MeeGo Handset 1.1

Having owned an N900 for a little while now (casting my vote for openness and freedom in the mobile space), I've been eagerly waiting for a MeeGo release that I could install on my N900 and play with. That moment came a little over one week ago! :) So, after waiting for my nice new class-10 microSDHC card to arrive (cheaper to buy online with shipping, than to buy locally), I finally had a play last weekend. I was a little dissapointed :|

Although I had expected a lot of bugs and instabilities, and my overall expectations were quite low at this stage, I was still quite surprised at just how incomplete MeeGo Handset is. I guess my unrealistic expectations stemmed from the fact that the current MeeGo handset release has the version number 1.1 - that implies to me that it should be "fairly complete" (albeit with bugs, etc). However, it is more inline with what I would call a version 0.1.

Now I'm not complaining - what little I did see seemed to be quite stable, though a little slow. I still have high hopes for MeeGo and would love to see it become a major player in the mobile space (how else will we get any sense of freedom or control over our own handsets? Certainly not with any of the current competitor offerings). I'm just expressing that my own expectations were clearly a bit off. So, it looks like I'm going to have to stick with Maemo 5 for now.

On a related note, I installed the Nokia Qt SDK today... wow, what a contrast! The SDK installation was smooth, and I was able to get a basic app up and running in an N900 emulator in seconds (of course it helps that I know, and love Qt already). Having spent six years perform mobile application research and development for Australia's largest telco, I've had a lot of experience with mobile SDKs, and this one is far far better than any others I've used! :)