First Tizen Conference gets mixed reviews

Via: @timsamoff, @Jaffa2

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Marcin Juszkiewicz, Thomas Perl and Carsten Munk are amongst those who attended, and blogged about, the first Tizen Conference this week in San Francisco. Tizen is Intel's latest collaboration on an open-source mobile operating system, this time with Samsung rather than Nokia. Carsten's initial impressions, of the first keynote, recalled the same first keynote from Jim Zemlin (of The Linux Foundation) almost exactly a year previously:

many from MeeGo remember last years keynote, Monday Morning with MeeGo.. February 11 had happened months before and there was still a fighting spirit in the community, we needed people who were showing passion in their work, the same fighting spirit. And we got something that was closer to Monday Mourning with MeeGo. Which left many people depressed and unimpressed. A talk that spoke more about the fantastic deployments of the platforms that MeeGo was in practical competition with, than about MeeGo itself and it's qualities and achievements.

When a last moment change in the Tizen conference schedule came in, that moved the first keynote which was supposed to be Imad from Intel and JD from Samsung to the morning after and instead, we got a recycled keynote, void of genuine and documented passion for Tizen, with the same recycled material as in the Monday Morning with MeeGo talk and the same speaker as last year - with him even talking about that if people had noticed he would be on schedule, there'd probably be fewer in the room. I was left unimpressed and depressed, again. Carsten's impressions pick up after that rocky start. In other news at the conference, a Samsung-produced "developer" device was given out and Sprint, a US carrier, joined the Tizen Associaiation - a trade body separate to the "open" Tizen Project.

Nokia N9 removed from Nokia's Finnish website

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Most manufacturers keep old products on their website as long as possible - it provides a useful reference, and gives a jumping off point for support downloads/manuals etc. However, AllBoutN9 reports that if you visit the Finnish Nokia website and look for their products, you will see a difference: Nokia N9 disappeared from their product catalogue. The AllBoutN9 article ascribes this to its success, and a desire by Nokia management to promote Windows Phone.

N9 increasingly available direct from US retailers

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Fry's, a leading electronics retailer in the US, has in its latest flyer an advert for unlocked N9s ("one per customer"). This was brought to light by phonenews.com saying: Nokia today quietly initiated sales of the Nokia N9 in the United States. Your editor, however, thinks this is more likely to be just another retailer (like Amazon.com) offering imports. There's no evidence that Nokia is selling these devices into the US market, and the fact it's not widely available suggests that's still the case.