Brandon’s Posterous

I can appreciate the work, but all the doofus/fanboi gadget sites like endgadget and gigaom are spinning this as the only way to make the n900 useful. Not doing the maemo community much good imho.

Nice hack I guess, but seriously developing for/using android compared to maemo5 is like wearing handcuffs.

This might actually sell a few N900s for Nokia. Why? One word: apps. Nokia's webpage on the N900 doesn't even mention apps! (http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/). Do they even exist? Meanwhile, Android has 20,000 apps, and growing at the rate of hundreds per day. Nokia builds great hardware, but software-wise, they are an also-ran.

MHO: That is very cool and part of what I like so much about the N900. I love being able to develop and run maemo apps. It is a great environment. I also love it that people can really hack this box and make it run Android. Personally, I'd probably rather see android run on top of Maemo so I wouldn't have to reboot to move from one to the other, but if this becomes stable and available, I would definitely load it on my N900

Umm, midtoad the n900 is a relatively complete linux distribution. There are about hmm.. i dunno millions of "apps" to compile and run.

In addition it provides a full browser not some mobilized webkit variant so just about every flash (9.4) app and web-based app is available.

Finally, the ovi store for maemo5 has recently launched in the past week. We are all very sorry that it does not have 20,000 apps in 10 days.

Jesus I hate android fanbois. The n900 is the first generation of device for the maemo5 platform. It is not marketed as a pure consumer device. It's an early adopter piece of hardware. In case you didn't notice the apple fanbois said the same thing about any possible android marketplace. And both of you say the same thing about RIM.

The point is to develop and create an app ecosystem on the platform not turn it into some bastardized android. Like I said above, it's an interesting piece of work and a nice expression of the freedom the n900 gives us, but I'm not sure it's doing the maemo platform itself alot of good.

P.S. Apple and Android handsets combined account for pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to RIM and Nokia.

Seriously dude Shawn, shut up. No one is sounding more fanboyish than you are. Drop in a bucket? Just check out the share of market iPhone and Android phones occupy in the smartphone category. Do not include those Nokia 3310 or 1616 phones which sell in India and you know you are fuckd up bad. Do not discount innovation and the work Apple and Google has put in. Ovi store is a joke in front of Apple and Android' app stores (and not to say a copycat version too). Get your facts right.
If the N900 is that good, why isn't selling like pancakes. Hmm, do you have any answer? Hmm, no? Hmm, hmm - go and get a life..

Varun, you are the obvious fanboi here, you were after all the one to drop straight to personal abuse as soon as something dared to encroach on your world view.
It is a new device, has great potential and does already have quite a lot that will work if you bother to look. The full browser gives you all of Google labs stuff for starters, docs, reader, etc. Small local apps are always handy when your connection in a weak signal area, but that is less and less of an issue and web based apps are often practical.
How many standalone apps will arrive is still an unknown, we will have to wait a month or two at least, in the mean time you may beneft from your own advice re: a life, a person should not get so rabid and aggressive over a phone, it is a little sad.

"Small local apps are always handy when your connection in a weak signal area, but that is less and less of an issue and web based apps are often practical" - what are you saying? Do you even know anything? You just said that all apps are useless. That people paying for all those apps do it because they are in a weak signal area - dude you are talking about America and Western Europe here (where 3G is very prevalent and 4G is imminent). Maybe you are right - eventually one day we will only see web based apps; but that is out of present scope (where local apps rule). You know what is sad - people like you who think they sound wise but are so unaware that it hurts me writing this comment as I know you will not understand.
And people are defined by the opinions they have - look at shawn's comments previously and you will know that he was totally biased against Android. Yes, maybe, I could have used better words to make him understand but I don't care as long as he gets the message.

"Just check out the share of market iPhone and Android phones occupy in the smartphone category."

On a worldwide scale in the smartphone category? Hmm, I don't know for sure, but last time I checked Apple was at 17 percent, RIM at 20 percent and Nokia at 39 percent. That's right, Nokia is still by far the largest smartphone maker in the world. (source: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1224645)

The reason is the screwed up provider dominated US market, on which market shares are the other way around: that's why blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo spend so much blah blah on iPhone, RIM and Android and relatively less on Nokia.

Outside of US, Blackberry's are relatively rare, iPhones are frowned upon in some parts of the world. Android is a margin player virtually everywhere - but with Googles good money it's got some good press lately

To the guy who talked about Apple and innovation...I think the correct term is 'patent infringement'. :)

In Australia, although we aren't anywhere near being considered a large market, Blackberry are popular amongst businessmen and higher class teens. Android is non-existent as there are very few people who pick up those handsets. And iPhones are mostly picked up by people between 15-23 who want something pretty simplistic and pretty.

Does it actually do anything yet? or does it just boot? How involved its the setup?

¿Will you say in public how can we do it?

Why does everyone have to hate other devices? I have an iPhone and a Nokia N900. The N900 is great fun for someone who likes more than the out of box experience but anyone who says the iPhone is simplistic clearly hasn't spent much time with it. Its the easiest to use phone, granted. but it's also very convenient to use for other things. How many phones can you use Logmein with? I can control any one of my family members PCs from a train the other side of the world, great tech support device. Want to do something you can't get an app for or do 2 things at once then it's game over for the iPhone.

N900 - I can have a dozen programmes all running at once without any slow down, I can browse the full websites with Flash, sync my bookmarks and personal data with Firefox and Weave. Its seemless moving from Desktop surfing to N900 surfing.

Can you please write up some docs and put them on the Maemo wiki on how you did this?

Interesting. I wonder if Android can use the VGA-out? I haven't seen a single Android phone with support for external monitors and I wonder if it's even possible in the operating system or if phone manufactures just aren't interested. I know that's what I'm waiting for!

Great job Brandon. I was trying to do it myself sometime ago, but wasn't confident with the bootloader hacks. Please post the details of how did you manage to do it, I can help in further testing.

@ gnasher666

with the n900's browser, you can use the logmein website and control a computer just fine. no app required

Great Job... I hope there is coming a project for a running android on n900... maemo 5 is nice but the signals from nokia are not very hopefully.... also maemo 5 was history before the n900 came out.. no comments from nokia how long they will support the n900 or if there chance to upgrade the n900 to maemo6 - also the practise with ovi maps... why they didn´t make a clear announcement if they support ovi maps or qt 4.6 with maemo 5??? the n900 is a casestudy for nokia - they put great technology in one piece of hardware - and now they want thet a community do the rest for them... cause they need a alternative os for the old symbian technology...

An Android with root on n900 would be GREAT

I´m not a programmer but i´ve hope that there are also some geeks who are good coder read that and will try it!!!

Nice work man !!!

a little question..

Is possible to run Android in other phone whit the same Cpu/GPU as N900 ( ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX graphics )....
Like the Samsung Omnia HD i8910 ?

hi Brandon great work i really hope you will give us a detailed tutorial for this and the N900 community will be happy to have a good system replacement if nokia wont upgrade the n900 to maemo6.

Dear god, this looks amazing. Great job, Brandon. A+ work. Maybe you could make more videos showing the extents of the Android OS on the n900. This is honestly a selling point for me.

News ?

:D thats realy nice...if this will be normal i am goingt to buy one ;-)

Looks very nice...in the moment i work with the n97 mini...but iam going to buy a n900 in the future. Thank you for that video...

Nice greatings

I have been the proud owner of the N900 for nearly a month now. I also own an HTC Magic and think the N900 is a far superior phone. I am a Linux user (Linux Mint and Sabayon) on my computers and love how open this phone is.

I am still playing with the phone and learning but am getting to grips with it. I have added the testing repo which has opened up a lot more to play with.

Look forward to chatting to all the other N900 users at http://www.NokiaN900Forum.net this really does feel like an enthusiasts phone, not just another run of the mill handset.

instructions? por favor? or am i missing them somewhere? :)

Cute, but I've no interest in dual booting my N900. Andoid games running under an Android compatibility layer for Dalvik on Maemo, yes wonderful, but dual booting no.

N900s are phones for serious Linux users. If you like ssh, rsync, python, and latex, then you'll love the N900. Did I mention vpnc and x11vnc! VoIP integration rocks too.

If those Linux app names sound like greek, fine. You're likely better off sticking with Android. You'll know when Nokia releases a consumer ready MeeGo device.

Any updates Brandon? I would be interested to see if this has gone anywhere.

Any news here? Or at least a simple how-to?

The Motorola Milestone/Droid has hardware similar to the N900. Can you somehow use the firmware/flash files from Motorola Droid and use them to run Android on N900 so that we have greater compability with n900's hardware because of great similarity of hardware between the two. Are you ever going to release a tutorial for installing android on n900?

fabulous work, how did u manage to do this ?

This is a superb post Brandon’s Posterous

Was checking this fantastic guideline for web designing for the most anticipated N900!!
This document contains information and guidelines for web developers who want to ensure that their pages work well with the Nokia N900 with Maemo 5 OS. In version 1.1 of the document, information about portrait orientation has been added.
Download it here http://bit.ly/9kCTfU

It is dual-boot, your not restricting yourself on the phone, just gives you much more usability if Maemo sucks again in specific function....and honestly, do you really want to develop your own app everytime something is not working on the n900 or nokia is not providing any updates on specific functions... if so have fun :-)

Dear god, this looks amazing. Great job, Brandon. A+ work. Maybe you could make more videos showing the extents of the Android OS on the n900. This is honestly a selling point for me.

Forget this guy, he obviously wants to keep how he did it to himself. The real action is going on here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=49811&page=1

dj_steve's youtube chanel on youtube is here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/djsteve1030

It is still in alpha quality, but it has come a very long way in only a few months.