Questions for Nokia

This page collects questions from the community on the availability of drivers, hardware support and documentation and other resources associated with elements of the Nokia internet tablets.

= Hardware support questions =

From Simon Pickering

 * Status of PowerVR MBX driver [2] and OpenGL implementation.
 * We have PowerVR MBX chips sat in our N8x0 machines, doing, afaict, not a lot. It would be nice if it worked (think OpenGL loveliness in games, and I would hope some frivolous but eye catching snazzy desktop features - prettier UI = more publicity = more sales; perhaps...). There are Linux 2.6.x kernel drivers available, though not for the right kernel version and for the OMAP2430 rather than OMAP2420.


 * Status of DSP SBC task
 * In the roadmap there used to be (what I interpreted as) mention of implementing a DSP task to handle encoding audio for A2DP use (where A2DP stands for Advanced Audio Distribution Protocol and is a Bluetooth protocol for sending data to Bluetooth stereo headsets [1]). SBC stands for subband codec, which is the default encoding method required by A2DP hardware. At the moment this encoding must be carried out by the ARM in software, but if the task could be offloaded to the DSP it would free up the ARM to do other things (such as decoding video better).


 * Status of IVA
 * This is part of the OMAP2420 and stands for Imaging and Video Accelerator chip. Its abilities are described at the end of this document [3], in the specifications. It looks like it could do some useful acceleration. There is however no real information available (from Ti or elsewhere) about what it is, and how to program it, though there are some hints, e.g. [4]. The DSP gateway (which is the bridge software between the ARM and the DSP) has been expanded to allow it to interface with the IVA, but the patches say that there's no driver for the IVA itself [5]. Is this being pursued (as there's little we can do about it as we have no information) and if not, why not?


 * Status of AGPS support.
 * We have heard that there is AGPS software floating around inside Nokia. Is there any idea when we are likely to see this, and what method will it use to supply the data to the GPS chipset? Will it be possible for us to feed it data, i.e. will there be an API that we can access?

From Nick Loeve

 * Is there any work being done to make binary only wifi modules open completely (definitively)? Or is it possible for Nokia to supply it in object form or at least updated as the kernel API changes over time?

= Open/closed software status questions for Nokia =

(i.e. say what and say why you would like it open)


 * Will maemo core provide list of maemo components with their open/close status + reasons for each component why it is closed.
 * Marcin 'hrw' Juszkiewicz


 * Why is the tablet-browser-ui closed?
 * Ryan 'GeneralAntilles' Abel

= Bug/bug tracker related questions for Nokia =


 * when will the thumb keyboard bug with text cell renderers (to edit table cells, e.g. in maemopad+ or todo) be fixed? how are priorities assigned inside of nokia to such bugs?
 * Thomas 'thp' Perl


 * When will the bugs tagged 'security' in bugzilla be acknowledged and fixed? Some have been open since early 2007 without even an acknowledgement from the maintainer. I ask Nokia because, to date, all these bugs are in Nokia-contributed code.
 * Will responsiveness to security issues ever become a priority at Nokia? Will there, for example, ever be a public security contact for Nokia products?
 * Will Nokia (or the security@maemo.org staff, which today consists entirely of Nokia people) provide/produce a list of all upstream packages (and their version numbers) for ITOS versions to facilitate tracking of security issues in upstream code?
 * Olle Segerdahl

= Documentation related questions for Nokia =


 * Is it likely that some documentation (or code) will be made available in the future for the dsme and bme components for power/battery/charging/device control on the tablets?
 * Is it possible to document the serial pins for the n8x0 devices?
 * Nick Loeve