Can Linux Dominate Smartphone OS?

Jeryl Kesh writes "Does Motorola's roaring success with its Linux-based 'Ming' phones in China indicate that the open-source platform is now a serious contender against Symbian and Windows Mobile in the handheld device software platform arena? The world No. 2 mobile phone maker, which debuted the Ming smartphone in March this year in China, shipped more than one million Linux-based units in China alone last quarter, according to research firm Canalys. However with Nokia refusing to adopt Linux, Symbian remains by far the top mobile device OS, according to Canalys, with a 67 percent share, well ahead of second-place Windows Mobile, with 15 percent of the market. Eirik Chambe-Eng, the co-founder of one of the most popular mobile Linux platforms, Norway-based TrollTech, has also reportedly predicted a 'revolution' in the use of open-source software on phones and handheld devices. His contention was that Linux gives handset manufacturers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) 'complete control,' and in turn keeps Microsoft and Symbian at bay."

I would say yes

[GmAz]

I would have to say yes. Being open source, any manfacturer could use it on their phone. And considering that phones aren't really OS dependant...why wouldn't they go to linux. I don't buy my phone based on what software is on it, I want a phone that is loud, easy to use and has long battery life.

Linux is so versatile!

[HugePedlar]

Is there anything that won't run Linux? PCs, Linksys Routers, PDAs, and now cheesy supervillains [wikipedia.org]. What next?

Smart?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do thay call phones which need time to boot(!) and which need virus killer to function properly "smart"?

Thank god I still have one of those "stupid" 5110's from Nokia.

Does the os on a phone even matter?

[DrXym]

I don't know about anyone else, but I really, really do not care what OS my phone uses, just as long as it works as advertised. It should be navigable, have good sound quality, good battery life, have shortcuts, good predictive texting and other features. In other words it should just work.

If there is some kind of Linux at the bottom of it - great, but running Linux is not much of a selling point if the UI is junk. I have an ADSL modem & wireless router which uses Linux. Fortunately it's an excellent bit of kit because I would curse it everyday no matter what OS was underneath if it wasn't.

I most certainly hope so

[LKM]

Having used almost all currently available cell phone OSes (Palm OS on a Treo, Symbian on a P800, Mobile Windows on friends' phones and some weird choices like Ogo), I can say with some authority that they all suck. Well, "suck" may be a bit strong a word, but each of them has both huge shortcomings and lots of small areas where they simply don't pay enough attention to details.

What smart phones really need is for Apple to fix them. This probably won't happen, so the next best thing is a Linux based OS which allows us programmers to fix what the big companies don't seem to be capable of fixing.

Re:Does that translate to customer savings?

[syntaxglitch]

In the US, at least, the cost of mobile phones is massively subsidized by cellular providers offering phones for far below value in exchange for a contract for some length of cellular service. Therefore, the actual price of mobile phones here is all but irrelevant and there's no market pressure to reduce prices.

two points

[nostriluu]

First, I wish all the people who don't want a "smart" phone would just be quiet. We know. Go buy a basic phone. It's not like there aren't any. All smartphone postings should include this disclaimer.

Second, I'm wondering really how open the linux is that's installed on these phones. If proprietary interfaces and device drivers are used, it might as well be running symbian|windows|whatever. Could you develop an app for these phones as easily as you could for gnome/kde/etc, and release it 100% open source for use by others?

Re:Does that translate to customer savings?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not interested if it saves you money, they're interested if it saves them money.

They weigh up all the costs of the various parts, the cost of integration of theose parts and the cost of testing them...

Linux is an OS, yes...but you need a lot more than an OS to make an integrated suite of apps that work seamlessly on a phone. I'd estimate that linux would probably make up less than 30% of the size of the rom in a phone, which may not be such a saving in costs.

Phones also have to be delivered within a specific market window in order to make a profit. If you can't rely on people supplying parts of your software to make that target window then you are in a very risky situation and you will lose millions. This sin't like the PC market where hardware and software features are fairly independent of each other and you can 'mix and match', they are tightly integrated.

You then have the balance of the cost of the hardware to run the software. If linux requires an extra 10 dollars worth of RAM to run at a decent speed, even if all the software was free, you'd still be burning more money. If it wasn't very power-efficient then you're talking a lot more money for the battery.

You also have the cost of testing. You need to test all the software as a system. As the filesystems are different (no fast access to spinning discs, for instance), you are going to find huge ammounts of boundary conditions that no-one normally finds, and probably no-one is interested in fixing (as it doesn't affect their beowulf cluster ;). If you release a phone that has crap SW quality, then you'll be stuffed. People generally don't treat dodgy consumer devices with as much forgiveness as the do PCs.

It's far more complex than 'linux is free so it's cheaper', or 'linux is open source so it's more reliable'.

Re:Does that translate to customer savings?

[Bloke down the pub]

Just because the consumer doesn't see the actual cost of the phone as a distinct line item doesn't make it irrelevant. The provider still factors it into their calculations of how much to rip you off ^H^H^H charge you per month.

Re:Does the os on a phone even matter?

[DrXym]

I can write and install my own applications anyway, using something called Java. Practically every phone offers it these days, supporting the CLDC & MIDP configurations. For example, look at all the emulators [sun.com] available. Obviously Java is not the fastest platform for but its perfectly sufficient to write games and small utilities that run over a wide range of devices.

Now obviously you could do the same with natively compiled code if all phones used the same hardware but they don't. So I'm not sure how using Linux is any guarantee against fragmentation. There are lots of embedded Linux solutions that run on lots of embedded processors with lots of embedded GUIs. Unless every Linux based phone maker happened to pick (and licence) the exact solution used by Motorola, there is no possibility that apps would run on one system to the next.

It's more about platform stability

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more important that it be a stable applications platform. If Linux has 90% market share, but constituted of 10 incompatible versions, then really you have 10 differen OS's and it wouldn't be fair to count market share in that way. What makes Windows Mobile and Symbian really interesting is that I can write an app and be pretty sure it will run out the box on devices I never tested with.

Re:I hope so.

[c.gerritsen]

I refuse to buy a phone that is based on MS or Symbian. I do NOT trust either of them, at all. I DO trust Linux.

What makes you trust a phone with Linux more than one with Windows or Symbian?

Are you planning on reloading the software on your phone? If you get, say, a T-Mobile phone running Linux, T-Mobile could have made whatever modifications they wanted to to the operating system.

I don't see why you should trust it more when it is easier for the wireless company to do whatever they want with your phone. Then again, they may be doing the same with phones with Windows or Symbian.