easy and fun to hack. As you add on more features, you also add on complexity and people who want simple devices may get frustrated with very complicated devices.

This evening, I went to update any programs on my N900 that had new versions. One of which was kernel power. Kernel Power is a wonderful package for the N900. The parts I like most are the battery usage statistics, IPv6 support, different file system support, and the ability to run mobile hotspot.

That said, I like to push the limits of my N900 so I’ve also got multiboot and nitdroid installed. So, I’m not surprised when things break when I do an upgrade, and things broke when I tried updating the kernel power package.

After poking around for a while, I found a fairly easy way to get things back. First, I tried using various things like pressing 0 when multiboot came up to get a stock kernel boot. That didn’t work. I booted into Nitdroid, and tried to edit the files from Nitdroid. No luck.

Finally, I ended up with this as the best procedure I could come up with.

First, I reflashed just the kernel. I still had my image around from upgrading to PR 1.3, so it was pretty easy:

sudo ./flasher-3.5 -F RX-51_2009SE_20.2010.36-2.002_PR_COMBINED_002_ARM.bin --flash-only=kernel -f -R

At this point, I rebooted, and still had multiboot and all my other applications running. I pressed 0, and this time I got to a stock kernel. I logged in, and uninstalled multiboot, and reinstalled it. I also installed multiboot-kernel-maemo and multiboot-kernel-power.

apt-get remove multiboot
apt-get install multiboot multiboot-kernel-maemo multiboot-kernel-power

I started testing and everything is back in order. Nitdroid is also still working. Now, I need to find out what the updated kernel power really does for me and start messing around a little bit more with Meego.

I also am using Blessn900 with the fcam drivers, and at this point, they appear to be working properly as well.

Next, I’ve reinstalled easy-chroot and easy-deb-chroot. I had these around a few reflashes ago and it is time to retry them. Next, I’ll see if I can get Qole’s easy-meego-chroot running.

So, the latest update to the firmware for the Nokia N900 came out today, and I figured I’d give it a shot to see what works and what doesn’t. As I did for my experiments installing NitDroid on the N900, I am writing this as a log so people can see what worked and didn’t for me. It will be geeky, so non N900 users may want to skip this post.
<!--break-->
My biggest concern was whether PR 1.3 would conflict with NitDroid, Multiboot, Power Kernel or other things I had running. On the Maemo Users mailing list, I found that the default PR 1.3 kernel returns 2.6.28-omap1 Sure, it is an August build, but I guessed that it wasn’t all that different from the Nitdroid or Power kernels. So I tried an Over The Air or OTA upgrade.

The phone itself isn’t new, nor is the idea of installing Android on a Nokia N900. However, I took a slightly different path which I figure some of my geekier friends might find interesting.

You are in a maze of twisty little packages, all alike.

Well, I finally did it. Last night, I bricked my Nokia N900. Bricking a mobile device is making some change or update that causes the device to no longer start up properly. Normally mobile device users don't have to worry about bricking their devices. Most phone manufacturers and mobile carriers don't want people to brick the phone, so they lock it down and keep tight control over what can be installed for apps.

One of the panels at Digiday Social was "Is The App The Future of Social? . Perhaps it would have been better named, "What is the future of apps?"

Last week, my wife got a Nook eReader as a birthday present. We've talked a bit about eReaders and have put off getting one. I've had a few concerns with eReaders. First, most of them so far seem to be too closed for my liking. You can't go in and make modifications. In many cases you are limited to where you can get your ebooks. Also, as the iPad and other slates or tablets become more popular, eReaders may end up being over taken by tablets before we know it.

Quim Gil has a blog post up Running MeeGo 1.1 unstable in your N900. I’ve kicked around installing Meego and this is my report of how things have gone.
<!--break-->

This morning, I set up my Nokia N900 to be an #ipv6 enabled web server. In this article, I will discuss what some background information about setting this up and then the details of what I did.
<!--break-->
Let me start off by describing the Nokia N900 for those who are not acquainted with it. It is, in my opinion, the best geeks’ phone out there. While non-geeks might enjoy some of the power off the phone, I generally steer my non-geek friends to an iPhone or an Android. However, for someone that wants a phone that they can configure, customize and program for, to their hearts content, there is nothing I have found like the N900.