No, nobody has ported Maemo 5 to our 5800s (yet!) but symbian theme designer Mandeep and FoneArena have released Maemo Arena, a symbian theme heavily inspired by the UI elements of Maemo 5.
Now only if some hacker would port the Maemo 5 OS to the 5800s, would we get the features like kinetic scrolling and skype integration on our 5800s but till then we have to be happy with this Maemo Arena theme, which we have to confess is as close as symbian UI can ever get to the Maemo UI, that is at the time being. Check out screenshots and a brief review after the break.
Screenshots-
Doesn’t that look exactly like the menu screen on the Maemo 5? We are talking about that menu screen in the landscape mode on our 5800s. Infact it would be hard to spot the difference between a symbian phone running this theme and an actual Maemo 5 device, unless you have both at your arm’s reach. Great work Mandeep!
What we like?
- Cool Maemo 5 wallpaper
- Menu screen in landscape mode just looks “maemo”some!
What we don’t like?
- White text has very low visibility with the present maemo wallpaper and hence shortcuts homescreen is largely unreadable
Verdict
As we have said earlier Maemo Arena is as close as we can get to the Maemo UI on our 5800 and that it is until some hacker is able to port the Maemo 5 OS to our 5800s, the chances of which are lets say not very encouraging. If you have been following the development of Maemo, you would know that this is one of the most happening platforms in the mobile industry today.
For more juice on Maemo, please check our sister blog for Nokia N900. And yeah, this very theme is just another reason why symbian rocks. Wondering how? See our 5800 can look like a Maemo device anytime but the vice versa is not really possible, atleast we haven’t seen/heard of.








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Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Cool!
Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Nothing great about it
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 12:28 am
I simply wonder why would anyone wanted to have their maemo look like symbian. Why?
Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Awesome theme! Seriously. One of the things which I always found annoying were the bars which came in between the ‘Options’ and ‘Exit’ buttons in the landscape view. But this chages it!
There was only one fault I was able to notice. In the landscape view of the menu, there is a rectangular patch of darkness right next to the battery. No idea as to why it is there. Is anybody else seeing the same problem?
Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Don’t see any problem with the battery symbol. The things missing from that is the original battery icon and the network signal which I think it could be done by flashing. The icons,wallpaper and the keyboard layout is the cool part.
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 6:52 pm
not good looking!!
Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 8:39 am
I feel so…..