Sharp Zaurus Personal Mobile Tool versus Nokia Internet Tablet

powerful + free = perfect?

Sunday was the day we were waiting for. My friend had unwrapped his new N770 and needed help with vpnc setup. But, of course, what he really wanted was my Z to see how it would compare to his toy. We quickly agreed both were great for web and mail and ICQ and anything because – as he puts it – "once the source is open, the possibilities are endless".

I don't think Sharp and Nokia perceive each other as competitors, however from the international users' point of view they are: ARM CPU, high resolution LCD touch screen, Linux, Opera browser. Keyboard, Bluetooth, WLAN, MP3 and GByte storage possible.

Their hardware is quite impressive and has been compared before. My dream to fully substitute a notebook seems harder than expected because tiny devices do have tiny screens and they aren't as easy on the eyes as I thought. I'm happy that Sharp's devices offer a keyboard when I want one while it can be hidden when not needed.

In both cases users get a specialized GUI, some commercial proprietary closed source software and a package manager that will easily install additional software portet to the platform. OK, that's exactly what the casual user expects, but to the FLOSS community this is clearly not the real thing. Both "stock ROMs" do their job, but it's a shame they're not completely free (as in speech) although linux advocates don't seem to care (because they don't use the commercial software they paid for, I assume).

Don't get me wrong, the Opera browser, for example, is great; if I can't get it for free I'll accept the rules of the commercial game which usually forces closed source upon us but I want it's impact limited, like a package that can easily be installed and removed. Hardware/Software bundles like Opera or Qtopia and Z or N770 where the only way to get the software you paid for is using the binaries on the flash image they ship with are to be avoided. Those setups leave the free software between commercial hardware and commerical applications very little room, not enough to develop. A real open PDA will come with a free distribution like Debian.

As I have never bought a new Z and as I don't understand Japanese I can hardly comment on how Sharp deals with the GNU GPL v2 covering the kernel and very likely more. Nokia distributes a localized German/French package. The only reference to open source and GPL I found is a single English page in the otherwise German and French manual called "Open source notice" after the (mandatory) security warnings: "includes certain open source software", written offer as in GPLv2 sec 3b, "You may obtain [...] source code at www.nokia.com/support/770". GPL violated? At least they are not particular nice.

On the Nokia 770 support site mentionend above there's a small link "for developers / source code". License says "Software [...] is primarily licensed under free and open source software licenses". Nothing more precise. The debian style repository includes source packages. It's pretty obvious they'd go for a far more restrictive license if they could; the next Internet Tablet may be closed source and covered by software patents.

On the other hand, Nokia created the maemo platform, which developers seem to like, plus they (plan to) publish new official version with additional features. The Z has hardly seen any after-sales vendor support.

When I first got my Zaurus I was deadly disappointed of the (non-exisiting) documentation and installation trouble I had. Too many choices, too many things that don't just work. Sounds typical for geeky open source projects but we can do a lot better, see Knoppix and many other desktop and server projects. In contrast, the N770, a typical consumer product: No choices, few features, but they work out of the box – as long as you can live with the "boxed" feature set. Want more features, more freedom, more choices? Then you got to use a closed source flasher utility and ignore Nokia's FUD messages: "If you want to brick your device" ... (If you live in Asia, especially in Japan, you can probably use the Z as a consumer device like the N770.)

Most reviewers treat PDAs as either hackers' toys or game consoles for adults (officially PIM and business email are the killer apps but we know it's not true), but they are more, they are computers, personal computers. And real computers need a real OS including local and remote shell access. No matter what users and vendors think and no matter how good the UI is, sooner or later you want a shell. Omitting it means not understanding the device and makes users' lives harder not simpler.

summary: Decent hardware, strong community, big potential. Unfortunately the vendors don't understand that potential yet. For now N7770 is better for wireless surfing, Zaurus is more universal, but the difference will vanish assuming constant community effort. However if you want a PDA (with PIM and all) or a laptop replacement working out of the box, both are not there yet.

©Jan Korger, spacezone.de
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