Who Needs the iPhone?
Programming Python on the Nokia N800
Monday January 22, 2007
At MacWorld 2007, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's iPhone as an amazing device. It has been widely heralded as a major technological step forward, combining a media player, a WAP-enabled web browser, and a cell phone. It is expected to be a hit. It also requires a two-year phone contract with Cingular/AT&T Wireless in order to bring the price down to around $599 USD.
But all of that was bettered before it happened. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Nokia unveiled the N800 which sports equivalent features and a bit more for around $399 USD. One feature of Nokia's N800 is a Python programming environment. Nokia supports the ability of users to customise their phones and has enabled developers to create third-party software for Nokia devices. With a project called Maemo, you can program the N800 to do a lot more than intended and in ways that suit your needs (instead of Apple's conception of your needs). Whether you write programs for file processing or one of the several network protocols, the N800 allows you to do that with Python. You can even control the camera.
Need more reasons for why the N800 is at least as feature-rich as the iPhone? While Python programming is enough for me, StarryHope has ten others. So, if you are on the market for a new pocket communication device that you can tailor to your needs, you might save yourself quite a bit of money and consider Nokia's N800 (prices).
But all of that was bettered before it happened. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Nokia unveiled the N800 which sports equivalent features and a bit more for around $399 USD. One feature of Nokia's N800 is a Python programming environment. Nokia supports the ability of users to customise their phones and has enabled developers to create third-party software for Nokia devices. With a project called Maemo, you can program the N800 to do a lot more than intended and in ways that suit your needs (instead of Apple's conception of your needs). Whether you write programs for file processing or one of the several network protocols, the N800 allows you to do that with Python. You can even control the camera.
Need more reasons for why the N800 is at least as feature-rich as the iPhone? While Python programming is enough for me, StarryHope has ten others. So, if you are on the market for a new pocket communication device that you can tailor to your needs, you might save yourself quite a bit of money and consider Nokia's N800 (prices).
Comments
you forgot it doesn’t phones, as iphone does!
(personally, i’ll buy the successor of n800, if i can phone with that! or, at least, use edge/umts to surf out of my home!)
for the rest, iphone has simply too much publicity, and nokia n800 is much better as device (but, you know, i want edge/umts!)…
ciao
Thanks for your comment, ‘fly, and for emphasising that part of the situation. You are right, it does not phone like the iPhone does. But for those in the US, where the iPhone comes with a required two-year contract with AT&T Wireless (formerly Cingular), the N800 offers the same capabilities without the restrictions (albeit telephony via VOIP and not a standard carrier) and at a reduced price (one could buy two N800s for the long-term cost of one iPhone). It will be interesting to see what kind of package Apple offers in places where cell phone technology is more advanced as in Europe or Asia. As you know, serving up a locked phone in Europe does not go over well.
I, too, am eager to see what will happen with EDGE and UMTS, but I think one will have to wait a bit for that. It is my understanding that iPhone uses 2G technology. I hope I am wrong on that. If it is true, that certainly makes the N800 look like the better deal.
Thanks again for your post.
Please advise, if you know, somebody has really used the capabilities of Nokia 800’s programming features and developed some applications for consumers. I would really appreciate.
Thanks for your query. Applications for the Nokia N800 can be found at the Maemo project:
http://downloads.maemo.org/
If you want an index of them, you can use this hacked Google search:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site%3Adownloads.maemo.org+n800&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
Python has been released for iPhone.
So has Objective-C
And Perl
And Tcl
And PHP
And Ruby
And Apache
Thanks. Yes, it was released after this blog was posted. See http://python.about.com/b/2007/10/15/python-and-apache-on-the-iphone.htm