At MWC 2010, which was held in February, Intel and Nokia have joined forces of Moblin and Maemo developers in a joint mobile platform MeeGo. Now developers have access to early release of the new platform.

Open platform is proposed for Nokia N900, netbooks based on Intel Atom and devices on the platform Intel Moorestown.

Now the repository of MeeGo contains only the base of operating system in the form of coverage from the Linux-kernel to the layer of middleware. Thus, the announcement is interesting to quite a small number of developers.

It is alleged that affordable MeeGo manner allows to load with either USB-media or CD-ROM. In the absence of a graphical environment operation with the system is made through the terminal.

The final release of MeeGo will take place very soon – in May.

Apparently, it will take time before the N900, the flagship of Nokia multimedia smartphones will be transferred from Maemo to MeeGo OS. According to Kvim Jill, a member of the group Nokia Maemo, the first version of MeeGo does not provide dual boot. Moreover, he admitted that this version is far from being perfect and it will not have any exceptional features, and 99 percent of users will probably not want to install it on their smartphones.

It is worth noting that according to some sources, the version MeeGo PR1.2 supposedly provides a dual boot, but as we see, this is not true and it was just another attempt by some fans of Nokia to indulge in wishful thinking.

Moreover, they still claim that this version has some features which may be of special interest to the owners of Nokia N900, e.g.  updated virtual keyboard, the ability to completely erase the information stored in the internal memory of the smartphone, as well as autorotation of the image.

Whether it is true or not we can not yet say for sure, but according to Kvim Jill, Nokia is well aware that the dual boot in MeeGo OS should be enabled as soon as possible. However, the representative of Nokia has not announced when this will happen.

The smartphone Nokia N900 based on Maemo has served as the “heart” and “brain” of the robot called Niko the creation of which has recently been announced with the official press release of Nokia.

However, Niko is developed not by Nokia itself, but by two young enthusiasts – graduates of the University of Waterloo (Canada).

In January of this year Nokia announced the launch of the American part of the competition PUSH N900, within the frames of which the owners of the model N900 were suggested to create an unusual device on its base. Niko is one of these developments.

The body of the robot has been collected from the designer of the Danish company LEGO, and it is managed with the help of Twitter-Blog (@ N900Niko) where the commands are published. For example, the robot can be ordered to turn right or to get ahead, says the resource.

Although Nokia has not yet operated turn-by-turn navigation through its Ovi Maps on the platform for handheld devices Maemo, users of N900 can now determine their location due to Sygic company, which released a version of its Mobile Maps application for this device.

So far available only in Europe, the application costs 60 euros. It includes maps of the Eastern and Northern Europe, as well as the traditional “places of interest”, the location of the cells commit speeding, warnings about speed limits and lots of configurable options (including multi-language support).

So far, nothing is known of going beyond the limits of Europe, but Sygic assures that gradually additional regions will be announced soon.

The leaders of the Chinese mobile market, as some of you might already know, are becoming the models of Anycool, Nokia and iPhone companies, actively transforming from phones to a whole combine of various possible features. Why are sales of counterfeits actively developing? And if there is a chance to spend twice as much money buying not really qualitive product, rather than purchasing the “licensed” iPhone or Nokia?

If you have come across Anycool mobile phones, you can quite call them Chinese products, because only in China 2 SIM-cards and a television are embedded in the phone so far and, as expected, with lots of defects and improper phone capabilities. But at the same time, the manufacturer, which has already settled in 27 countries, assures the high quality of its models, their reliability. Anycool is one of those brands that will bring comfort and a great functionality at a low price. In its case there’s no need to talk about the quality of Chinese phones.

Among the most popular models of Anycool are T518, I939. Both are bar form factor phones, have a touch screen, good features, the second model only has a single processor.

The advantage of two processors in Anycool phones is the operation with two SIM-cards simultaneously. If you receive calls at the same time by two numbers, phone with single-processor will only receive one call but the dual-processor will, of course, receive both.

Apple iPhone also is not behind in the Chinese market, but at the same time, moving normally, which is more preferred by the mobile phones buyers because of  the confidence in the quality of the product purchased. Many users are already aware of the difference between the original and Chinese iPhone. In the second case you can expect terrible quality, but the price is acceptable, which plays so well with the money of the unsuspecting citizens.

Nokia is moving, in that sense, more directly. The company is not so stridently corrected by Chinese craftsmen. For example, new Nokia 2730 and Nokia N900 are quite great models. The first has a more simple design and functionality, the model may rightly be considered transitional from a budget phone to more advanced, N900 is designed for more demanding clients. It has Wi-Fi, an excellent 5 Mpx camera with three shot digital zoom and video recording with resolution of 848×480 pixels, supports flash cards up to 16 GB. It has a very impressive display, ARM Cortex-A8v 600 MHz processor, it is based on Maemo 5 operating system.

To select a certified and tested product or transformed rubbish is the choice of each individual, but what to do with this stuff, when it actually becomes worthless? And this happens thousands times more frequently than with the original, to throw out into trash? Hardly anyone will buy a used Chinese iPhone, not everyone will buy Chinese phones in general, so maybe it’s worth before buying really reliable mobile friend, to save  some extra money and buy something that will last 2-3 times more than China’s counterfeit? I think many would agree with this idea.

Some web resources have reported, citing a source in the Nokia company that the operating system Maemo 5 Internet Tablet Nokia N900 will be able to get MeeGo upgrade. It should be noted that MeeGo is an operating system that combines Moblin and Maemo platforms. About the beginning of works on this project was announced in mid-February at Mobile World Congress 2010. It was also announced that at the end of March there will be a version of MeeGo for netbooks based on Intel Atom and the Internet tablet Nokia N900.

And now they say that the internet tablet will not receive support of the new OS. The same source indicates that the first model running MeeGo will be released in the second half of this year. Perhaps, it will be MID phone LG GW990 on a new hardware platform Intel Moorestown. This is a long and narrow device with a 4.8-inch touch screen.

However, there are several other formal comments on the expense of support for Nokia N900 MeeGo OS. Ray Haddow, head of Nokia Communications, said that this issue remains open. This confirms the post of Valtteri Halla made on official MeeGo blog. According to him, the distribution OS for developers for the device is ready, but nothing is known about the final consumer version yet.

Analysts at Ovum came to the conclusion that the Finnish Nokia is noticeably behind its competitors in terms of performance. Many companies have made their choice in favor of ARM Cortex A8 processor and Qualcomm Snapdragon, neglecting ARM11. However, Nokia still uses the latter in its smartphones.

The report says that Nokia phones need a little improvement in order to be more competitive. It is noted that only Nokia N900 is equipped with advanced processor (ARM Cortex-A8, 600 MHz), but Nokia N97 and Nokia N97 mini work with ARM11, the clock frequency of which is only 434 MHz.

The amount of RAM in the most advanced models of Nokia is 256 MB, while our competitors have phones that offer twice more. HTC HD2 is brought as an example, working with Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and equipped with 448 MB of RAM.

The matter also concerns displays. Nokia currently prefers resistive screens, but most users prefer capacitive technology. There are about twenty devices in the market, equipped with high definition displays, while there is only one such device – again Nokia N900in the portfolio of the Finnish manufacturer.

The smartphone Nokia N900 only for 120$? It is possible, but only with a condition that it is not original Nokia, and collected on an unnamed Chinese factory Nokla. It is not only similar to the original by appearance in the folded position, but can boast with the pull-out keyboard. These are the only similarities of the phones, though. The screen of “nokla” measures only 3.2 inches, while the resolution is ludicrous – 320×240 pixels.

Only the presence of two slots for SIM-cards may be mentioned as a plus, but almost every Chinese phone can boast with this qulity. And do not be deceived by “iPhone like” icons of the operating system – there is no trace of smartphone here, and from the additional programs you can install only Java-based applications.

Of course, it is useless to try to find a driver for printer hp for such NOKLA N900. Actually, there is no optics from Carl Zeiss, 3G, 32 GB of memory and processor ARM Cortex A8. But the price is not bad without argument.

The operating system, developed jointly by Nokia and Intel, will appear in the form of a test version soon.

Recently, one of the representatives of Nokia, who is involved in work on MeeGo operating system, said in his blog that the first version of the operating system will appear at the end of the month. According to Valterri Hull, the blogger, the appearance of the first version also means the discovery of the code by the developers, who will be able to begin the study of the new platform.

Let us remind, that MeeGo is considered to be a joint project of Nokia and Intel. At the MWC 2010 exhibition the companies announced that they will combine their developments (Moblin and Maemo), creating an ideal mobile OS. The owners of Nokia N900 mobile computers will be the first to have access to MeeGo, and later a version for devices working on Intel Atom processors will be released.

In case if you are an owner of smartphone Nokia N900  and also the PlayStation 3 by happy coincidence, you have a great chance to save on the purchase of additional gamepad for the latter. You need nothing else than straight arms and a little time for that. It is sufficient to just download Extras-Devel emulator BlueMaemo Bluetooth from the repository, then to make a simple configuration and interface with the console. And that’s all – you have almost a full SIXAXIS (trade name of gamepads for PS3) at hand, the only difference of which from the original is that all the buttons here are with touch control.

The only serious drawback of this emulator is the absence of analogue joysticks, which are simply absent on-screen applications. So such “gamepad” is  fitting more for simple arcades of PSN, rather than to control the characters in serious actions or car races. In addition, it is not very convenient to press the “Shifts”, which in case of BlueMaemo Bluetooth are located in the corners of the screen.

Such a space is open for harmless trolling! You can, for example,visit an electronics store and control the exhibited console at the demo booth from your device quietly from the corner.