N900 - Yes, it sucks.

[Megacrazy]

Overall

+ Feels solid
+ Great screen
+ Good sound quality from speakers/phone
+ Pretty fast camera
+ Good keyboard
+ USB charging/sync
+ Customizable desktop
+ Fast GPS lock
+ Nice Task Switching
+ Very nice OS

- Scrolling anywhere is like a bunch of mini seizures, really close together. In other words, garbage. Why the hell is this not perfectly smooth like the iPhone? It's the same hardware.
- Missing features that make you go WTF: no playlists, no searching email.
- WTF do you sync with...you get OVI links from the factory yet you try ovi suite and you get "device not supported". Typical Nokia garbage.
- Desktop widgets are cool but take facebook and news...you get 2-3 lines that keep scrolling and no way to make the widget larger. Completely useless.
- Music player widget is great but does not work with A2DP. Why?
- RSS reader is slow as hell to update (wifi or not). Scrolling is painfull at best.
- Transitions in the OS are nice but they often turn choppy and fail altogether. If you want to use transitions see that 2 year old device...what was it again...oh yeah.
- Try playing music and going online at the same time. The choppy scrolling gets even worse. Can I still scroll in the browser? Yeah. Is it painful as hell? Yeah.


Browser:

+ Pages load fast considering everything it's loading.
- Scrolling through bookmarks is slow as hell. Why?
- Scrolling through pages you get the checkered pattern VERY often. Sometimes you sit there for 3-5 seconds waiting for the scroll to catch up. WTF?
- Sometimes the pages get messed up with previous pages. Half the page would be the current page, half the previous page. You have to either reload the page or scroll over the messed up area to refresh it. WTF?
- Clicking back brings up this nifty history view. Nice. Now I have to factor in 5-10 seconds every time I want to click back? Have a history button and have the back button do just that: TAKE YOU BACK. No, I don't want to press backspace.
- Flash...yeah it does flash and youtube videos. If you feel like waiting 20 seconds for the video to catch up to the audio every time you move the page while playing the video then this device is for you.


Conclusion

I could go on and on but in a few words: THIS PHONE IS GARBAGE. I like it for what it can do but it doesn't do anything better than other phones out there. The experience is still painful. All the fragmented scrolling and painfull transitions make you feel like you're asking the device to do too much. Over-planned features are everywhere and yet not fully implemented (widgets, what widgets?). Basic functions are missing.

Where are the apps? WTF do you sync with? Why isn't there a central support page for this phone..etc.etc. I don't think Nokia has their stuff together and doubt they ever will. For me, this was Nokia's last chance to continue earning my business after all the garbage I bought from them over the years. Let's see how it pans out with some firmware updates but I am starting to get the feeling we're all wasting our time.

[dansus]

Looks like theres work to do.

Want to sell?

[Megacrazy]

Haha no...I will enjoy the hell out of this phone you kidding me :)

[hypnotik]

Do you want some cheese with that whine? I have a nice bit of Roquefort here....

[somedude]

let the auction start

[r-t-q]

Will defo wait to try one out before I go jumping in head first tho

[Megacrazy]

Do you want some cheese with that whine? I have a nice bit of Roquefort here....

Mmmmm...that doesn't sound half bad actually.

[jaywhy13]

If it's garbage why not sell it? :)

Come on... start the bidding @ about US$300 there about :D I'm game!111

[Ovek]

http://hurleysashimi.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/crying-baby-party-56800676.jpg

[brog]

Haha no...I will enjoy the hell out of this phone you kidding me :)

:confused:

[mklass]

You should have tested before buying and crying?

Serious its a brand new OS and there will be bugs and lack of applications they will be ironed out over the next few months. The lack of apps is because it's a brand new OS. Once the phone/tablet is wide spread then expect many applications new and old (Ports from Maemo 4 ports from Linux based apps)

As other's say if you think its that bad sell it, if not it cant be all that bad

[hihai411]

the music player doesn't have a playlist? lol wth..thats so basic not to have.

[JD2010]

If it's garbage why not sell it? :)

Come on... start the bidding @ about US$300 there about :D I'm game!111

Me too I am on the game 325Us$ already waiting for one but I'll take this one while waiting

[teletappi]

are you the boy who cries after playing modern warfare 2?in youtube?are you going to make a vid about n900?boy who cry after having nokia n900?:D

[Rauha]

WTF do you sync with?
http://europe.nokia.com/get-support-and-software/download-software/nokia-suites-for-your-pc


Why isn't there a central support page for this phone.
http://europe.nokia.com/get-support-and-software/product-support/n900

[ossipena]

the music player doesn't have a playlist? lol wth..thats so basic not to have.
lol, somebody doesn't know how to create playlists I'd say.

so please learn to use the device first. it isn't iPhone so obivously it doesn't work like one....

[Megacrazy]

You should have tested before buying and crying?

Serious its a brand new OS and there will be bugs and lack of applications they will be ironed out over the next few months. The lack of apps is because it's a brand new OS. Once the phone/tablet is wide spread then expect many applications new and old (Ports from Maemo 4 ports from Linux based apps)

As other's say if you think its that bad sell it, if not it cant be all that bad

I think you are confusing a reality check with complaining.

Would you buy a car with 3 wheels only because the last wheel was in development? Don't worry it's coming in version 1.1. The point is that Nokia has been pulling this crap with all their phones lately. They keep pumping out phones and none of them are any good. Well guess what, this one sucks too.

As a geek I will definitely enjoy the phone...but for normal people this will fall waaaaaay short, especially when you can go get an iphone for 200$ that can actually scroll smoothly.

[hypnotik]

lol, somebody doesn't know how to create playlists I'd say.

so please learn to use the device first. it isn't iPhone so obivously it doesn't work like one....

Really? Someone else seemed to have this same issue, so it does seem to be UI issue - not all that intuitive.

[mklass]

I think you are confusing a reality check with complaining.

Would you buy a car with 3 wheels only because the last wheel was in development? Don't worry it's coming in version 1.1. The point is that Nokia has been pulling this crap with all their phones lately. They keep pumping out phones and none of them are any good. Well guess what, this one sucks too.

As a geek I will definitely enjoy the phone...but for normal people this will fall waaaaaay short, especially when you can go get an iphone for 200$ that can actually scroll smoothly.

But a wheel on a car is a major issue.. Small software features are not that critical. It seems to me that your pretty much comparing it to an iPhone.. iPhone will have features the N900 does not have but all the +'s to the N900 far out weight the iPhone... Maybe you just need to get used to it..

[Bratag]

I think you are confusing a reality check with complaining.

Would you buy a car with 3 wheels only because the last wheel was in development? Don't worry it's coming in version 1.1. The point is that Nokia has been pulling this crap with all their phones lately. They keep pumping out phones and none of them are any good. Well guess what, this one sucks too.

As a geek I will definitely enjoy the phone...but for normal people this will fall waaaaaay short, especially when you can go get an iphone for 200$ that can actually scroll smoothly.

No I would walk around the car first and make sure I was getting what I thought I was getting. There have been dozens and dozens of demo vids posted before the phone came out. If you jumped on thinking it would be an iphone killer then you are an idiot, the phone was never touted as that. The lack of apps has LONG been known, creating a playlist has already been explained.

I bid $350

[archzai]

- Scrolling anywhere is like a bunch of mini seizures, really close together. In other words, garbage. Why the hell is this not perfectly smooth like the iPhone? It's the same hardware.
- Desktop widgets are cool but take facebook and news...you get 2-3 lines that keep scrolling and no way to make the widget larger. Completely useless.
- Try playing music and going online at the same time. The choppy scrolling gets even worse. Can I still scroll in the browser? Yeah. Is it painful as hell? Yeah.



These are valid points guys. I love the N900 to bits and have been waiting to get it. These are valid points we really have to consider and look at with open eyes instead of getting all defensive whenever someone brings up a valid concern.

if music playing lags the system up, does that not concern you guys at all?

despite the promises of patches and stuff, even current OS like Symbian are flawed and slow at times. just thought i would bring that up. : /

also, things like the facebook widget etc., these are things firmware cant fix. if the maemo crew never let us resize widgets, then the widgets will be useless.

[Megacrazy]

lol, somebody doesn't know how to create playlists I'd say.

so please learn to use the device first. it isn't iPhone so obivously it doesn't work like one....

I know how to make playlists buddy. Unfortunately if it takes you forever to make one I don't think it counts as a playlist.

As far as syncing, wtf is the ovi suite and why does it coexist with the pcsuite?

[Raubtier]

funny...

there is a thread dedicated for new owners and their experiences and you choose to create your own whine-thread..

i guess it just means that you are desperately looking for attention..

[Laughing Man]

It's a UI issue, the same problem plagued the n800/n810's default media player. You have to experiment or look/ask here to find it (I think I remember myself doing that when I first got the n800 too in Dec 2007).. wow it's been two years.

Don't know why the TC is experiencing browser issues, I haven't seen anything like that even in the multi-tasking videos. As for lack of applications and widgets, have you enabled extras? As of now extras is disabled until the 1.1 firmware update. As more time comes by we'll see more applications from extras and as soon as something like EasyDebian for Fremantle is ready you'll be able to use Debian and some of its applications.

[brog]

Thought the flash video Issue was fixed with the retail firmware (lags etc.)?

[lschumanfcoe]

Why does reading this thread make me feel as if I'm listening to a manic-depressive? My conclusion is that, um...he hates the phone but will enjoy it very much. Uh, and that the phone is complete and utter garbage that appeals to his inner geek. Time to adjust the medications?;)

[dansus]

As a geek I will definitely enjoy the phone...but for normal people this will fall waaaaaay short, especially when you can go get an iphone for 200$ that can actually scroll smoothly.

An iPhone for $200? Where? I will buy 10 and make a killing!

[Megacrazy]

No I would walk around the car first and make sure I was getting what I thought I was getting. There have been dozens and dozens of demo vids posted before the phone came out. If you jumped on thinking it would be an iphone killer then you are an idiot, the phone was never touted as that. The lack of apps has LONG been known, creating a playlist has already been explained.

I bid $350

In which the scrolling is perfectly smooth. I have watched them.

Please point out where I said iPhone killer.

This is a phone that is being sold by Nokia as a flagship device. I am therefore within logical bounds to assume that it will compare to other flagship devices and not crap its pants every time I try to scroll.

Also, the fact that I bring up concerns after using the phone for some time and some people around here get all defensive and call me a whiner makes you guys a bunch of fools. Exactly the kind of fools that Nokia needs to keep buying garbage products.

Again, as a gadget, the N900 is great. As a phone that is supposed to be bought by many many people it falls flat on its face.

[Rushmore]

I think you are confusing a reality check with complaining.

Would you buy a car with 3 wheels only because the last wheel was in development? Don't worry it's coming in version 1.1. The point is that Nokia has been pulling this crap with all their phones lately. They keep pumping out phones and none of them are any good. Well guess what, this one sucks too.

As a geek I will definitely enjoy the phone...but for normal people this will fall waaaaaay short, especially when you can go get an iphone for 200$ that can actually scroll smoothly.


Perhaps Megacrazy in an odd rough sort of way reflects what a lot of smartphoning, iPhone expecting type of people will also say.

Heck, Mega did not even bring up no portrait mode for messaging or lack of MMS- that will be posted by the smarthoners. ;)

[fphillips]

For anyone who doesn't know how to make playlists - read page 74 of your manual.

[Megacrazy]

Why does reading this thread make me feel as if I'm listening to a manic-depressive? My conclusion is that, um...he hates the phone but will enjoy it very much. Uh, and that the phone is complete and utter garbage that appeals to his inner geek. Time to adjust the medications?;)

Exactly. Great geek product but crappy phone.

[Laughing Man]

I didn't expect the n900 to be a great phone (I consider it a tablet first, a phone second myself). Not to mention considering how Nokia themselves pointed out that it's only step 4 of 5 in building the platform. Step 4 is more for the geek and bleeding edge crowd than your average consumer.

Though I'm not so sure I want step 5 myself, it seems to be too smartphoney and no longer a tablet by that point. Especially given the things they are considering (e.g. DRM systems)

[dansus]

Exactly. Great geek product but crappy phone.

You mean 'Mobile Computer' surely...

[Rauha]

Exactly. Great geek product but crappy phone.
Really?

Your OP didn't even mention phone functionality, and seemed to critize the "smart" part of it rather heavily.

Also, naming you thread as "N900 - Yes, it sucks" isn't really the best way for reasonable criticism that might actually be usefull and help in Maemo development.

[pagesix1536]

the music player doesn't have a playlist? lol wth..thats so basic not to have.

I never use playlists. Won't bother me one bit. Does it have the ability to play music based on info gathered from ID3 tags? Like play all music in a specific genre? That and a really good directory structure is all I need.

[wigglemeyer]

Really?

Your OP didn't even mention phone functionality, and seemed to critize the "smart" part of it rather heavily.

Also, naming you thread as "N900 - Yes, it sucks" isn't really the best way for reasonable criticism that might actually be usefull and help in Maemo development.

especially considering the "geek" in him is still excited about the phone. Very misleading title which is likely only an attempt to generate replies (i.e. trolling)

[Laughing Man]

I never use playlists. Won't bother me one bit. Does it have the ability to play music based on info gathered from ID3 tags? Like play all music in a specific genre? That and a really good directory structure is all I need.

Yes it does. Though playlists are nice when you want to say make one for a party, or do smart playlists (smart playlists would be a nice feature actually).

Though I wonder why there's no music program (not online like Last.FM, etc.) out there that is done via tags.

[bAxon]

Not to mention considering how Nokia themselves pointed out that it's only step 4 of 5 in building the platform. Step 4 is more for the geek and bleeding edge crowd than your average consumer.

Though I'm not so sure I want step 5 myself, it seems to be too smartphone and no longer a tablet by that point.

every time I hear step 4 of 5 I have to run to the bathroom.. because this means cr*p

at any given stage the phone has to be finished product. No excuses because with Nokia 5 of 5 will become 4.95 out of five and when you hope you have of 5 of 5 suddenly you are in 5 of 6 :-) and the crap continues.. got to run to the bathroom sorry

[Bratag]

In which the scrolling is perfectly smooth. I have watched them.

Please point out where I said iPhone killer.

This is a phone that is being sold by Nokia as a flagship device. I am therefore within logical bounds to assume that it will compare to other flagship devices and not crap its pants every time I try to scroll.

Also, the fact that I bring up concerns after using the phone for some time and some people around here get all defensive and call me a whiner makes you guys a bunch of fools. Exactly the kind of fools that Nokia needs to keep buying garbage products.

Again, as a gadget, the N900 is great. As a phone that is supposed to be bought by many many people it falls flat on its face.

Did you ever consider that perhaps its just YOUR phone and you should think about reflashing as several other people have done and a very simple process has already been posted for.

Or did you just decide not to bother doing any work and instead fire off a big ole whine.

[Laughing Man]

Simply put. It's not a [smart]phone yet. It's just a tablet with basic phone capability added.

[pagesix1536]

I know how to make playlists buddy. Unfortunately if it takes you forever to make one I don't think it counts as a playlist.

As far as syncing, wtf is the ovi suite and why does it coexist with the pcsuite?

What needs to be synced? Music? Drag-n-drop ma man? :D

[pagesix1536]

As a phone that is supposed to be bought by many many people it falls flat on its face.

Um... it's not a phone. It's a pocket computer that just so happens to have some phone features to it. :p

[nuknuk]

Send it back then ITSYWITSY BABY.:DOverall

+ Feels solid
+ Great screen
+ Good sound quality from speakers/phone
+ Pretty fast camera
+ Good keyboard
+ USB charging/sync
+ Customizable desktop
+ Fast GPS lock
+ Nice Task Switching
+ Very nice OS

- Scrolling anywhere is like a bunch of mini seizures, really close together. In other words, garbage. Why the hell is this not perfectly smooth like the iPhone? It's the same hardware.
- Missing features that make you go WTF: no playlists, no searching email.
- WTF do you sync with...you get OVI links from the factory yet you try ovi suite and you get "device not supported". Typical Nokia garbage.
- Desktop widgets are cool but take facebook and news...you get 2-3 lines that keep scrolling and no way to make the widget larger. Completely useless.
- Music player widget is great but does not work with A2DP. Why?
- RSS reader is slow as hell to update (wifi or not). Scrolling is painfull at best.
- Transitions in the OS are nice but they often turn choppy and fail altogether. If you want to use transitions see that 2 year old device...what was it again...oh yeah.
- Try playing music and going online at the same time. The choppy scrolling gets even worse. Can I still scroll in the browser? Yeah. Is it painful as hell? Yeah.


Browser:

+ Pages load fast considering everything it's loading.
- Scrolling through bookmarks is slow as hell. Why?
- Scrolling through pages you get the checkered pattern VERY often. Sometimes you sit there for 3-5 seconds waiting for the scroll to catch up. WTF?
- Sometimes the pages get messed up with previous pages. Half the page would be the current page, half the previous page. You have to either reload the page or scroll over the messed up area to refresh it. WTF?
- Clicking back brings up this nifty history view. Nice. Now I have to factor in 5-10 seconds every time I want to click back? Have a history button and have the back button do just that: TAKE YOU BACK. No, I don't want to press backspace.
- Flash...yeah it does flash and youtube videos. If you feel like waiting 20 seconds for the video to catch up to the audio every time you move the page while playing the video then this device is for you.


Conclusion

I could go on and on but in a few words: THIS PHONE IS GARBAGE. I like it for what it can do but it doesn't do anything better than other phones out there. The experience is still painful. All the fragmented scrolling and painfull transitions make you feel like you're asking the device to do too much. Over-planned features are everywhere and yet not fully implemented (widgets, what widgets?). Basic functions are missing.

Where are the apps? WTF do you sync with? Why isn't there a central support page for this phone..etc.etc. I don't think Nokia has their stuff together and doubt they ever will. For me, this was Nokia's last chance to continue earning my business after all the garbage I bought from them over the years. Let's see how it pans out with some firmware updates but I am starting to get the feeling we're all wasting our time.

[HangLoose]

If smooth scrolling is so important for you I understand... For me I would never EVER EVER sell mine. Got rid of my iPod cos its too restrictive for me. Indeed is smooth but at the same time I need to use the phone how apple wants...

Skype+messaging+browser in this phone are perfect... Also my wife didnt understand how come the radio of the car was playing the music of the phone... cooool!!!

(Damn, I lost the perfect oportunity of scaring her... Leaving inside of the car for a while and recording my voice... "Babbyyy... its my ghost... I am deaaaaadd...")

Sad hasnt worked for you pal...

[nashith]

I think you are confusing a reality check with complaining.

Would you buy a car with 3 wheels only because the last wheel was in development? Don't worry it's coming in version 1.1. The point is that Nokia has been pulling this crap with all their phones lately. They keep pumping out phones and none of them are any good. Well guess what, this one sucks too.


FYI, I believe it can't helped to release updates later n ship half baked software first. It has become the industry norm for quite some time. The tough competition and time to market is the primary cause. I am sure you are very well aware that Apple did the same with iPhone too, it is not a problem, its just how things work now. Get used to it please.

[hypnotik]

Yes it does. Though playlists are nice when you want to say make one for a party, or do smart playlists (smart playlists would be a nice feature actually).

Though I wonder why there's no music program (not online like Last.FM, etc.) out there that is done via tags.

Doesn't sort an album by ID3: track Number properly, which is mega annoying.

[hihai411]

I think its cool that you point out the phones flaws which is good input for future updates and what not. The funny part is how you put in your initial post that the phone is just garbage and yet in a later post you replied that you really enjoy the phone and do not want to give it up. lol.

[Rushmore]

Maybe it shoud have been "PHONE part is garbage"? Still rough, but makes more sense than OP's title and subsequent posts.

[hqh]

Maybe it shoud have been "PHONE part is garbage"?

I just successfully made a phone call, so the phone part did everything I was expecting it to do. Wouldn't call it garbage :)

It works a lot better than most S60 phones with their first firmware versions.

[Breece]

What is that Problem with A2DP?

[Nemo_me]

Do you need to use strength to take off the back of your N900?

[Megacrazy]

Well the consensus seems to be that this is just step 4 out of 5 and that it's still in development and that everyone did the same thing (releasing half baked products). Sure, maybe that's the case but let's look at the competition.

What does this phone do better than the iPhone/Android?

Samsung has had widgets for how long now?

Android has had the panoramic desktop with links etc. for how long now?

So, if you are expecting to sell a product, surely it does something better than your competition...no?

The title is there to get people talking. I love this phone but that doesn't mean it doesn't fall short of the competition. Hence the "garbage" remark. It falls short of Android and of the iPhone as well.

[Breece]

Megacrazy, what is your problem with A2DP?

[MisterSim76]

Overall

+ Feels solid
+ Great screen
+ Good sound quality from speakers/phone
+ Pretty fast camera
+ Good keyboard
+ USB charging/sync
+ Customizable desktop
+ Fast GPS lock
+ Nice Task Switching
+ Very nice OS

- Scrolling anywhere is like a bunch of mini seizures, really close together. In other words, garbage. Why the hell is this not perfectly smooth like the iPhone? It's the same hardware.
- Missing features that make you go WTF: no playlists, no searching email.
- WTF do you sync with...you get OVI links from the factory yet you try ovi suite and you get "device not supported". Typical Nokia garbage.
- Desktop widgets are cool but take facebook and news...you get 2-3 lines that keep scrolling and no way to make the widget larger. Completely useless.
- Music player widget is great but does not work with A2DP. Why?
- RSS reader is slow as hell to update (wifi or not). Scrolling is painfull at best.
- Transitions in the OS are nice but they often turn choppy and fail altogether. If you want to use transitions see that 2 year old device...what was it again...oh yeah.
- Try playing music and going online at the same time. The choppy scrolling gets even worse. Can I still scroll in the browser? Yeah. Is it painful as hell? Yeah.


Browser:

+ Pages load fast considering everything it's loading.
- Scrolling through bookmarks is slow as hell. Why?
- Scrolling through pages you get the checkered pattern VERY often. Sometimes you sit there for 3-5 seconds waiting for the scroll to catch up. WTF?
- Sometimes the pages get messed up with previous pages. Half the page would be the current page, half the previous page. You have to either reload the page or scroll over the messed up area to refresh it. WTF?
- Clicking back brings up this nifty history view. Nice. Now I have to factor in 5-10 seconds every time I want to click back? Have a history button and have the back button do just that: TAKE YOU BACK. No, I don't want to press backspace.
- Flash...yeah it does flash and youtube videos. If you feel like waiting 20 seconds for the video to catch up to the audio every time you move the page while playing the video then this device is for you.


Conclusion

I could go on and on but in a few words: THIS PHONE IS GARBAGE. I like it for what it can do but it doesn't do anything better than other phones out there. The experience is still painful. All the fragmented scrolling and painfull transitions make you feel like you're asking the device to do too much. Over-planned features are everywhere and yet not fully implemented (widgets, what widgets?). Basic functions are missing.

Where are the apps? WTF do you sync with? Why isn't there a central support page for this phone..etc.etc. I don't think Nokia has their stuff together and doubt they ever will. For me, this was Nokia's last chance to continue earning my business after all the garbage I bought from them over the years. Let's see how it pans out with some firmware updates but I am starting to get the feeling we're all wasting our time.

Its a shame that your experiences haven't 't equalled those of this previewer:

http://my-symbian.com/other/preview_n900.php?page=4

[Megacrazy]

Megacrazy, what is your problem with A2DP?

It doesn't work if you play music using the widget on the desktop....Maybe it's just my headphones?

[pagesix1536]

Yes it does. Though playlists are nice when you want to say make one for a party, or do smart playlists (smart playlists would be a nice feature actually).

Though I wonder why there's no music program (not online like Last.FM, etc.) out there that is done via tags.

Is it reasonable to assume that once this device gets into the hands of the public, that we'll start to see some of our favorite MP3 player apps from the Linux desktop get ported over to Maemo? I'm willing to bet that when there's a void like this, the community will step up to fill it provided they are able to use the tools to make that happen. The SDK is available, I think we'll for sure see this sort of thing happen a lot.

[Breece]

But it does work when playing music without the widget?

[Icee]

As a geek I will definitely enjoy the phone...but for normal people this will fall waaaaaay short, especially when you can go get an iphone for 200$ that can actually scroll smoothly.

Where do I find an iphone for 200$, show me, I would by a 1000 and sell them. ****ing great businesses making almost 800$ profit on one phone.

[Megacrazy]

But it does work when playing music without the widget?

Yup...It works fine with the media player.

As far as the iphone: http://www.att.com/

[hihai411]

Where do I find an iphone for 200$, show me, I would by a 1000 and sell them. ****ing great businesses making almost 800$ profit on one phone.

I think he means with a contract?

[MisterSim76]

Yup...It works fine with the media player.

As far as the iphone: http://www.att.com/


Hmmmm...tell me honestly now, are you a Jobsian Troll?

[mattmull]

Jobsian trolls are mythical creatures, that supposedly feed on the tears of people waiting for their n900s.

[Rotkaeqpchen]

Overall

+ Feels solid
+ Great screen
+ Good sound quality from speakers/phone
+ Pretty fast camera
+ Good keyboard
+ USB charging/sync
+ Customizable desktop
+ Fast GPS lock
+ Nice Task Switching
+ Very nice OS


Obviously you ARE mega crazy when you then say its garbage?!

[Texrat]

I am starting to get the feeling we're all wasting our time.

Today's nominee for best unintended irony. :p

[Laughing Man]

Well the consensus seems to be that this is just step 4 out of 5 and that it's still in development and that everyone did the same thing (releasing half baked products). Sure, maybe that's the case but let's look at the competition.

What does this phone do better than the iPhone/Android?

Samsung has had widgets for how long now?

Android has had the panoramic desktop with links etc. for how long now?

So, if you are expecting to sell a product, surely it does something better than your competition...no?

The title is there to get people talking. I love this phone but that doesn't mean it doesn't fall short of the competition. Hence the "garbage" remark. It falls short of Android and of the iPhone as well.

Can Apple, Samsung, and Android boot into Debian? Can they run KDE? What about Open Office? Sure there's smartphone office apps but not a true office program. Granted you may not want to use those things but those are the capabilities that Maemo provides. If someone provides a mobile office program on Maemo then you can run that and OpenOffice then. Is that something any of those manufacturers can do? Hence why I say the n900 is more tablet than phone. Also why I say if your looking for a smartphone your on the wrong platform right now. That won't be till the next step at the very least.

Is it reasonable to assume that once this device gets into the hands of the public, that we'll start to see some of our favorite MP3 player apps from the Linux desktop get ported over to Maemo? I'm willing to bet that when there's a void like this, the community will step up to fill it provided they are able to use the tools to make that happen. The SDK is available, I think we'll for sure see this sort of thing happen a lot.

Straight ports I don't know. There probably were on the older tablets but I don't think I tried them. But with the previous tablets there were quite a few music programs built for the platform. Canola, MediaBox, Kagu, YouAmp were just some of them (the ones I tried at least). It was kind of strange having that many music programs no my device so I just kept Mediabox and Youamp. I'm happy that Mediabox is coming to the n900 since it has a really spiffy interface and the developer is involved with the community. :D

[Megacrazy]

Obviously you ARE mega crazy when you then say its garbage?!

Maybe or maybe you fail to see that most of those are hardware related.

It's in the individual apps where things start going downhill fast. The idea of the OS is pretty cool but saying it needs more work is an understatement.

[stemfour]

Megacrazy does raise some valid points but he has set himself up for a backlash creating a thread like this, especially when there are existing threads for feedback on the device.

To be fair though he doesnt sound like a troll to me, merely someone with conflicting feelings that maybe he didnt put across too well. Having said that he has made quite an effort with his breakdown, some detail there!

It would be very interesting however if this thread stayed open and we got to see how these issues are resolved in time for him/her.

So I'll be watching this ( and every other N900 related ) space in anticipation. Hopefully one day ( Dec 3rd? ) I'll be able to chuck in my opinion of the device. :rolleyes:

[Bratag]

Maybe or maybe you fail to see that most of those are hardware related.

It's in the individual apps where things start going downhill fast. The idea of the OS is pretty cool but saying it needs more work is an understatement.

And you bought the very first shipment of the very first device to run the OS thinking what exactly?

[sevla]

I don't understand what this device being a "mobile computer" has to do with effective scrolling. So because it's so called not a smart phone means it's ok if the scrolling is choppy or if basic features that consumers expect are missing? That doesn't make any sense. Regardless of his "rants" he has raised legitimate points that nobody seems to want to address. I think he is trying to say that the device is not as polished as say the iPhone. The question is WHY and how do we make it better, not calling him a whiner. The iPhone does not do a lot of things but it does a small set of things very very well. Nokia should take note of that and apply it to there products.

Being a mobile computer rather then a smart phone does not mean basic functionality should be not be working or just missing all together. Instead of immediately coming to the defense a piece of electronics why not deal with the issue which can make the phone better.

The iPhone has set a standard in terms of UI. Nokia needs to anticipate the fact that it's phones (mobile computers or whatever the hell you want to call it) will be compared to the likes of the iPhone. If it falls short people are going to wonder why, especially if they have comparable hardware.

[Rushmore]

I just successfully made a phone call, so the phone part did everything I was expecting it to do. Wouldn't call it garbage :)

It works a lot better than most S60 phones with their first firmware versions.

Still would make more sense than original post.

[Bratag]

I don't understand what this device being a "mobile computer" has to do with effective scrolling. So because it's so called not a smart phone means it's ok if the scrolling is choppy or if basic features that consumers expect are missing? That doesn't make any sense. Regardless of his "rants" he has raised legitimate points that nobody seems to want to address. I think he is trying to say that the device is not as polished as say the iPhone. The question is WHY and how do we make it better, not calling him a whiner. The iPhone does do a lot of things but what it does it does very well. Nokia should take note of that and apply it to there products.

Being a mobile computer rather then a smart phone does not mean basic functionality should be not be working or just missing all together. Instead of immediately coming to the defense a piece of electronics why not deal with the issue which can make the phone better.

The iPhone has set a standard in terms of UI. Nokia needs to anticipate the fact that it's phones (mobile computers or whatever the hell you want to call it) will be compared to the likes of the iPhone. If it falls short people are going to wonder why, especially if they have comparable hardware.

I havent seen anyone else post that scrolling for them is bad.

The N900 was never ever touted as even a consumer device but always as a geek device. Comparing it to the iPhone is pointless and is not and apples to apples comparison

[penguinbait]

Um... it's not a phone. It's a pocket computer that just so happens to have some phone features to it. :p

So its a secondary device? :D:D

[sevla]

I havent seen anyone else post that scrolling for them is bad.

The N900 was never ever touted as even a consumer device but always as a geek device. Comparing it to the iPhone is pointless and is not and apples to apples comparison

Ok well with that type of attitude Nokia will continue to lose market share and I suggest selling their stock.

Whether it's a geek device or not it needs to polished and not missing BASIC features. So beacuse it's a "geek" device we can't compare UI effectiveness or experiences? That's just silly.

[Rauha]

The question is WHY and how do we make it better, not calling him a whiner.
I'm willing to discuss that in an another thread. One with bit more logic and less (apparently) intended confrontation. There are plenty of threads about user N900 user experience. I'm not wasting anymore time with this one. Megacrazy's communication in this thread has been...well somewhat reminecent of his chosen handle.

[Bratag]

Ok well with that type of attitude Nokia will continue to lose market share and I suggest selling their stock.

Whether it's a geek device or not it needs to polished and not missing BASIC features. So beacuse it's a "geek" device we can't compare UI effectiveness or experiences? That's just silly.

Thats not what I said. I said comparing a device that was never intended for the general public to a iPhone which was intended for every drone in the world is not a valid comparison. By your logic I can rip the iPhone a new one because I cant

1) Cross compile apps to work on it
2) Get root access with a single sudo command
3) Run my own apache server on and serve web pages from it.
4) Run and FTP server on it
5) Connect a wii remote to it and play SNES games
6) Play Quake III on it.

I mean I could go on and on - but 99% of drones dont care about that stuff and thus the iphone does "pretty" the N900 does "awesome"

[Laughing Man]

I don't understand what this device being a "mobile computer" has to do with effective scrolling. So because it's so called not a smart phone means it's ok if the scrolling is choppy or if basic features that consumers expect are missing? That doesn't make any sense. Regardless of his "rants" he has raised legitimate points that nobody seems to want to address. I think he is trying to say that the device is not as polished as say the iPhone. The question is WHY and how do we make it better, not calling him a whiner. The iPhone does not do a lot of things but what it does it does very well. Nokia should take note of that and apply it to there products.

Being a mobile computer rather then a smart phone does not mean basic functionality should be not be working or just missing all together. Instead of immediately coming to the defense a piece of electronics why not deal with the issue which can make the phone better.

The iPhone has set a standard in terms of UI. Nokia needs to anticipate the fact that it's phones (mobile computers or whatever the hell you want to call it) will be compared to the likes of the iPhone. If it falls short people are going to wonder why, especially if they have comparable hardware.

Well for one thing the chopping scrolling I don't know anything about besides (watching youtube videos where it doesn't seem that it's a problem if it exists). I'll have to see whether it exists when Amazon finally ships me their device. And I agree that Nokia needs better usability checks. There are things that even I question from a usability perspective as someone who studies and works in Human Factors.

Though there are also differences between the iPhone and the n900 that most people won't realize. For one thing, the iPhone can't multi-task outside of what Apple allows you to do, or unless you jailbreak it and install something to let you do background apps. Apple also has a better graphics chip in their 3GS (though that really shouldn't make a difference in normal operation, more in games). Then there's resolution differences (same screen size, two very different resolutions). Depending on what you visit the browser also has more to render. E.g. Apple has no flash so if you go to a website with flash it'll simply not render it. While the n900 will.

Then Apple has had three versions to modify the iPhone. You may argue that the n900 has had its previous versions to (770, n800/n810) but those were tablets with very different operating systems (heck even the 770 and the n800/n810 were different operating systems). Now Nokia's step is taking that tablet and sticking on phone functionality. Hence why you get a device that's more like a tablet with voice functionality than a smartphone. Thus it's odd to compare it to smartphones when it's more like a tablet/MID/etc.. Regardless of what Nokia likes to call or position the n900 as. The n900 isn't even sticking around that long if you look at what's on Maemo 6 and the rumored n910 device.

[overfloat]

http://sadviolin.com

[krk969]

megacrazy, not that i dont want to believe what you say, but would you mind posting a small video about the scrolling being jerky and the browser staggering when music player is running in the background.

That would stop this thread from running into 1000 pages without any facts being put.

And, i agree with you that this phone doesnt do anything different from the competition except for the open source concept.

Things like widgets and multiple desktops have been marketed like its the first thing we have ever seen on phones, we all know it isnt true.

Will wait to see some more facts, meanwhile if you could get the videos for us please.

thanks

[DaveP1]

I havent seen anyone else post that scrolling for them is bad.

The N900 was never ever touted as even a consumer device but always as a geek device. Comparing it to the iPhone is pointless and is not and apples to apples comparison

So it's a toy that should be sold over at ThinkGeek for those with more money than sense?

If that's the case, then it should be advertised as such. If Nokia is trying to sell it to a broader market, then it better be able to be compared to the iPhone.

Thats not what I said. I said comparing a device that was never intended for the general public to a iPhone which was intended for every drone in the world is not a valid comparison. By your logic I can rip the iPhone a new one because I cant

1) Cross compile apps to work on it
2) Get root access with a single sudo command
3) Run my own apache server on and serve web pages from it.
4) Run and FTP server on it
5) Connect a wii remote to it and play SNES games
6) Play Quake III on it.

I mean I could go on and on - but 99% of drones dont care about that stuff and thus the iphone does "pretty" the N900 does "awesome"

Here are the features that do not appear on Nokia's list of N900 features or on the N900 Tech Specs page (which includes an Operating System section):

1) Cross compile apps to work on it
2) Get root access with a single sudo command
3) Run my own apache server on and serve web pages from it.
4) Run and FTP server on it
5) Connect a wii remote to it and play SNES games
6) Play Quake III on it.

99% of drones would have no problem if Nokia had put your features on their N900 page and left out the list of iPhone like features.

[Megacrazy]

I don't understand what this device being a "mobile computer" has to do with effective scrolling. So because it's so called not a smart phone means it's ok if the scrolling is choppy or if basic features that consumers expect are missing? That doesn't make any sense. Regardless of his "rants" he has raised legitimate points that nobody seems to want to address. I think he is trying to say that the device is not as polished as say the iPhone. The question is WHY and how do we make it better, not calling him a whiner. The iPhone does not do a lot of things but what it does it does very well. Nokia should take note of that and apply it to there products.

Being a mobile computer rather then a smart phone does not mean basic functionality should be not be working or just missing all together. Instead of immediately coming to the defense a piece of electronics why not deal with the issue which can make the phone better.

The iPhone has set a standard in terms of UI. Nokia needs to anticipate the fact that it's phones (mobile computers or whatever the hell you want to call it) will be compared to the likes of the iPhone. If it falls short people are going to wonder why, especially if they have comparable hardware.


Exactly.

To answer other questions I am not a troll. The review I posted is the what the average consumer will say. Who cares if it can run Open Office it can't scroll smoothly in the damn browser? It's called user experience and Nokia should look it up.

Clearly this device is made by geeks for other geeks but this has little relevance in the market. If you want to sell a phone/tablet/whatever the hell it is get ready to be compared to....the iPhone. The iPhone doesn't do many things because a lot of them simply aren't feasible on a mobile platform with little processing power and a very limited battery. However, everything else it does is basically perfect/almost perfect.

I love how Nokia keeps trying to avoid comparisons because they know there is none...No, this is a mobile tablet with phone functionality. WTF does that mean? You mean it's a smartphone like every other phone out there but you don't want it compared. They tried to pull the same BS with their N series mobile computer stuff.

Also, the point of this all is that all of us should start demanding better software from them. If they can't do it then get out and let somebody else try it. Attitudes such as "it's only step 4 out of 5, it's a tablet not a phone, it just came out" etc. is exactly what they strive on. They need to understand that they do not set any benchmarks anymore but the market does.

Last time I checked Android is up to version 2 and it already kicks all sorts of ***. How come Maemo 5 is finding all sorts of excuses for missing functionality, crappy scrolling and poor user experience?

[Megacrazy]

megacrazy, not that i dont want to believe what you say, but would you mind posting a small video about the scrolling being jerky and the browser staggering when music player is running in the background.

That would stop this thread from running into 1000 pages without any facts being put.

And, i agree with you that this phone doesnt do anything different from the competition except for the open source concept.

Things like widgets and multiple desktops have been marketed like its the first thing we have ever seen on phones, we all know it isnt true.

Will wait to see some more facts, meanwhile if you could get the videos for us please.

thanks

Agreed. I will start working on some videos.

[sevla]

Thats not what I said. I said comparing a device that was never intended for the general public to a iPhone which was intended for every drone in the world is not a valid comparison. By your logic I can rip the iPhone a new one because I cant

1) Cross compile apps to work on it
2) Get root access with a single sudo command
3) Run my own apache server on and serve web pages from it.
4) Run and FTP server on it
5) Connect a wii remote to it and play SNES games
6) Play Quake III on it.

I mean I could go on and on - but 99% of drones dont care about that stuff and thus the iphone does "pretty" the N900 does "awesome"

Yes you CAN rip the iphone a new one cause it's missing those features. That's PERFECTLY fine! I mean that is essentially what people complain about the iPhone the most right? It's lack of options/openess. BUT just because the n900 has said features does not mean it's excused or exempt in other area's, particularly in the UI department. That's my basic point.

Although I disagree, I do understand your point. But the question I keep asking myself about this phone is, why can't it be pretty ANNNND awesome??

I think Nokia can do it and is very capable, they just need to focus on the UI and user experience a bit more. imo of course.

p.s. I'm in no way an Apple die hard but I appreciate the enormous amount of effort they put into the making the phone so usable. The n900 beats it flat out in terms of features however the UI just isn't there yet for me and I think that is what's holding me back from getting REALLY excited about the device.

[Bratag]

Exactly.

To answer other questions I am not a troll. The review I posted is the what the average consumer will say. Who cares if it can run Open Office it can't scroll smoothly in the damn browser? It's called user experience and Nokia should look it up.

Clearly this device is made by geeks for other geeks but this has little relevance in the market. If you want to sell a phone/tablet/whatever the hell it is get ready to be compared to....the iPhone. The iPhone doesn't do many things because a lot of them simply aren't feasible on a mobile platform with little processing power and a very limited battery. However, everything else it does is basically perfect/almost perfect.

I love how Nokia keeps trying to avoid comparisons because they know there is none...No, this is a mobile tablet with phone functionality. WTF does that mean? You mean it's a smartphone like every other phone out there but you don't want it compared. They tried to pull the same BS with their N series mobile computer stuff.

Also, the point of this all is that all of us should start demanding better software from them. If they can't do it then get out and let somebody else try it. Attitudes such as "it's only step 4 out of 5, it's a tablet not a phone, it just came out" etc. is exactly what they strive on. They need to understand that they do not set any benchmarks anymore but the market does.

Last time I checked Android is up to version 2 and it already kicks all sorts of ***. How come Maemo 5 is finding all sorts of excuses for missing functionality, crappy scrolling and poor user experience?

For iPhone comparison arguments see above post. The fact is the N900 IS CAPABLE of running many things BECAUSE of the hardware and the OS that the iphone cannot.


As far as Android kicking sort of *** its taken a year and 4 releases of the OS to get to that point and believe me when I say I had one of the first G1's and went through MUCH pain before it got to this point.
If you like come back in a year when the N900 and maemo 5 have been out for 12 months and if the issues still exist I might let you make the Android comparison

[ARJWright]

Thats not what I said. I said comparing a device that was never intended for the general public to a iPhone which was intended for every drone in the world is not a valid comparison. By your logic I can rip the iPhone a new one because I cant

1) Cross compile apps to work on it
2) Get root access with a single sudo command
3) Run my own apache server on and serve web pages from it.
4) Run and FTP server on it
5) Connect a wii remote to it and play SNES games
6) Play Quake III on it.

I mean I could go on and on - but 99% of drones dont care about that stuff and thus the iphone does "pretty" the N900 does "awesome"

Actually #s 3 and 4 are possible. I've got to go and find the posts (Engadget or Gizmodo had it) where someone pulled it off with a Jailbroken iPhone (no way that's happening to a legal iPhone).

EDIT: http://gizmodo.com/282139/iphone-can-now-serve-web-pages-run-python-open-source-apps - there you go ;)

The devices will be compared, whether its valid to some here or not. User experience is one metric for 3.5in-screened mobile devices that's actually a pretty consistent and easy gage. Functionality of the device is not what people (new-ish) here, are debating.

[f pickels]

No I would walk around the car first and make sure I was getting what I thought I was getting. There have been dozens and dozens of demo vids posted before the phone came out. If you jumped on thinking it would be an iphone killer then you are an idiot, the phone was never touted as that. The lack of apps has LONG been known, creating a playlist has already been explained.

I bid $350

Point is this, every other Phone Company solved all these problems years ago. And None of them specially Apple released a phone or operating system that was in development. Nokia is the biggest phone maker in the world. you would think they might be able to make a phone/operating system that was atleast as good as a three year old device/system. And to leave out basic features and compatibilities for the end user to solve, thats just a pitty. The N900 has not been marketed as project. It has been released as an end user finished product. and it seems more and more it is falling short.

And a side note, when I first started looking at this site, community. I was very impressed, people trying to help,solve, create. Yet them more I read the more I see a bunch of self serving bitter people that think they no it all, and do nothing but rag, criticize, demean any opinion that differs from their own. Or when any question is asked that they think is beneath them.. If this is really what Maemo is about , Tradgic. And this is going to be a shot lived project.

[rcs1000]

Have you noticed something slightly strange about all the people saying 'The N900 is garbage' - none of them seem to want to sell their phone, even though they will be offered a big premium to what they paid.

Now, I would love to get my hands on the N900. I *love* the N810 and the N800. I'm very happy with a Linux command line, and I think that before long most of the debian and Ubuntu repositiories will be available on my phone.

To me, that *is* megacool.

So, come on N900 haters, sell me your N900.

[rcs1000]

btw, I exclude sr1329 from this. she has been cogent and intelligent in her criticisms. they're fair, and they're issues i'm happy to deal with.

interestingly, she doesn't notice *any* of the problems with multitasking that megacool does, although she is critical of the resistive touch screen and scrolling through menus and lists,

[Bratag]

Point is this, every other Phone Company solved all these problems years ago. And None of them specially Apple released a phone or operating system that was in development. Nokia is the biggest phone maker in the world. you would think they might be able to make a phone/operating system that was atleast as good as a three year old device/system. And to leave out basic features and compatibilities for the end user to solve, thats just a pitty. The N900 has not been marketed as project. It has been released as an end user finished product. and it seems more and more it is falling short.

And a side note, when I first started looking at this site, community. I was very impressed, people trying to help,solve, create. Yet them more I read the more I see a bunch of self serving bitter people that think they no it all, and do nothing but rag, criticize, demean any opinion that differs from their own. Or when any question is asked that they think is beneath them.. If this is really what Maemo is about , Tradgic. And this is going to be a shot lived project.

When I first came here there weren't as many whingers running around crying that they bought a phone and it doesn't give them a backrub while making phone calls. As I have stated before - there were demo after demo after demo of the phones features. Its not like they were not able to be informed.

I have two expectations from this phone

1) I can make and receive phone calls
2) It runs Linux

Everything else can be fixed in software :)

[Laughing Man]

And a side note, when I first started looking at this site, community. I was very impressed, people trying to help,solve, create. Yet them more I read the more I see a bunch of self serving bitter people that think they no it all, and do nothing but rag, criticize, demean any opinion that differs from their own. Or when any question is asked that they think is beneath them.. If this is really what Maemo is about , Tradgic. And this is going to be a shot lived project.

That helpfulness quickly goes away when your idea of trying to get help or support comes from insulting the device other people like. You'll find that on any community, heck I can go to an iPhone board right now, start a thread called "iPhone - Yes, it sucks," and you will get the same result. You'll see that with nearly anything.

How should this topic have been started?

Title: Jerky, weird scrolling browser (browser lag, or something like that).

Post: Talk about what your seeing (e.g. the jerky weird scrolling behavior), ask if anybody else has this issue. And if necessary post a picture and video to help explain the issue.

Yelling about how it sucks and how it's inferior other devices isn't going help you out at all.

[DaveP1]

I have two expectations from this phone

1) I can make and receive phone calls
2) It runs Linux

Then you should get the G1 - it's significantly cheaper and it can do what you require. Heck, you can get an S60 phone and a full blown Linux netbook for a combined price that's cheaper than the N900.

If that is all the N900 is, Nokia needs to change its advertising because the N900 overview, features, and specifications pages seem to describe a great phone that is also a very smart phone.

[Megacrazy]

That helpfulness quickly goes away when your idea of trying to get help or support comes from insulting the device other people like. You'll find that on any community, heck I can go to an iPhone board right now, start a thread called "iPhone - Yes, it sucks," and you will get the same result. You'll see that with nearly anything.

How should this topic have been started?

Title: Jerky, weird scrolling browser (browser lag, or something like that).

Post: Talk about what your seeing (e.g. the jerky weird scrolling behavior), ask if anybody else has this issue. And if necessary post a picture and video to help explain the issue.

Yelling about how it sucks and how it's inferior other devices isn't going help you out at all.

No but it does provide some entertainment. Also, it's the truth. Complaining about a jerky browser that nobody here will be able to solve is pretty much pointless. On the other hand, this thread might help some people decide if they should buy this or not.

[twaelti]

a) It's not a phone
b) Music Player takes up to 25% of the CPU. Application Manager can use quite a lot of resources, too.
c) My N900 sometimes gets very slow and pretty unusable, so I have to reboot (probably memory/swapping or Tracker running amok or whatever). Had once a phone call hang the device. But then: pre-production unit and firmware, abused by installing dozens of apps from extras-devel and hacking around endlessly. 2500 songs, 1000 pictures, 48 GB of memory :-)
d) If the browser gets slow, it can well be because of multiple flash containers in a page or similar hyperloaded webpages. On average news sites, I never ever had a problem.

Come on, nothing is perfect, but file bugs in bugzilla and help Nokia make this thing even better. For me, after 6 weeks of intense use, it's still the JESUS-Comcomcom (Compact communication computer) :-)

[Bratag]

No but it does provide some entertainment. Also, it's the truth. Complaining about a jerky browser that nobody here will be able to solve is pretty much pointless. On the other hand, this thread might help some people decide if they should buy this or not.

Didnt really give the community a chance to try did you - good luck with that, congratulations on wasting your money :)

[Laughing Man]

Then you should get the G1 - it's significantly cheaper and it can do what you require. Heck, you can get an S60 phone and a full blown Linux netbook for a combined price that's cheaper than the N900.

If that is all the N900 is, Nokia needs to change its advertising because the N900 overview, features, and specifications pages seem to describe a great phone that is also a very smart phone.

I believe Bratag already had a G1. And the S60 + a netbook solution doesn't work when your goal is to reduce the amount of devices carried, not increase. =P. If that were the case I would have already gotten an Android phone + Linux netbook.

And yes I do think Nokia needs to change their advertising.

No but it does provide some entertainment. Also, it's the truth. Complaining about a jerky browser that nobody here will be able to solve is pretty much pointless. On the other hand, this thread might help some people decide if they should buy this or not.

You can at least get troubleshooting help, and if it really is an issue with the n900 (considering others haven't really reported jerky browser issues) and not your particular unit, we can get it into bugzilla and vote it up so ideally it'll be fixed by Nokia quickly.

[DaveP1]

That helpfulness quickly goes away when your idea of trying to get help or support comes from insulting the device other people like. You'll find that on any community, heck I can go to an iPhone board right now, start a thread called "iPhone - Yes, it sucks," and you will get the same result. You'll see that with nearly anything.

True, but try to turn the other cheek. ;)

Remember that some of the disgruntled who come here will have just dropped around $500 on what they thought was going to be the greatest phone in the history of creation (or, at least, in the history of Nokia) and, at least in their minds, it isn't. This may be where they come to vent.

If they're venting about something that is scheduled to be fixed (or a missing app), tell them it's on the future release list. If they're venting about some issue that needs a bug report, ask them to file one or, better yet, help them file one. Don't just attack back.

[zerojay]

I'll give up smooth scrolling in the browser so that I can run 50+ apps at the same time any day of the week - but I almost always have smooth scrolling in the web browser even when playing music anyways.

If the transitions bother you so much, turn them off completely then.

Also, remember, this is not the 5th and final step in Maemo's evolution. The 5th step is supposed to be what ends up competing with stuff like the iPhone, not the N900. So everything that would go into always making scrolling super smooth and other presentation bits are going to be concentrated at that point, not as much for Maemo 5.

[dinis_2003]

Have you noticed something slightly strange about all the people saying 'The N900 is garbage' - none of them seem to want to sell their phone, even though they will be offered a big premium to what they paid.

Now, I would love to get my hands on the N900. I *love* the N810 and the N800. I'm very happy with a Linux command line, and I think that before long most of the debian and Ubuntu repositiories will be available on my phone.

To me, that *is* megacool.

So, come on N900 haters, sell me your N900.

I also do like Nokia!!! An I also have some complains about it.
How nokia can release mega cool phone leaving all simple futures that any boolshit phone had it 5 years ago? That is what i do not understand.
I remember some one said, "com one Nokia give us our phone! We do not care if it has bugs." Can you imagine how many complains would be made if they did it?
Even if they had problems with software it is not an excuse to leave out all simple futures.
I think they can not do it.
I am waiting for my preorder and i am not going to cancel my order.

[twaelti]

One tip about the scrolling: the kinetic scrolling on the N900 can go VERY fast if you "kick" it the right way. Learn to scroll in a large list (such as the apps with -test and -devel enabled) - I can kick through with two swipes :-)

[Laughing Man]

True, but try to turn the other cheek. ;)



Haha I'm very bad at that. I'm the sort of person where if you **** me off enough, I'll fight back and then kick you in the balls for good measure. Luckily it takes alot to **** me off. (or little if I've been having a very very bad day).

Though it's interesting how martial arts temper your anger, you get knocked down to the ground alot so at some point you just stop getting angry about being knocked around.

[sondjata]

Seems like I made the right choice waiting cause:
1) No ATT 3G
2) No sync and older apps won't work? So GPE suite is out of the question. Ermining out.
3) No MaemoMapper <--- absolute dealbreaker.

So I'll be waiting for a price drop and/or GPE and Maemomapper ports or equivalents but if someone has an 810 they'll part with for a decent price...well..a low price..I'll probably bite that to get the keyboard.

[Jack6428]

I read and I loled. Go get the iPhone. You obviously don't understand the N900 not one bit. I feel sorry for you. Really funny how you list all the good things, but then your conclusion is "garbage"..haha..and more thing, technically the N900 is better then the iPhone in every way, fact. The iPhone is NOT a smartphone.

[franklinn]

Exactly.

To answer other questions I am not a troll. The review I posted is the what the average consumer will say. Who cares if it can run Open Office it can't scroll smoothly in the damn browser? It's called user experience and Nokia should look it up.

Clearly this device is made by geeks for other geeks but this has little relevance in the market. If you want to sell a phone/tablet/whatever the hell it is get ready to be compared to....the iPhone. The iPhone doesn't do many things because a lot of them simply aren't feasible on a mobile platform with little processing power and a very limited battery. However, everything else it does is basically perfect/almost perfect.

I love how Nokia keeps trying to avoid comparisons because they know there is none...No, this is a mobile tablet with phone functionality. WTF does that mean? You mean it's a smartphone like every other phone out there but you don't want it compared. They tried to pull the same BS with their N series mobile computer stuff.

Also, the point of this all is that all of us should start demanding better software from them. If they can't do it then get out and let somebody else try it. Attitudes such as "it's only step 4 out of 5, it's a tablet not a phone, it just came out" etc. is exactly what they strive on. They need to understand that they do not set any benchmarks anymore but the market does.

Last time I checked Android is up to version 2 and it already kicks all sorts of ***. How come Maemo 5 is finding all sorts of excuses for missing functionality, crappy scrolling and poor user experience?

so scrolling is not smooth in maemo 5?. Why oh why is Nokia struggling with a basic feature like Kinetic scrolling ? They still havent added this to the 5800 and the n97 implementation is quite mediocre. It seems they have very average UI developers and average wont cut it when competing with UI whizzes at Apple and HTC.

If I find this to be the case, then I may send back to Nokia and get a moto milestone. The n810 is good enough for me - I paid only £120 so I expect more from n900 at almost 4 times tht price.

Nokia, wake up !

[ossipena]

Seems like I made the right choice waiting cause:
2) No sync and older apps won't work? So GPE suite is out of the question. Ermining out.

at least yesterday there was a pile of gpe-software in extras-testing...

e:what's wrong with scrolling? i havent got any complaints.

i am falling in love more and more to my n900, will sell it if somebody pays 6000€....

[Laughing Man]

Seems like I made the right choice waiting cause:
1) No ATT 3G
2) No sync and older apps won't work? So GPE suite is out of the question. Ermining out.
3) No MaemoMapper <--- absolute dealbreaker.

So I'll be waiting for a price drop and/or GPE and Maemomapper ports or equivalents but if someone has an 810 they'll part with for a decent price...well..a low price..I'll probably bite that to get the keyboard.

Err..

2) Don't know about the older applications not working. It seems dependent on what's missing in Maemo 5 compared to Maemo 4 since some things were removed.

3) There is MaemoMapper coming for Maemo 5... Gnuite may not be working on it anymore (consider he works for Google now) but there are other developers working on it.

[Bratag]

so scrolling is not smooth in maemo 5?. Why oh why is Nokia struggling with a basic feature like Kinetic scrolling ? They still havent added this to the 5800 and the n97 implementation is quite mediocre. It seems they have very average UI developers and average wont cut it when competing with UI whizzes at Apple and HTC.

If I find this to be the case, then I may send back to Nokia and get a moto milestone. The n810 is good enough for me - I paid only £120 so I expect more from n900 at almost 4 times tht price.

Nokia, wake up !

Nobody else has reported slow scrolling - in fact quite the opposite - dont take the ramblings of a disgruntled single user as fact.

[homelinux]

I will drop a few words in:

I have been a regular visitor of these forums for a few years (since I purchased my N800) and I agree that the crew here can get pretty deffensive when in presence of negative comments about Nokia stuff (justified or not). Then you have the common "search the forums" answer when a newbie asks something. The problem with this is that the search algorithm (IMO) is not great, every time I look for something it takes several attempts and there is no gurantee that you will be presented the "best" solution on top. With that said, and 10 pages of comments later, the originator of this thread hasn't provided proof of the chopiness he is complaining about. And I agree that he should have expressed himself in a different way (was cursing really necessary?). To give him the benefit of the doubt, he is probably upset with his purchase and was just venting.

I do not own a N900 .. preordered on Amazon and later cancelled it. In case you are wondering why, the lack of 3G support on AT&T did it for me (specs on Amazon were wrong at first). I'm a happy Blackberry user but still trapped with EDGE data rates. Why would Nokia not include the AT&T 3G frequency? Switching carriers is not an option for me because I have a company-owned line.

This post turned out longer than I expected, but after reading the 10 pages of comments I felt tempted to say something. I find the Canola team to be a good example of how to react to criticism (good or bad). No Canola for N900??????? Well, another reason not to buy it ... YET.

[kopte3]

Megacrazy, maybe you have a faulty device or maybe you're right about everything you said, but opening a thread with this name is very immature. There is already a thread for owners opinions, why do you think that your opinion is super important? Should we all open a thread when we get our devices? I respect your opinion, but i don't get it - why do you need to yell so hard and try to tell the whole world how you are unhappy with this device. Do you think this kind of attitude helps someone? I think you're only gonna confuse somebody. "it sucks, but i'll enjoy it"
Enjoy it then.

[Holyshit]

Can Apple, Samsung, and Android boot into Debian? Can they run KDE? What about Open Office?

Yh Android does and it did so long before the N900. The T-Mobile G1 (and e.g. HTC Hero) run FULL Debian. Yes, they also support native X11, so you can run KDE, LXDE, IceWM whatever you want. So what your point again?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8yBHbwuKSU&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjNhGjyAUAw&feature=player_embedded

Even better: it's a 1-click install for G1 owners.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=529233
http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=Debian_on_G1
http://www.androidfanatic.com/cms/community-forums.html?func=view&catid=9&id=1620#1620

So yh u get the best of both worlds: Android and full Debian on 1 device. When u need it u got full Debian in the palm of ur hand, when when u're finished u just switch back to a very nice smartphone OS. There's no emulation whatsoever and u don't need to wipe Android. Just slap the Debian ARM image onto a SD card, download an App from Market and you're set to go.

Sure there's smartphone office apps but not a true office program. Granted you may not want to use those things but those are the capabilities that Maemo provides. If someone provides a mobile office program on Maemo then you can run that and OpenOffice then. Is that something any of those manufacturers can do? Hence why I say the n900 is more tablet than phone. Also why I say if your looking for a smartphone your on the wrong platform right now. That won't be till the next step at the very least.


Windows Mobile 6.5/7 basically have quite good Office support. And basically Open Office is kinda bloated (it uses more resources and is slower than Microsoft Office, look it up) and hasn't got any touchscreen support - and the N900 doesn't have a trackball or D-Pad. And it's just silly to run something bloated like Open Office on a portable device. A lot of companies are moving to smartclients and webservices, look at Intel Moblin OS, look at Google Chrome OS, look at Microsoft's WebOffice.

In a couple of years time, writing office documents will be like webmail. Most people don't use local email any longer, and office on the internet allows you to access and share your documents anywhere and anytime, and you always have the most current version of the document in reach.

[Laughing Man]

I will drop a few words in:

I have been a regular visitor of these forums for a few years (since I purchased my N800) and I agree that the crew here can get pretty deffensive when in presence of negative comments about Nokia stuff (justified or not). Then you have the common "search the forums" answer when a newbie asks something. The problem with this is that the search algorithm (IMO) is not great, every time I look for something it takes several attempts and there is no gurantee that you will be presented the "best" solution on top. With that said, and 10 pages of comments later, the originator of this thread hasn't provided proof of the chopiness he is complaining about. And I agree that he should have expressed himself in a different way (was cursing really necessary?). To give him the benefit of the doubt, he is probably upset with his purchase and was just venting.


Yeah the search is terrible, you get better results if you were to go to google.com and type in site:talk.maemo.org than if you used the built in one. Don't know if the new power search is any better though. Interestingly I've noticed that where I worked too where despite having a google powered search, the results will be different than had you done a site search.

[Bratag]

Yh Android does and it did so long before the N900. The T-Mobile G1 (and e.g. HTC Hero) run FULL Debian. Yes, they also support native X11, so you can run KDE, LXDE, IceWM whatever you want. So what your point again?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8yBHbwuKSU&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjNhGjyAUAw&feature=player_embedded

Even better: it's a 1-click install for G1 owners.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=529233
http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=Debian_on_G1
http://www.androidfanatic.com/cms/community-forums.html?func=view&catid=9&id=1620#1620

So yh u get the best of both worlds: Android and full Debian on 1 device. When u need it u got full Debian in the palm of ur hand, when when u're finished u just switch back to a very nice smartphone OS. There's no emulation whatsoever and u don't need to wipe Android.



Windows Mobile 6.5/7 basically have quite good Office support. And basically Open Office is kinda bloated (it uses more resources than Microsoft Office, look it up) and hasn't got any touchscreen support - and the N900 doesn't have a trackball or D-Pad. And it's just silly to run something bloated like Open Office on a portable device. A lot of companies are moving to smartclients and webservices, look at Intel Moblin OS, look at Google Chrome OS, look at Microsoft's WebOffice.

In a couple of years time, writing office documents will be like webmail. Most people don't use local email any longer, and office on the internet allows you to access and share your documents anywhere and anytime, and you always have the most current version of the document in reach.

Um actually what they run is an image within a virtual machine. I dont know if you have played with it much but its by far and away a novelty as opposed to something that can be viably used.

Not saying it isnt cool - just not really a valid comp

[gjtorikian]

I will drop a few words in:
This post turned out longer than I expected, but after reading the 10 pages of comments I felt tempted to say something. I find the Canola team to be a good example of how to react to criticism (good or bad). No Canola for N900??????? Well, another reason not to buy it ... YET.

What are you wankers moaning about?

http://etrunko.blogspot.com/2009/09/canola-on-n900.html

[Megacrazy]

Here we go some real life scrolling in the browser, flash off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JeLKKfDDM

If you want a comparative iPhone vid I can do that too but I think it's pretty much self explanatory. I might cover the actual OS later.

As far as the unit being defective...come on...seriously.

[Laughing Man]

Yh Android does and it did so long before the N900. The T-Mobile G1 (and e.g. HTC Hero) run FULL Debian. Yes, they also support native X11, so you can run KDE, LXDE, IceWM whatever you want. So what your point again?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8yBHbwuKSU&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjNhGjyAUAw&feature=player_embedded

Even better: it's a 1-click install for G1 owners.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=529233
http://android-dls.com/wiki/index.php?title=Debian_on_G1
http://www.androidfanatic.com/cms/community-forums.html?func=view&catid=9&id=1620#1620

So yh u get the best of both worlds: Android and full Debian on 1 device. When u need it u got full Debian in the palm of ur hand, when when u're finished u just switch back to a very nice smartphone OS. There's no emulation whatsoever and u don't need to wipe Android.



Windows Mobile 6.5/7 basically have quite good Office support. And basically Open Office is kinda bloated (it uses more resources than Microsoft Office, look it up) and hasn't got any touchscreen support - and the N900 doesn't have a trackball or D-Pad. And it's just silly to run something bloated like Open Office on a portable device. A lot of companies are moving to smartclients and webservices, look at Intel Moblin OS, look at Google Chrome OS, look at Microsoft's WebOffice.

In a couple of years time, writing office documents will be like webmail. Most people don't use local email any longer, and office on the internet allows you to access and share your documents anywhere and anytime, and you always have the most current version of the document in reach.

Interesting, I may be considering Android sooner than I thought then. Though is this persistent? E.g. what happens if I upgrade the Android OS?

As for the future, I'm not buying a device in the future. I'm buying a device now for what it can do now (granted I keep it for at least 3 years). When the future comes then that's when I'll be evaluating again what can be done with what devices out there. I also tend to have a bias against online tools (I just use them for storage mostly) since you may not always have access to them [if the service ever goes down even for temporary reasons] and it's dependent on being connected (can be solved with better network access) . Though Google Gears was nice while it lasted since it allowed you to work offline and then sync the changes back online.

[Holyshit]

Um actually what they run is an image within a virtual machine.

It doesn't run in a virtual machine, it runs natively. Because Debian supports ARM. So basically Debian is able to run on any smartphone that has an ARM CPU.

[Texrat]

Who cares if it can run Open Office it can't scroll smoothly in the damn browser?

Mine is still scrolling smoothly.

Am I doing something wrong? :rolleyes:

so scrolling is not smooth in maemo 5?. Why oh why is Nokia struggling with a basic feature like Kinetic scrolling ?

They aren't. Scrolling is as smooth as teflon-coated silk. Take the hyperbolic comments with a huge grain of salt.

[Bratag]

It doesn't run in a virtual machine, it runs natively. Because Debian supports ARM. So basically Debian is able to run on any smartphone that has an ARM CPU.

I stand corrected

[RevdKathy]

Mine is still scrolling smoothly.

Am I doing something wrong? :rolleyes:

Ohh! Are you running Open Office too? Can we have a bear-of-very-little-brain walk-thru on how that's done? (I know it has been done). Prett please?

[Holyshit]

Interesting, I may be considering Android sooner than I thought then. Though is this persistent? E.g. what happens if I upgrade the Android OS?


It's not difficult to run Debian on ARM. The difficulty is getting access to your phone's hardware. HTC devices (like G1, HERO) are quite open to development, so it was a lot easier for the community to built boatloaders and gain access to other hardware in the phone. So, don't get your hopes up for the Droid yet. The Droid hasn't even been truely rooted yet. Fortunately HTC is upcoming with a Snapdragon Android device (and highres screen etc). Yes it is persistent because you run it from the SD card. And Android OS doesn't touch your SD card.

[hypnotik]

What are you wankers moaning about?

http://etrunko.blogspot.com/2009/09/canola-on-n900.html

Can't wait until an installable package is created!

[carolinabluejay]

Okay imo, I do not agree totally with the OP, but he/she does make some valid points (although in an obtrusive manner). I think we all have to be a little more realistic in what to expect from the device. Much of what the OP is complaining about is software related and could be fixed via firmware updates. However,this is a new iteration of the OS, and it appears Nokia was not expecting this type of response to the device, which has led to this device's mishandled launch. Therefore, I would expect a few things to be a little off. Most of what the OP listed may have to do with that particular device, as I have not seen many reports of these "bugs" from others of whom have received the device or have a pre-prod unit with final release firmware. I would say report these issues through the proper channels and as I have witnessed from the dedication of this community and commitment from Nokia, I am sure they will be addressed.

In regards to the Iphone & Android comparisons, they are going to happen. It is unfortunate, but they are going to happen. Are they directly comparable? Imo, No. Also, I think this is the first time Nokia is committing the same amount of resources Apple and Google put into the Iphone and Android respectively. I look at it like this: Nokia has a vast catalog of devices that it manages and builds up each year, with 3 OSes (S40, S60, Maemo) that it supports. Maemo to me is now beginning to be prepped for the "mainsteream", where as before it was limited to a "niche" product. This is in comparison to Apple who has one smartphone and one mobile OS (in terms of mobile devices), and Google has one mobile OS. All three platforms have things that they lack (none are perfect no matter how much we want them to be) and things that each does very well. Imo I think Maemo is catching up to be right where it should be as far as its capabilities are concerned, and will speed up once its fully released on the public.

Now as far as this goes:
...THIS PHONE IS GARBAGE. ...

HELL to the Naw, I can't get with that. My confidence still lies with this platform, this community, Nokia, and this device (whenever it gets here).

[Endri]

does anybody remember the first six month of the iphone? before installer? the phone its was really little more than a proto, the keyboard waschunky and so on...

the problem here are expectation. too high. this phone did not jump here from year 2100. but since now is one of the best 1.0 piece of hardware. in 5 weeks we will have tons of decent app... and so... yes it is not perfect but it will be. And if you preord one is because you wanna be part of the ongoing optimization...

[Phlook]

I don't have it yet but i am flying to get in in the Chicago Flagship store at the same time as i'll be visiting my friend there and i am glad to get it even it has some issues or not.

Yes Nokia could've work on the UI better to get into the competition on their First release of the Maemo 5 platform while Android and IPhone had quite some years to perfect their same OS's, but having waited 2 months of delays, i just wanna have the device in my hands and let Nokia and those who can figure out what else we need to complete it... I was already a wreck knowing people had the pre-production devices in their hands and imagine how those were supposed to be...

If anyone wants a perfect UI for this device, then they should wait for a 2nd or 3rd version increment or something before considering getting the device. I, on the other hand, would like it now and will enjoy it until i can enjoy it even more and morer... ;)

[zerojay]

Here we go some real life scrolling in the browser, flash off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JeLKKfDDM

If you want a comparative iPhone vid I can do that too but I think it's pretty much self explanatory. I might cover the actual OS later.

As far as the unit being defective...come on...seriously.

Looks like the issue is that you aren't used to using a resistive touchscreen more than anything else. Honestly, your video actually shows scrolling working quite well for the most part.

[Megacrazy]

Looks like the issue is that you aren't used to using a resistive touchscreen more than anything else. Honestly, your video actually shows scrolling working quite well for the most part.

Really? How about the browser taking 1-2 seconds to load the page as you scroll...does that have to do with a resistive touchscreen too?

Anyway, somebody pointed out that the iPhone wasn't perfect when it came out which is totally true. Unfortunately though, Nokia has a history of not fixing anything and coming out with the next phone or version we're supposed to buy. Watch, 6 months down the road it'll be Maemo6 with smooth scrolling and another 600$ price tag.

If this community can solve some of the issues this phone (that's exactly what it is) has then kudos to you. However, I still think that Nokia should be fixing their own stuff, not somebody who does this on the side, for free.

[Raubtier]

jesus..

come on..

who really would be scrolling at THAT speed?! makes no sense whatsoever... the first 30% you show normal scrolling speed and it performs just fine..

[un-named_user]

I don't seem to understand why there seems to be a tinge of fanboy-ism in some of the replies. Megacrazy has raised very valid points, about how a normal consumer will feel about the device. And people who think that a 10 15 minute fiddle with the device is enough to tell all about it aren't entirely correct.

Yes I love the phone, but it feels very beta-ish after you use it extensively. Yes I know, that it is the culture we live in. Sell now debug later.

The iPhone does have a very very polished albeit limited UI. But just beacuse maemo5 is more advanced that doesn't give Nokia an excuse not to have gotten it right. (Not comparing functionalities)

I've used the phone now for 4 days now and I'l list out some of the problems I encountered

Browser
1. Crashes every 15 minutes or so, I guess because I switch back and forth every min between windows. Bad nokia :(
2. History is a painfully slow method to go back a page. Nokia needs to provide forward and back buttons in the UI
3. History, open in new window, the menu(tap and hold) stop working randomly.
4. Lots and lots of checkered patterns while scrolling and esp after you start scrolling after zooming in.
5. I have a habit of opening a new window and going back to the previous page instantly(via the task switcher). All that happens is a 2-10 second delay before the page responds/scrolls again.
6. Some of the new window(in point 5) doesn't load completely when I do come back to it and have to wait 3-10 seconds again for it to load. This is a bad when the phone is billed as mutitasking
7. Links click(finger and stylus) but the browser doesn't seem to respond once in a while.
8. I like the volume control to zoom in and out, but then I have no means to control the volume easily when playing a flash video. try youtube and just see how microscopic the volume links are.
9. Drop down lists are very laggy while scrolling.
10. The address bar gives suggestions whenever it pleases. A reboot later it seems to remember all the website I have visited before :p
11. Once in a while if I click the address bar and start typing away the contact search opens up

Music Player
1. Stutters often while browsing the web side by side.
2. Scrolling just feels laggy at times. Nokia really needs to pick up the slack here and everywhere else kinetic scrolling is implemented

General
1. The pdf reader really needs kinetic scrolling.
2. I don't know if its relevant in every country or not. But the contacts application gives me an option to send a text msg to landlines. I atleast want an option to turn it off.
3. To swipe the screens the finger has to be moved a lot before the screens move.
4. The phone tells me to remove the charger as the battery is full after I have done so :D
5. The rotation sensor for the phone app is flaky, from standby I've literally had to shake the phone while holding it to get it to start. But once it starts it switches orientation perfectly as needed.

Weird Bugs
1. I downloaded a couple of pics from the internet, saved them in the gallery. then later deleted them from the gallery. But I was left with some pictures(with black thumbnails). If I tried to delete these the phone said they didn't exist or something and didn't do anything. I downloaded the pics again and deleted the pics. it worked then :confused:
2. The conversation app is showing 2 entries from my call logs and I still cant delete them :mad:


Hardware thoughts
1. There has to be ctrl, shift, and the symbol key on the other side of the keyboard. Its a pain trying to do lets say ctrl+a.
2. The build quality is fine. But I've been a E-series user for a long time and this seems like a step down.
3. The screen could have been brighter
4. Single touch makes it a pain to type fast on the on-screen keyboard. I wish it was resistive multi touch. I dont like capacitive ;)
5. Battery is just about adequate. Nokia should have put the 1500mAH battery.
6. A lil hardware(send & end) buttons would be nice. Just makes it easier to use the phone.


I still love the phone, I do. The promises it holds, the browser's capabilities(not the stability as of yet), the community behind it. and I hope most of the bugs would be resolved as soon as possible in the coming updates.

No point I suppose in discussing the third party apps, and the things the phone can't do, like lack of mms which I really do need sadly cause I still knowingly bought the phone :)


PS: this is my first post on the forum, been following it for a month or two now. But was too lazy to register :D. So a hi to all.

btw could somebody guide me how to get rid of the damn conversation entries without formatting the phone???

and NO I wont sell my phone :D

[brog]

Here we go some real life scrolling in the browser, flash off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JeLKKfDDM

If you want a comparative iPhone vid I can do that too but I think it's pretty much self explanatory. I might cover the actual OS later.

As far as the unit being defective...come on...seriously.

Let me say this as an (ex-)iPhone User..
The Browser's performance isn't bad, seriously.

[bbin]

Here we go some real life scrolling in the browser, flash off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JeLKKfDDM

If you want a comparative iPhone vid I can do that too but I think it's pretty much self explanatory. I might cover the actual OS later.

As far as the unit being defective...come on...seriously.
Okay... And your problem is...?

I just see a an ex capacitive screen user making silly taps on a resistive screen and browsing a site with too much zoom in -- rendering gets slow at times but really nothing too bad at that zoom level.

What I would really like to see is that you take that iphone and n900 side by side, clear the cache and make a test about speed and content being showed.

[zerojay]

Really? How about the browser taking 1-2 seconds to load the page as you scroll...does that have to do with a resistive touchscreen too?

Anyway, somebody pointed out that the iPhone wasn't perfect when it came out which is totally true. Unfortunately though, Nokia has a history of not fixing anything and coming out with the next phone or version we're supposed to buy. Watch, 6 months down the road it'll be Maemo6 with smooth scrolling and another 600$ price tag.

If this community can solve some of the issues this phone (that's exactly what it is) has then kudos to you. However, I still think that Nokia should be fixing their own stuff, not somebody who does this on the side, for free.

At normal zoom on Engadget with flash *on*, I may get the occasional small stutter when scrolling down the page quickly but that's about it. I don't generally zoom in, but it makes sense that it will take maybe a little more time to render than normal. Remember, this is a mobile device... it's not a 4 core monster. It's not perfect, but it's still really damn good when compared to almost every other mobile device out there.

(By the way, I often see the same scrolling jitters when using the iPhone as well.)

[zerojay]

What I would really like to see is that you take that iphone and n900 side by side, clear the cache and make a test about speed and content being showed.

And that wouldn't even be a fair comparison since the N900 will render everything and the iphone won't.

[pwannell]

I would love moderators to check megacrazy and unameduser and then ban IP's that are used twice for usernames. Both first posts and both write posts in exactly the same way. Megacrazy can we see a piccy of your n900 and u toogether pls?

[omniscy]

Let me say this as an (ex-)iPhone User..
The Browser's performance isn't bad, seriously.

Exactly. I was just scrolling over the same webpage using an ipod touch, and performance was pretty much the same.
If i scroll at those speeds(wich is useless, 'cause nobody can read that fast :P ) i also get a lot of checkered parts and then i have to wait a sec or so to load that part.

[brog]

The only point in time when this discussion will make any point/sense will be, when every participant in this thread actually owns an N900 and can speak for themselves.

Seriously, it is clear that we, as people who do not have the device, cannot really make a point.

I will now leave this thread and (maybe) come back when my N900 finally arrived. :)

[sondjata]

Err..

2) Don't know about the older applications not working. It seems dependent on what's missing in Maemo 5 compared to Maemo 4 since some things were removed.

3) There is MaemoMapper coming for Maemo 5... Gnuite may not be working on it anymore (consider he works for Google now) but there are other developers working on it.

Right so when MM or it's equivalent comes out I'll bite.

[Texrat]

Really? How about the browser taking 1-2 seconds to load the page as you scroll...does that have to do with a resistive touchscreen too?

Something else not happening on my N900.

I'm starting to smell a trend...

[Megacrazy]

The problem with the video is that it can't really capture how smooth the scrolling is. In real life it feels like the N900 is running at about 9 frames per second and the iPhone at about 30...if that makes sense. Android will generally run crappy right as you start scrolling but then be as smooth as the iPhone. The N900 is just jerky throughout.

Also, the browser seems to slow down and speed up randomly in how well it scrolls without opening anything or changing anything...hmmm.

[Megacrazy]

I would love moderators to check megacrazy and unameduser and then ban IP's that are used twice for usernames. Both first posts and both write posts in exactly the same way. Megacrazy can we see a piccy of your n900 and u toogether pls?

Hahaha exactly what I was thinking...see what happens when you post crap about a device? More people come out with the same opinion.

Relax, I am not trolling in any way. Feel free to check as many IPs as you want.

[Laughing Man]

And that wouldn't even be a fair comparison since the N900 will render everything and the iphone won't.

Couldn't you turn off the flash component though?

Right so when MM or it's equivalent comes out I'll bite.

Just pointing it out. I too look forward to MM myself.

[sjgadsby]

2. History is a painfully slow method to go back a page. Nokia needs to provide forward and back buttons in the UI

Agreed. The backspace key on the keyboard may be used to go back a page in the browser, but it often takes several tries before it works. Still, it's better than using the history.

I still haven't found a decent "forward".

4. Lots and lots of checkered patterns while scrolling...

Agreed.

5. I have a habit of opening a new window and going back to the previous page instantly(via the task switcher). All that happens is a 2-10 second delay before the page responds/scrolls again.

I haven't noticed that delay. I do find the new browser window tops itself, a behaviour I thought was to be left behind.

7. Links click(finger and stylus) but the browser doesn't seem to respond once in a while.

Agreed.

8. I like the volume control to zoom in and out...

(I don't, but go on.)

...but then I have no means to control the volume easily when playing a flash video.

Agreed.

10. The address bar gives suggestions whenever it pleases. A reboot later it seems to remember all the website I have visited before

Yes, there's something odd there. For a few days, just before I flashed to PR1.0, my N900 provided suggestions in the browser's address bar. It hadn't ever done that previously. I didn't even know it was supposed to.

Now that I've updated to PR1.0 the suggestions are gone again.

1. The pdf reader really needs kinetic scrolling.

Agreed.

2. I don't know if its relevant in every country or not. But the contacts application gives me an option to send a text msg to landlines.

Yes, that is a bit odd. I'd be happy if those entries disappeared.

1. There has to be ctrl, shift, and the symbol key on the other side of the keyboard. Its a pain trying to do lets say ctrl+a.

Those keys are sticky. Press and release "Ctrl". Press and release "a".

3. The screen could have been brighter

Yipes! Full brightness gives me sunburn.


As for the rest, WORKSFORME.

[Bratag]

Here we go some real life scrolling in the browser, flash off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JeLKKfDDM

If you want a comparative iPhone vid I can do that too but I think it's pretty much self explanatory. I might cover the actual OS later.

As far as the unit being defective...come on...seriously.

I guess I am just missing it - it seems to scroll just fine - until of course you go insane and whip your thumb (or whatever finger) up and down like a mad person. Then the page takes a small while, and to me it didnt seem like more than a second, to redraw. You can even see the grid patten in the empty space.

[Texrat]

We need more of these threads.






Ah, I'm sure we'll be getting them...

[Laughing Man]

Eep, the PDF reader doesn't have kinetic scrolling. I read alot of PDFs on my tablet and was hoping for some kinetic scrolling this time around.

[un-named_user]

I would love moderators to check megacrazy and unameduser and then ban IP's that are used twice for usernames. Both first posts and both write posts in exactly the same way. Megacrazy can we see a piccy of your n900 and u toogether pls?

Yes 'd love if the moderators can actually check the IP addresses to confirm the same. I just hope you will pipe down after that.

What is with people? Its the same with IPhone followers. tell them that the iPhone cant multitask and they go we dont need no stinking multtasking... blah blah blah..

I'm seeing the same attitude here also. I'm not denying the phone is good. But yes there are stability and performance(optimization) issues, that nokia needs to look into fast.

I didn't say flash is choppy, did I? Cause I know flash is too cpu intensive for even a cortex a8. That's adobe's fault.

Loosen up a bit, even a n900 can have faults and hopefully nokia will fix most of them eventually :)

Relax. I'm not out to get nokia. I did buy the phone after all :D

[Megacrazy]

I guess I am just missing it - it seems to scroll just fine - until of course you go insane and whip your thumb (or whatever finger) up and down like a mad person. Then the page takes a small while, and to me it didnt seem like more than a second, to redraw. You can even see the grid patten in the empty space.

Ok here are the issues:

- Smoothness of the scroll is not good at all. In other words if you look at an image it looks like it's jumping around, not sliding around like on other devices.
- You get checkered patterns when other devices do not get checkered patterns (especially when dealing with large images).

Reloading once you get the checkered patterns is on par with other devices or even faster sometimes. Set the N900 side by side with a 3Gs or a Droid...and if the scrolling is just as smooth (do not confuse with fast) I will not sell the N900 but eat it :)

un-named_user, I have noticed a lot of the problems you described but was too lazy to write it all out. Plus, it's the scrolling that really bothers me

[Bratag]

Ok here are the issues:

- Smoothness of the scroll is not good at all. In other words if you look at an image it looks like it's jumping around, not sliding around like on other devices.
- You get checkered patterns when other devices do not get checkered patterns (especially when dealing with large images).

Reloading once you get the checkered patterns is on par with other devices or even faster sometimes. Set the N900 side by side with a 3Gs or a Droid...and if the scrolling is just as smooth (do not confuse with fast) I will not sell the N900 but eat it :)

un-named_user, I have noticed a lot of the problems you described but was too lazy to write it all out. Plus, it's the scrolling that really bothers me

Does it scroll better when not zoomed in all the way?

[DaveP1]

What is with people? Its the same with IPhone followers. tell them that the iPhone cant multitask and they go we dont need no stinking multtasking... blah blah blah..

I'm seeing the same attitude here also. I'm not denying the phone is good. But yes there are stability and performance(optimization) issues, that nokia needs to look into fast.

. . .

Loosen up a bit, even a n900 can have faults and hopefully nokia will fix most of them eventually :)

Really. I've never met a device I didn't want to have improved. The N900 has strong points but it has weak points too. Let's not be so insecure that we can't admit the weak points exist.

[Megacrazy]

Really. I've never met a device I didn't want to have improved. The N900 has strong points but it has weak points too. Let's not be so insecure that we can't admit the weak points exist.

Yeah I might've cut the honeymoon a little short with this thread.

Zoom has no effect on smoothness. The more you zoom in the more checkered patterns you get. Also, if you switch tasks without closing the browser and then switch to it again...it's checkered patterns galore.

[Zuhälter]

I don't know about anyone else.. But Megacrazy is scaring the Bajesus out of me with this thread. I know I was going out on a leap of faith pre-ordering the N900.. but damn, I'm all nervous now! I expect there to be a learning curve with this device and some growing pains. Expect it and look forward to working through them TOGETHER with the community (Ok, actually you guys with the technical knowhow working through it and me tagging along and benefiting from your expertise.. but clicking thanks on the forum to how my appreciation!) I KNOW that my Nokia N95 8GB will have more and better phone functions than the N900 (until a couple of firmware updates hopefully) However the browser being jumpy and lagging?? WTF?? :eek: However, in NO video have I seen, this lag or anything else. Any other review said the browser was by far the best part of the device! So the people who have their N900, is it true??? Is it people being afraid to say what Megacrazy is saying or is this some evil plot to keep me up at night wondering. Aaaaaarrgh, I hate second guessing myself! Damn you Megacrazy if this is a joke.. daaaaaaaaamn uuuuuuu! :mad: :rolleyes:

[jjx]

>> 2. I don't know if its relevant in every country or not. But the contacts application gives me an option to send a text msg to landlines.

Yes, that is a bit odd. I'd be happy if those entries disappeared

You can send text messags to some landlines, at least in the UK. But not all landlines!

Some landline companies convert incoming texts to electronic speech, and then phone the landline and speak it or leave a voicemail.

I think you can send and receive proper texts with the right landline phones, too.

But it would be great to have a way to avoid sending texts to landlines by accident, which I've done a few times on other phones when specifying a contact by name in a text message.
Because usually the result is a message sent to /dev/null and the sender doesn't realise.

[Laughing Man]

It's probably more an effect of not differentiating between home, cell, and work phone numbers. But it's interesting that you can do that jjx.

[un-named_user]

Agreed. The backspace key on the keyboard may be used to go back a page in the browser, but it often takes several tries before it works. Still, it's better than using the history.

Those keys are sticky. Press and release "Ctrl". Press and release "a".

Yipes! Full brightness gives me sunburn.


Actually that's why I use open in new window then switching back a lot. It just makes it less painful to browse the web

I know they are. but it just feels more natural to have them on both sides. Plus I like symbian's way of notifying about the current sticky key applied(single clicks).

and the brightness is weird. One level below maximum is actually dark and max is actually bright.. my bad :D

[Bratag]

Yeah I might've cut the honeymoon a little short with this thread.

Zoom has no effect on smoothness. The more you zoom in the more checkered patterns you get. Also, if you switch tasks without closing the browser and then switch to it again...it's checkered patterns galore.

Well I believe its happening on your device - we have quite a few devices in the wild now - can we get some others to weigh in on this - looks like its the engadget website thats being used to demo. Could we have a couple of people load it up and scroll around etc quickly

[danielwilson]

I don't know about anyone else.. But Megacrazy is scaring the Bajesus out of me with this thread. I know I was going out on a leap of faith pre-ordering the N900.. but damn, I'm all nervous now! I expect there to be a learning curve with this device and some growing pains. Expect it and look forward to working through them TOGETHER with the community (Ok, actually you guys with the technical knowhow working through it and me tagging along and benefiting from your expertise.. but clicking thanks on the forum to how my appreciation!) I KNOW that my Nokia N95 8GB will have more and better phone functions than the N900 (until a couple of firmware updates hopefully) However the browser being jumpy and lagging?? WTF?? :eek: However, in NO video have I seen, this lag or anything else. Any other review said the browser was by far the best part of the device! So the people who have their N900, is it true??? Is it people being afraid to say what Megacrazy is saying or is this some evil plot to keep me up at night wondering. Aaaaaarrgh, I hate second guessing myself! Damn you Megacrazy if this is a joke.. daaaaaaaaamn uuuuuuu! :mad: :rolleyes:

i would not take any notice just talking crap when i used the devise scrolling and browsing though the net was smooth as a babys bum my m8s got hd 2 and he regrets buying it over the n900

[Texrat]

Yeah I might've cut the honeymoon a little short with this thread.

Doubtful. There has been far too much hyperbole in your posting and I'm sure many others recognize that.

I think there are enough unreasonably rabid fans to keep the honeymoon going a bit longer. ;)

[Enyibinakata]

N900 is a groundbreaking device and will have a place in mobile computing history.

Well done NOKIA. You've proved the doubters wrong and shown the Americans how its done.

[un-named_user]

I don't know about anyone else.. But Megacrazy is scaring the Bajesus out of me with this thread. I know I was going out on a leap of faith pre-ordering the N900.. but ....
....
hate second guessing myself! Damn you Megacrazy if this is a joke.. daaaaaaaaamn uuuuuuu! :mad: :rolleyes:


The browser is impressive no doubt. Being able to use the chat on facebook and gmail is impressive IMO.

Its just that some issues need to be worked out, that's all. But don't worry about it, as these days no products come out that didn't require a patch or two to get them up to the optimum.

[jjx]

Looks like the issue is that you aren't used to using a resistive touchscreen more than anything else. Honestly, your video actually shows scrolling working quite well for the most part.

I looked at the same video, and I see the scrolling is moderately smooth (not really smooth - I notice but some people can't see the difference in games, so the same would apply).

But the complaints about slow drawing of browser content are crystal clear in the video. Much of the time, when scrolling at speed all you can see is a blue display - you can't tell where you are in the page. And then it eventually draws itself in, sometimes in several stages, almost like loading a web page (although it's clearly just rendering, not fetching or layout).

That can be improved in software I'm sure. (Very sure). But whether it will actually be improved remains to be seen.

Having seen that video, I'm confident that it at least some browser canvas implementation is likely to fix the rendering performance, even if it's not in the shipping browser. E.g. Tear or Fennec, for example?

[Dave999]

This phone sucks, like all new phones does. But wait a month or two and this beast will eat you alive :)

[MrGrim]

Doubtful. There has been far too much hyperbole in your posting and I'm sure many others recognize that.

I think there are enough unreasonably rabid fans to keep the honeymoon going a bit longer. ;)

It can't be a coincidence that the very next post proved your point

[Texrat]

I really don't get the browser complaints. Maybe I'm visiting the wrong sites?

Although I've been to heavy ones like LinkedIn, ebay, cnn.com, youtube, etc etc etc.

And consistently, the only sites giving me fits on the N900 are those that do the same on my quad-core 4gig PC connected to a fiber network. Yes, I'm talking to YOU LinkedIn and 1and1.com. Speed up your sites! :p

Sooo... seriously, not sure where so many of these rendering and scrolling complaints are coming from. I'm just dealing with UI oddities more than anything.

[Enyibinakata]

Eep, the PDF reader doesn't have kinetic scrolling. I read alot of PDFs on my tablet and was hoping for some kinetic scrolling this time around.

The beauty of open source development is you can at least raise this as a bugzilla. Try and appreciate what the Maemo team have accomplished. Be glad for now that you have a decent PDF app.

Have you seen the calendar app ? Is there any other mobile calendar that compares to it ?.

How about real multitasking ? Have you seen the youtube video by mysymbian showing its multitasking power ? Is there any mobile app that can do the same ?

And the browsing ? The Video playback - at a time where other platforms are restricted in terms of codec they can play (you have to pay Archos for this, right ?), this handles divX with aplomb and resolution is top notch ? And torrent, have you seen the torrent client ? Torrent on a mobile ? wow.

Yes Maemo 5 has shortcomings and I hope these shortcomings will be addressed by the capable Maemo team.

Thank you Maemo team - I still love my Maemo 4 powered n810 and looks like you've exceeded that.

Thank you. :)

[Texrat]

It can't be a coincidence that the very next post proved your point

Probability was on my side. :D

[Megacrazy]

I don't know about anyone else.. But Megacrazy is scaring the Bajesus out of me with this thread. I know I was going out on a leap of faith pre-ordering the N900.. but damn, I'm all nervous now! I expect there to be a learning curve with this device and some growing pains. Expect it and look forward to working through them TOGETHER with the community (Ok, actually you guys with the technical knowhow working through it and me tagging along and benefiting from your expertise.. but clicking thanks on the forum to how my appreciation!) I KNOW that my Nokia N95 8GB will have more and better phone functions than the N900 (until a couple of firmware updates hopefully) However the browser being jumpy and lagging?? WTF?? :eek: However, in NO video have I seen, this lag or anything else. Any other review said the browser was by far the best part of the device! So the people who have their N900, is it true??? Is it people being afraid to say what Megacrazy is saying or is this some evil plot to keep me up at night wondering. Aaaaaarrgh, I hate second guessing myself! Damn you Megacrazy if this is a joke.. daaaaaaaaamn uuuuuuu! :mad: :rolleyes:

Haha...If you're coming from the N95 then you're basically time traveling into the future with the N900. I don't think you have any reasons to worry.

Most of this thread is about things not being perfect, the way they were supposed to be. In fact I am using the phone right now typing this...so it can't be all that bad :)

[jjx]

None of them specially Apple released a phone or operating system that was in development.

Actually they did :-) The first iPhone was missing a lot of what people now take for granted on it, according to numerous reports.

Nokia is the biggest phone maker in the world. you would think they might be able to make a phone/operating system that was at least as good as a three year old device/system. And to leave out basic features and compatibilities for the end user to solve, thats just a pitty. The N900 has not been marketed as project. It has been released as an end user finished product. and it seems more and more it is falling short.

Therein lies the problem.

Nokia is also trying to make an open source friendly device, to tap into that enthusiasm, knowledge and skill.

"A little bit dangerous..."

Which means they needed to start a lot of things from the beginning. Or at least, they had to go back a way. They couldn't take what had taken a lot more development than you might imagine, and just drop it onto this device.

The issues that bother you are really very hard to solve and take many years to get right. Sure, you can polish one thing (like the scrolling), but then you don't finish something else.

In tapping into open source, they seem to have gone for the idea that ongoing improvement with a solid base is better than polishing the pretty bits with a weak base, because the longer term result will be better all round and make us all happy, even if this stage isn't as pretty as it could have been.

Apple went the other way: make the basic things as pretty as possible, but be quite limited underneath, and don't make everything underneath actually reliable for a few releases either :-)

Ongoing improvement is the route Apple took, too, but the way it's talked about you'd get the impression every iPhone has been perfect the day it was released.

Anyways, thanks for starting this thread. The N900 does need to be thoroughly criticised so we know what people care about and can focus on improving those in particular.

And because it's relatively open, I can say "we can improve" as a non-employee :-) You don't get that with the iPhone.

As an embedded device developer, my initial impressions (without one in my hand) are that the hardware's pretty good, and the great majority of the concerns raised so far can be fixed in software.

It remains to be seen whether they will be fixed, though. Time, attention and energy are limited. But the other platforms face that problem too. Maemo has a good chance if it excites developers to work on it - not just on apps, but core improvements. And the hardware's good enough that big improvements in the user experience are, at least, possible with software updates alone.

I agree that it may make a less good impression on "ordinary" smartphone buyers. That's unfortunate. I think Nokia's taken a gamble on releasing it in this state, and I have no idea how that's going to work out commercially or in terms of reputation. But if I worked for Nokia, I would have been pushing them to make this gamble :-)

I hope it is commercially very successful, as that'll result in more people developing for it and supporting it for longer. But it remains to be seen.

[DaveP1]

N900 is a groundbreaking device and will have a place in mobile computing history.

Well done NOKIA. You've proved the doubters wrong and shown the Americans how its done.

However the N900 turns out, I think your expectations will end up a bit on the high side.

A groundbreaking device? Doubtful. It's one of several powerful phones running a version of Linux and it wasn't the first to ship.

Proved the doubters wrong? Not yet. There are still bugs that need to be ironed out. If nothing else, they proved that the doubters were right - the way it looks now, the N900 with Maemo 5 may be just a test platform for the N1000 with Maemo 6 (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Show Americans how it's done? By scrapping a major launch and then releasing a still buggy phone without much fanfare? I'd have to say no. Motorola showed everyone how it's done with the Droid. They sold an estimated 100,000 in the US in the first weekend and the first day it was available it showed up in web analytics with over 2% of all US mobile phone Internet traffic.

The N900 may turn out to be a great phone but it will always be one among many with its own strengths AND weaknesses.

[Devil]

everything sucks. the only thing that rocks are socks. they keep you warm. let this be a lesson to you all.

[davetech]

It's funny how when Iphone users first try a resistive touchscreen, they claim "touch is the broke!".

Resistive screens are pressure sensitive, capacitive screens are not. So you can get away with light swipes on the Iphone but with Nokia touchscreens, all but the X6 anyway, they are resistive and require different technique. Finger swipes on resistive are most effective when consistent firm pressure is applied and rolling fingerpads can mess with that consistency. That's why many resistive users simply use their fingernails. Personally, I'm fine with either screen as I find both to be quite usable in their own way. Ideally, I would prefer a multi-touch screen which won't react to the slightest of (accidental) touch but doesn't require cringe inducing pressure and can be used with any glove or stylus. I do like the glass screens found on capacitive though. :)

Maemo 5 is a merging of tablet and phone so app selection will be limited to start off (just like the Iphone didn't start with 80,000 apps).

Being that this a new platform, I'm willing to give it a chance to grow and mature. What I won't forgive is crappy build quality and OS instability. First impression videos seem to indicate a stable OS though and I'm hoping that holds true.

So the question is does it feel cheap? In my experience, I found the 5800 build quality to be disappointing whereas the N85, N97, and 5530 were ok. While I'm not a fan of the Iphone, I would rank its build quality as stellar. :)

[jjx]

I really don't get the browser complaints. Maybe I'm visiting the wrong sites?

Although I've been to heavy ones like LinkedIn, ebay, cnn.com, youtube, etc etc etc.

And consistently, the only sites giving me fits on the N900 are those that do the same on my quad-core 4gig PC connected to a fiber network. Yes, I'm talking to YOU LinkedIn and 1and1.com. Speed up your sites! :p

Sooo... seriously, not sure where so many of these rendering and scrolling complaints are coming from. I'm just dealing with UI oddities more than anything.

Judging by the video posted by Megacrazy (I don't have a handset :():

1. Go to a page that's quite large, plenty of scrolling and complex layout.
2. Zoom in.
3. Scroll at high speed up and down.
4. Observe drop-outs where the rendering doesn't keep up with the scrolling.

If you can't find any I say we have a winner :-)

If it happens on some sites but not others of equal apparent complexity, I say we have a computer science problem that is fun to solve :-)

It it happens with lots of sites, that'd be a bit sad.

[kanishou]

I don't know about anyone else.. But Megacrazy is scaring the Bajesus out of me with this thread. I know I was going out on a leap of faith pre-ordering the N900.. but damn, I'm all nervous now! I expect there to be a learning curve with this device and some growing pains. Expect it and look forward to working through them TOGETHER with the community (Ok, actually you guys with the technical knowhow working through it and me tagging along and benefiting from your expertise.. but clicking thanks on the forum to how my appreciation!) I KNOW that my Nokia N95 8GB will have more and better phone functions than the N900 (until a couple of firmware updates hopefully) However the browser being jumpy and lagging?? WTF?? :eek: However, in NO video have I seen, this lag or anything else. Any other review said the browser was by far the best part of the device! So the people who have their N900, is it true??? Is it people being afraid to say what Megacrazy is saying or is this some evil plot to keep me up at night wondering. Aaaaaarrgh, I hate second guessing myself! Damn you Megacrazy if this is a joke.. daaaaaaaaamn uuuuuuu! :mad: :rolleyes:

Calm down. :) He is just overly picky. Yes there are checkered patterns, that is because the browser prioritises to render your view right away, instead of waiting for most of the page to be rendered. Of course it will pre-render the remaining page as soon as possible, but it can't always be instant. Also, sometimes a cached rendering will be swapped out or invalidated, e.g. when you zoom in. If you scroll really fast, the browser won't have a cache yet and show you the pattern instead. However, just waiting for a second will allow it to catch up again.

Perhaps the iPhone 3GS browser is better at avoiding this, but then the iPhone browser doesn't offer you full desktop-capability rendering at near full desktop resolution.

Scrolling speed in general can be described as smooth, maybe not "silky smooth". We are talking about differences like comparing 25 FPS to 30 FPS. Calling it "jerky" would be beyond unreasonable.

It is true that playing media files in the background noticeably reduces smoothness of panning animations (we are also talking about a very minor stuttering here though, that most people will probably be hard pressed to notice). I would imagine that it would depend on the type of media being played, as some formats are more expensive to decode than others, but I haven't done any testing with this yet. This doesn't really effect the usability of the device at all, but it does slightly effect its aesthetic appeal (if you are able to notice it).

And finally, if you run too many tasks, things will start to get a little jerky of course. It doesn't mean unusable though, and everyone will have their own level of tolerance which decides how many tasks they are comfortable running at the same time. For me it is usually around six tasks, unless I have very good reason to run more than that (which is very rarely the case), as closing and opening tasks is quick and painless.

Frankly, I think it is a bit silly to pretend to speak for the "average user" at this time, when the device is actually available. Why don't we let the average user decide for themselves? If you are keeping and even enjoying the device, I find it fairly disingenuous to use catchy headlines like "yes, it sucks", which needlessly make potential users nervous.

[DaveP1]

everything sucks. the only thing that rocks are socks. they keep you warm. let this be a lesson to you all.

You forgot to mention the ultimate rock is Fox in Socks.

Kids are worth it if for no other reason than you get to read Dr. Seuss books again. :D

[Texrat]

Judging by the video posted by Megacrazy (I don't have a handset :():

1. Go to a page that's quite large, plenty of scrolling and complex layout.
2. Zoom in.
3. Scroll at high speed up and down.
4. Observe drop-outs where the rendering doesn't keep up with the scrolling.

If you can't find any I say we have a winner :-)

If it happens on some sites but not others of equal apparent complexity, I say we have a computer science problem that is fun to solve :-)

It it happens with lots of sites, that'd be a bit sad.

There are many more variables though. Router tech? ISP? Interference? Individual device component faults?

It isn't as simple as a handful of people experiencing poor performance of some sort and then broadly declaring "This device absolutely totally flat out sucks!!!"

Although some appear to believe that it is... :rolleyes:

[wierdo]

Today's nominee for best unintended irony. :p
As they say on Metafilter: Eponysterical.

[Texrat]

As they say on Metafilter: Eponysterical.

You'll love this then: http://scarabic.net/eponysterical.html

[MountainX]

Ok here are the issues:

- Smoothness of the scroll is not good at all. In other words if you look at an image it looks like it's jumping around, not sliding around like on other devices.
- You get checkered patterns when other devices do not get checkered patterns (especially when dealing with large images).

Reloading once you get the checkered patterns is on par with other devices or even faster sometimes. Set the N900 side by side with a 3Gs or a Droid...and if the scrolling is just as smooth (do not confuse with fast) I will not sell the N900 but eat it :)

un-named_user, I have noticed a lot of the problems you described but was too lazy to write it all out. Plus, it's the scrolling that really bothers me

Hey MegaCrazy - I remember you are the guy who paid $100 to take someone's place on the waiting list at the NYC store. So I believe you are for real (not a troll) and that you did not start with an agenda (although maybe you did start with unrealistic expectations). But your impressions interest me.

What I want to know is why haven't you just reflashed your device as others suggested? Can you do that and report back to us?

It seems some people are seeing the scrolling problems you mention and others are not.

From all the threads I'm reading, I am starting to think the situation is that some people are getting devices that are not functioning correctly. Other people are getting devices that are working much better. If that is the case, then you should find out rather than just assuming that every N900 has the same issues you are seeing. (Or are you just being extremely nit-picky?)

BTW, my N900 will arrive tomorrow. If mine has major issues (such as scrolling problems) like you mention, I guarantee you I will get support (probably here on the forums) and get them resolved.

[spinnukur]

are you the boy who cries after playing modern warfare 2?in youtube?are you going to make a vid about n900?boy who cry after having nokia n900?:D

You do have to admit, MW2 failed pretty horribly for PC...I meant not just fail, but EPICFAIL :P

[ARJWright]

Only because I like poking at people...


Have you seen the calendar app ? Is there any other mobile calendar that compares to it ?.

Yes, the original Handspring Treo, successive Palm Treos, the iPhone in all iterations, and the Palm Pre/Pixi - all without 3rd party anythings.


How about real multitasking ? Have you seen the youtube video by mysymbian showing its multitasking power ? Is there any mobile app that can do the same ?

Yes, the Palm Pre does the same, just not with as many apps, but definitely something that can't be programmed in there in a future firmware update - whoops, shouldn't have said that ;)


And the browsing ? The Video playback - at a time where other platforms are restricted in terms of codec they can play (you have to pay Archos for this, right ?), this handles divX with aplomb and resolution is top notch ? And torrent, have you seen the torrent client ? Torrent on a mobile ? wow.

Seriously... well, ok.

Browsing: iPhone and any Android device; any well RAM equipped Symbian device will also give very solid browsing experience, with a better handheld UI on the non-touchscreen ones to boot.

The Archaos Android tablet, pic a Windows Mobile device and add CorePlayer. Heck find a Palm LifeDrive and you can run a torrent app.


Yes Maemo 5 has shortcomings and I hope these shortcomings will be addressed by the capable Maemo team.

Thank you Maemo team - I still love my Maemo 4 powered n810 and looks like you've exceeded that.

Thank you. :)

Functionality does not a good user experience make. Its only one part of that. For that, you (and everyone else here) are welcome.

[kanishou]

Judging by the video posted by Megacrazy (I don't have a handset :():

1. Go to a page that's quite large, plenty of scrolling and complex layout.
2. Zoom in.
3. Scroll at high speed up and down.
4. Observe drop-outs where the rendering doesn't keep up with the scrolling.

If you can't find any I say we have a winner :-)

If it happens on some sites but not others of equal apparent complexity, I say we have a computer science problem that is fun to solve :-)

It it happens with lots of sites, that'd be a bit sad.

You'd need to solve the problem of "how to render a page faster than a user could possibly scroll, no matter how insanely complex the page layout is".

Considering the power of the N900 browser (which everyone is raving about), don't you think it's fair to cut it some slack if it occasionally needs half a second to catch up with the rendering during wild scroll-rides? :)

[DaveP1]

What I want to know is why haven't you just reflashed your device as others suggested? Can you do that and report back to us?

Does anyone know what would be causing a phone, direct from the factory, to need a reflash?

I know there was an OS update between the phones that were released before the original scheduled launch and now but do some of the sealed box phones have the old OS?

[jjx]

Calm down. :) He is just overly picky. Yes there are checkered patterns, that is because the browser prioritises to render your view right away, instead of waiting for most of the page to be rendered. Of course it will pre-render the remaining page as soon as possible, but it can't always be instant. Also, sometimes a cached rendering will be swapped out or invalidated, e.g. when you zoom in. If you scroll really fast, the browser won't have a cache yet and show you the pattern instead. However, just waiting for a second will allow it to catch up again.

Yup, but that means (in the posted video) you can't actually see where you've scrolled to, to stop the kinetic scrolling at the right place.

I noticed in the video that one web page was particularly slow to draw at one point in the scroll, but there wasn't much to draw. I expect that will be fixed soon, or fixed in an alternative browser.

Perhaps the iPhone 3GS browser is better at avoiding this, but then the iPhone browser doesn't offer you full desktop-capability rendering at near full desktop resolution.

Full desktop capability - doesn't it? The iPhone browser looks quite desktopy to me. What's missing?

Regarding resolution: yes, but on the other hand it's hardware accelerated rendering (or should be), and it turns out that resolution isn't much of a factor, because the bottleneck tends to be geometry, logic and poly/blit counts once the pixel operations are happening on high speed 3d hardware. So I'd expect the higher resolution to have little effect if the browser rendering is hardware accelerated for it's basic operations.

Scrolling speed in general can be described as smooth, maybe not "silky smooth". We are talking about differences like comparing 25 FPS to 30 FPS. Calling it "jerky" would be beyond unreasonable.

I agree, it's not jerky.

But (again from the video, and I appreciate Youtube adds it's own special distortion), it looks like the difference between 20fps and 50fps.

Some people cannot tell the difference at all, while others are acutely sensitive to it. It seems to be an eyesight/brain thing.

That said, are any of the other phones really that much better at scrolling in the browser? Even the last iPhone I saw (actually an iPod touch, but they are the same thing virtually) would stutter when you pushed the scrolling too hard.

The video of the ball game, assuming it's not been (insert term for photoshopping a video :)) shows the N900 can render full-screen scenes very smoothly when it's asked nicely.

Frankly, I think it is a bit silly to pretend to speak for the "average user" at this time, when the device is actually available. Why don't we let the average user decide for themselves? If you are keeping and even enjoying the device, I find it fairly disingenuous to use catchy headlines like "yes, it sucks", which needlessly make potential users nervous.

I found the thread very informative and might not have noticed without the catchy title.

But I agree it may make potential users overly nervous.

I expect in the end a lot of new users won't have used an iPhone or Android phone, and won't be expecting a miracle device (after all there's not a lot of marketing for it around!), so they'll be pleased with a lot of it's nice features.

And in my experience, every phone I've ever had has been totally disappointing for the first 2 weeks while I bump into limitations and bugs, until I get used to ignoring those and using the useful bits.

[misticjeff]

As far as the unit being defective...come on...seriously.
You never know....

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34973

[tissot]

everything sucks. the only thing that rocks are socks. they keep you warm. let this be a lesson to you all.
Very true indeed :D
As far as the web browser goes i would really want to see just simple back and forward buttons on it. Don't understand why did they brought this from S60 that i was 100% not to see. :mad: Flash performance still needs to get better and i'm confident that 10.1 will give us that. Just hoping to see it in near future. Pages drawing speed should be improved.
Other than those that i have been pleasently surprised about the browser and i do really think it's easily in the top 5 smartphone web browsers out there. Those things fixed and this will be truly amazing.

As far as rest of the phone goes i knew exactly what i was getting so no nasty problems for me, but there's lots of missing from this phone and with the hardware some performance aspects should be improved. While people want to compare Nokias past efforts with Symbian imo it's just unfair to compare very different OS and what uk based Symbian as a company was(owned by Nokia since last year) to Maemo that's in a different position than in the past inside and outside Nokia. They need to do just the same as Android no less, but wont mind if they do it faster ;) Plus i sure feel more confident about Maemo with the community around here compared to Symbian where it was really scattered around and you really where not as involved and so close to developers.

[jjx]

You'd need to solve the problem of "how to render a page faster than a user could possibly scroll, no matter how insanely complex the page layout is".

Considering the power of the N900 browser (which everyone is raving about), don't you think it's fair to cut it some slack if it occasionally needs half a second to catch up with the rendering during wild scroll-rides? :)

Yes, but the pages in the video didn't look that complicated. At one point, something quite simple (inside the visible area) takes half a second to appear.

That tells me that either (a) the page is very complicated but looks simple, or (b) there's scope for a nice algorithmic improvement in how the renderer decides what to draw. I'm a secret admirer of nice algorithms so it's always nice to see a potential improvement :p

One technical option might be to lower the complexity of the rendered scene when the render can't keep up - e.g. by converting letters to little squares and/or lowering the overall resolution. Then it would look very smooth, but a little blocky - better than drawing in large chunks after a delay imho. The iPhone does something like this when zooming; I don't know if it does it when scrolling.

Of course, no matter how close to perfection it gets, there will always be some difficult web page that slows it down. Same is evident on the iPhone and other mobile browser. None of them are all that great if you expect silky smooth everything,

[MountainX]

Here we go some real life scrolling in the browser, flash off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JeLKKfDDM

If you want a comparative iPhone vid I can do that too but I think it's pretty much self explanatory. I might cover the actual OS later.


Yes, I think it is self-explanatory in that the scrolling looked good to me.

Don't forget - the iPhone is usually rendering pages designed for it or other mobile devices. In the N900 you are rendering full desktop web pages.

I take back what I said about your device being defective. I don't see a single thing wrong with the scrolling.

I'd like to see you post a video of the N900 and iPhone side by side and make sure the web page is exactly the same (not just the URL - the actual served up content). Make sure the CSS is the same, etc. Maybe create a test page and save it to disk.

I wager that the N900 will easily outperform the iPhone.


As far as the unit being defective...come on...seriously.

Yeah, I didn't see a thing wrong with the video you posted.

What am I missing?

BTW, I will have my device tomorrow. I'll test this stuff too.

[javispedro]

Heck find a Palm LifeDrive and you can run a torrent app.

Haha. With a maximum socket accept queue length of 1, just opening the port to the outside world would have bringed PalmOS to its knees.


Regarding resolution: yes, but on the other hand it's hardware accelerated rendering (or should be), and it turns out that resolution isn't much of a factor
Well how is hardware accelerated rendering going to help pushing pixels to screen? Not even for scaling hw acceleration helps (since, heh, scaling the rendered image would make fonts look blurry).



You all seem to treat "smooth scrolling" like the most important thing in the universe. If that's the case, I'm sure framerate can be tuned -- even by yourself.

[sjgadsby]

...every phone I've ever had has been totally disappointing for the first 2 weeks while I bump into limitations and bugs, until I get used to ignoring those and using the useful bits.

It took me two or three weeks to come around to liking my N900. In the beginning, I had a strong urge to put it back in its box and carry on using my N810. Now I couldn't go back.

[daperl]

I'm a happy owner of an iPod touch 2G, but I'm having a hard time finding anything more ironic than visiting apple.com with my touch. It's one of the worst scrolling experience's one can have. Yet when I cruise apple.com with my n8x0's, the scrolling is like... Well, you know.

I'm glad to hear that people are generally happy with the n900's browser. I personally have no intention of touching microb with a ten foot pole. But worry not people, I'm guessing in the relatively not too distant future a webkit-based browser will be coming to an n900 near you. Throw in some user stylesheets and maybe a host's file, and you'll be blissfully gliding through the Web like Fred Astaire. I can almost hear the music.

[kalle]

As a geek I will definitely enjoy the phone...but for normal people this will fall waaaaaay short, especially when you can go get an iphone for 200$ that can actually scroll smoothly.

And isnt that exactly what Nokia has been saying from day one: this is step 4/5, this is NOT end user ready.

You americans with your iPhone price comparations... N900 is FREE here in Finland - with contract.

[Megacrazy]

Yes, I think it is self-explanatory in that the scrolling looked good to me.

Don't forget - the iPhone is usually rendering pages designed for it or other mobile devices. In the N900 you are rendering full desktop web pages.

I take back what I said about your device being defective. I don't see a single thing wrong with the scrolling.

I'd like to see you post a video of the N900 and iPhone side by side and make sure the web page is exactly the same (not just the URL - the actual served up content). Make sure the CSS is the same, etc. Maybe create a test page and save it to disk.

I wager that the N900 will easily outperform the iPhone.



Yeah, I didn't see a thing wrong with the video you posted.

What am I missing?

BTW, I will have my device tomorrow. I'll test this stuff too.

No Problem. I will do a video of the 3GS vs the N900 scrolling this very thread. It will be pretty embarrassing mainly because the amazing browser on the N900 doesn't even render this site properly.

[DaveP1]

And isnt that exactly what Nokia has been saying from day one: this is step 4/5, this is NOT end user ready.

Somehow I missed the "this is NOT (or even not) end user ready" on Nokia's website or in their press releases. :rolleyes:

Had they sold it as a new Nokia Internet Tablet, a follow-on to the N810 with phone capabilities and an upgraded OS, the smartphone people wouldn't be on here complaining about the phone features. OTOH, they wouldn't be buying it either. I wouldn't be surprised if the N900 sells more units between now and the end of the year than the N800 and N810 (combined) did during their entire production run.

[Texrat]

No Problem. I will do a video of the 3GS vs the N900 scrolling this very thread. It will be pretty embarrassing mainly because the amazing browser on the N900 doesn't even render this site properly.

I must have the super amazing version, because once again...

:rolleyes:

[Bundyo]

No Problem. I will do a video of the 3GS vs the N900 scrolling this very thread. It will be pretty embarrassing mainly because the amazing browser on the N900 doesn't even render this site properly.

Also do a little different experiment. Get an outdated video card. Run a game on it in 480p. Then run it in 1080p. Notice the difference?

[Rushmore]

No Problem. I will do a video of the 3GS vs the N900 scrolling this very thread. It will be pretty embarrassing mainly because the amazing browser on the N900 doesn't even render this site properly.


This could be a case of Flash and the actual Youtube source, but Droid seems to scroll a lot smoother on the same site. update: Not so sure there is any Flash on that page. Tried several time after clearing cache. In relation to the same page, Droid scrolls smoothly like the entire page is one smooth sheet. No sign of lag.

Again, not long to test myself, since my N900 is being delivered tomorrow.

[Psymastr]

http://marketmynovel.com/images/Dont-Feed-the-Trolls.png

[ccc1]

No Problem. I will do a video of the 3GS vs the N900 scrolling this very thread. It will be pretty embarrassing mainly because the amazing browser on the N900 doesn't even render this site properly.

bla bla bla ... and the amazing iphone can't multitask, can't play divx videos, can't play ogg files, doesn't support flash, can't send files via bluetooth, can't transfer videos/music without using itunes, no skype calls over 3G, no bittorrent client available, the instant messaging clients for the iphone are crappy and aren't as nicely integrated as on the n900, no adblocker for safari, you have to pay for tethering and so on ... :D

different users different needs. you prefer to scroll like a lunatic, i prefer a bittorrent client. :D

[qole]

These guys (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/20091105/smartphone-wars-nokia-n900-versus-htc-hd2-versus-motorola-droid-five.htm) seem to like the N900. They think it kicks the pants off of HTC HD2 and Motorola Droid.

(Also, Megacrazy, non-smooth scrolling is not normal behaviour. Your speed issues don't make sense to me at all)

[kopte3]

Even if the iPhone 3GS can smoother scroll the page i don't get your point. A bunch of guys explained:
1) It's only the first version of firmware (i'm talking about the official ones) - so it will for sure get better (vs. iPhone's 3.0/1)
2) There is a huge difference in resolution between iPhone's and N900's screen which makes iPhone easier to scroll.
3) As we all saw your video nobody got your point, nothing sucks there except your wish to make it looks like it sucks. You're scrolling like a madman in very zoomed page and that nobody is going to do.

I think you expected iPhone like capacitive screen and smoothness^2 effects. Maybe you made a mistake choosing a phone that isn't made for you. And maybe you should admit that to yourself rather than trying to make us believe that it sucks.
Because 18 of 20 pages of this thread is about "scrolling that isn't like on iPhone, it's not 24fps, it's 16.8fps and it hurts my eyes!!". On the other hand i agree that problems with making a playlist, no email search etc are real and should be addressed to Nokia for a solutions as soon as possible.

[VDVsx]

I must have the super amazing version, because once again...

:rolleyes:

Humm, you're not the only one :rolleyes:

Council privilege ? :D

[MountainX]

http://marketmynovel.com/images/Dont-Feed-the-Trolls.png

I like the image. We have a few trolls around here. But Megacrazy isn't a troll.

The guy paid $100 to take someone's place on the waiting list at the NYC Nokia store! He seriously wanted the N900. Maybe his expectations were too high, but he's not a troll IMO.

[Kozzi]

May I ask why you disabled commenting in your video ? Oh well you don't have to answer though, it's your choice after all.

[Bratag]

I like the image. We have a few trolls around here. But Megacrazy isn't a troll.

The guy paid $100 to take someone's place on the waiting list at the NYC Nokia store! He seriously wanted the N900. Maybe his expectations were too high, but he's not a troll IMO.

Really? Well if you pay that much and build up the device so much in your mind you are willing to do anything to get it - disappointment is inevitable

[Rushmore]

Really? Well if you pay that much and build up the device so much in your mind you are willing to do anything to get it - disappointment is inevitable

We have not seen anything yet. Smartphoners expecting high-end phone function will swarm on this board like fruit flies to spilled Pepsi. ;)

People can laugh now, but you might not be later ;)

[Megacrazy]

Commenting in the videos is disabled because I don't want the usual iPhone forever vs you're a mactard debate. Simple videos take them as you may.

2 more videos are added. The purpose of these videos is to compare browser rendering and general user experience. Cut the comments about fanboys, trolls etc.

1. iPhone 3Gs running maemo.org and engadget while a podcast is playing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcHOd-iEEJM

2. N900 running maemo.org and engadget while music is playing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEnRTbRqYwg

The browser crashed in the video so let's see who's trolling.

A couple of things I have noticed about the Maemo browser:

1. Larger text makes it work smoother (less text on the screen to render at 1 time I assume)
2. Scrolling up produces more checker patterns than scrolling down.
3. Seems to be slightly faster after the site has been sitting there for a while.

If I have time I will add windows mobile to the mix as well...which will be extremely embarrassing.

Don't complain about video quality because they are still 'processing' whatever that means :)

[Bratag]

Commenting in the videos is disabled because I don't want the usual iPhone forever vs you're a mactard debate. Simple videos take them as you may.

2 more videos are added. The purpose of these videos is to compare browser rendering and general user experience. Cut the comments about fanboys, trolls etc.

1. iPhone 3Gs running maemo.org and engadget while a podcast is playing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcHOd-iEEJM

2. N900 running maemo.org and engadget while music is playing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEnRTbRqYwg

The browser crashed in the video so let's see who's trolling.

A couple of things I have noticed about the Maemo browser:

1. Larger text makes it work smoother (less text on the screen to render at 1 time I assume)
2. Scrolling up produces more checker patterns than scrolling down.
3. Seems to be slightly faster after the site has been sitting there for a while.

If I have time I will add windows mobile to the mix as well...which will be extremely embarrassing.

Don't complain about video quality because they are still 'processing' whatever that means :)

Gotta tell you man its sounding more and more like your device is the problem - have you thought about reflashing it?

[Megacrazy]

Really? Well if you pay that much and build up the device so much in your mind you are willing to do anything to get it - disappointment is inevitable

Also try to stay on topic. This is not a debate about me or my expectations. I have 8+ smartphones laying around on my desk so I would say that my expectations were VERY correct.

[Megacrazy]

Gotta tell you man its sounding more and more like your device is the problem - have you thought about reflashing it?

And you are basing this on what? Let's see a video on your device going to the same sites and I'll think about flashing it. Do you even have your phone yet? hmmm.

[homelinux]

What are you wankers moaning about?

http://etrunko.blogspot.com/2009/09/canola-on-n900.html

Stay classy. It pays off at some point in life

[Bratag]

And you are basing this on what? Let's see a video on your device going to the same sites and I'll think about flashing it. Do you even have your phone yet? hmmm.

The fact that no one else is reporting these issues except one first time poster no one ever heard of before and the fact the several other people have in fact reported the exact opposite of your experience. But hey man whatever you do doesnt really affect me. You come onto community forums with a post titled to annoy people off the bat. You refuse to listen to anyones offers of help or suggestions - preferring instead to waste your time making mini dramas filming other phones, when you could be spending that time doing even basic triage or reflashing and confirming once and for all that it is your build/device or a broader issue.
You wasted 100 dollars to get your device a few days earlier and now you are angry at the world that it doesnt live up to your expectations.

Oh and I have 4 smart phones with 4 diff OS's within arms reach of me - does that make me special as well?

God I hate people who feel the need to play My dicks bigger than yours

[kopte3]

I wouldn't laugh if browser on my N900 had crashed.
Btw, could you reply on my previous post?
I see interesting that even Engadget found N900's browser better than iPhone's. That says a lot.

[jjx]

Well how is hardware accelerated rendering going to help pushing pixels to screen? Not even for scaling hw acceleration helps (since, heh, scaling the rendered image would make fonts look blurry).

Well typically, modern hardware acceleration uses a 3d capable chip, and pixel operations tend not to be the primary bottleneck nowadays. They can still be a bottleneck, for example if you're drawing lots of blended layers on top of each other, but it's quite different from the old days where you did everything you could to minimise the number of pixels written.

Basic pixel filling by 3d chips is pretty darn fast. So rendering algorithms these days don't try to minimise pixels; they try to minimise lots of other things, including pixels in the overall balance but not so much.

Did I mention that pixels are drawn in parallel with CPU calculations deciding what to send the GPU? So drawing 4 times the pixels does not mean taking 4 times as long for the render, any more.

I say typically. I don't know what the 3d chip and memory is like in the N900. It might be a rubbish one :)

If it's anything like the Intel Poulsbo debacle, which uses a similar 3d core from the same company, it'll be reasonably good performance (though not latest Nvidia/ATI class), with awful drivers that don't take advantage of it's features despite being closed source. Let's see if Nokia had better luck getting proper drivers for it than regular Linux users have managed (or even Windows users apparently) on Intel Poulsbo chipsets.

From the videos, it looks like the N900 is having no difficulty actually drawing any part of the web page to the screen. That's supported by watching the ball game videos, where the whole 3d scene is running quite smoothly. Much smoother than these scrolling web pages, in fact, despite being a full screen 3d render.

So it looks like the slowness is in calculating what to draw, and with images it's possibly decompressing them on demand into a cache. You can see all that because when the delay finishes and it does finally get round to drawing, it fills in everything rather quickly.

You all seem to treat "smooth scrolling" like the most important thing in the universe. If that's the case, I'm sure framerate can be tuned -- even by yourself.

I agree. If there was only one browser I'd look forward to doing that :) But it turns out there are several alternative browsers already in the pipeline. I'm confident at least one of them will have very smooth scrolling. (And if there isn't, I see an app waiting to be written :D) It looks like a microb problem more than a device problem - similar visual artifacts to rendering on Netscape Navigator 4 and IE 4.

[jjx]

2 more videos are added. The purpose of these videos is to compare browser rendering and general user experience. Cut the comments about fanboys, trolls etc.

1. iPhone 3Gs running maemo.org and engadget while a podcast is playing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcHOd-iEEJM

2. N900 running maemo.org and engadget while music is playing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEnRTbRqYwg

I agree, those videos show a clear difference in scrolling and general rendering speed between the two devices.

However, it's a mistake to dwell on this even though it's going to be a big part of the "feel" of the device for new users.

It looks to me like a software problem, not a hardware problem. And not an especially hard software problem either.

The browser scrolling - and crash - will be fixed, one way or another. Either by updates, or replacement with another browser, and there are several other browser groups eager to please so there's a healthy competition to do a good job.

That's a key difference from the iPhone. You can count on healthy competition among browser people keen to impress, to try and get the most out of the hardware in time.

You may find that's a big part of the different philosophy between this phone and the others. This one can expect continuous improvement once it's released, independent of what Nokia does. Especially in areas that lots of users care about. The others are at the whim of their parent company.

So, expect it a bit like desktop Linux distros operate: imperfect in many areas that you can see, but expect to enjoy the pleasure of regular improvements without having to pay for them.

That is totally due to the community and open sourceness.

Once you (or any user) "gets" the difference in philosophy, you may find yourself dwelling less on specific but superficial irritations (the scrolling doesn't stop you using it), focusing less on the "what can it do out of the box", and more interested in what it's going to do when a lot of people get up to speed seriously developing stuff for it. Unlike the other devices, this community and Nokia's seemingly good relationship with it means we can improve more of the "core" user experience that we're allowed to on other devices.

Let's move on from scrolling: The browser is quite capable as browsers go on a phone, isn't it?

[kanishou]

So Safari is quite obviously somewhat faster at redrawing pages. This isn't really unexpected.

If you expected that MicroB would run circles around Safari, despite the higher resolution, despite using the Firefox / Gecko engine, despite offering support for Flash, and despite Apple's years of experience on fine-tuning the browser for exactly this kind of device and user-experience, then this was an unfortunate misunderstanding. Speed is not the selling point of MicroB, capability is. The fact that it is as fast and usable as it is is the remarkable thing.

What matters is that the browser is convenient to use and gets you as close as possible to the desktop browser experience. Both Safari and MicroB have some things going for them in this regard. But this kind of analysis and direct comparison of rendering speed is ultimately pedantry, and if you truly think that this is what matters most to the average user, then I believe that you will be in for a surprise.

[davetech]

Will the N900 fully utilize the speed advantage of a Class 6 Micro SDHC card? If not, which class should I get?

[rundumel]

OH.MY.GOD.

I was so looking forward to getting the N900 for cool features like this elegant way of multitasking, being able to tag and upload multiple pictures, great messaging possibilities, awesome screen resolution, TV-out, panoramic desktop & widgets, flash support......

But now that I have seen those videos about how bad the browser is.... It seems unusable!!

Sure on my iPhone there is also a delay when I scroll fast, but on the N900 there were some at least 3.3 times longer!! What a piece of crap! And ok I admit on my 3GS the mail app crashed a few times and some other apps - some even constantly - and it's a tad annoying not having the landscape keyboard in every application, and I sure miss multitasking at times or even wish it had a better camera or just a few more settings for it, I'd also love to have a decent calendar & desktop widget on it like my N79 had... - BUT PAGE SCROLL IS SMOOTH! And that's like... you know... where the game is played!

[Bratag]

OH.MY.GOD.

I was so looking forward to getting the N900 for cool features like this elegant way of multitasking, being able to tag and upload multiple pictures, great messaging possibilities, awesome screen resolution, TV-out, panoramic desktop & widgets, flash support......

But now that I have seen those videos about how bad the browser is.... It seems unusable!!

Sure on my iPhone there is also a delay when I scroll fast, but on the N900 there were some at least 3.3 times longer!! What a piece of crap! And ok I admit on my 3GS the mail app crashed a few times and some other apps - some even constantly - and it's a tad annoying not having the landscape keyboard in every application, and I sure miss multitasking at times or even wish it had a better camera or just a few more settings for it, I'd also love to have a decent calendar & desktop widget on it like my N79 had... - BUT PAGE SCROLL IS SMOOTH! And that's like... you know... where the game is played!

God forbid you view one the the other dozens of videos which show the browser performing smoothly - or read the reviews (including engadgets, a site notoriously Nokia hating) who say that the browser is the best they have ever seen. No much better to watch a couple of videos from a guy who hasnt even bothered to TRY and fix his issue, even when other people with the device have said they have NO issues like his at all.

Yep thats the way to go

[christexaport]

Why does reading this thread make me feel as if I'm listening to a manic-depressive?
Hey, I suffer from bipolar disorder, aka manic depression, and I'm not this crazy. (...am I? :confused:)This dude has multiple personality disorder. Big difference. :p

[christexaport]

As a geek I will definitely enjoy the phone...but for normal people this will fall waaaaaay short, especially when you can go get an iphone for 200$ that can actually scroll smoothly.
Well let's look at that closely. Get an iPhone for a faux ~$200 or the N900 FREE ON CONTRACT? Not everyone is given subsidized iPhones, but in most markets, the N900 is cheaper than the iPhone unsubsidized or on contract. Check the UK for proof. Only in America...

[christexaport]

It's not a [smart]phone yet. It's just a tablet with basic phone capability added.
What definition of smartphone is everyone using to make these claims? Some say it isn't because it doesn't support autorotation, but neither did the N73 or 6600. They say because it doesn't have call and end buttons, but neither does the iPhone. They say because it lacks this or that, it isn't. I totally disagree. I don't think all smartphones are portable desktop devices, but all portable desktop devices with calling features are smartphones. They are multitasking computing platforms with cellular telephony capabilities and native application frameworks. Many of the features it lacks that people claim make it not a smartphone postdate the arrival of smartphones. So please get off the gas...:rolleyes:

[davetech]

God forbid you view one the the other dozens of videos which show the browser performing smoothly - or read the reviews (including engadgets, a site notoriously Nokia hating) who say that the browser is the best they have ever seen. No much better to watch a couple of videos from a guy who hasnt even bothered to TRY and fix his issue, even when other people with the device have said they have NO issues like his at all.

Yep thats the way to go

Ya gotta admit though, the lag is clearly present in his videos. I'd be a bit miffed too if I received mine in the same condition. Sure, I'd still hold out for updates to fix it and I would still be optimistic of its potential, but my out of the box experience would still get knocked down a notch or two. No reason not to expect better than at least S60 web browsing in Nokia's highly-touted, multi-tasking, desktop web browsing, mobile computer. Of course Nokia does have a knack for shipping buggy phones upon initial release (and releasing better firmware fixes for some regions only... what's up with that?). I can't say I have much confidence in Nokia's software side of things. Clearly, even with essentially identical hardware, Apple does a bang up job of coding the browser rendering.

I'll continue to try to keep my expectations in check and hope I don't receive a phone with similar issues. However, that's no excuse for Nokia to be shipping out some phones that do.

[kanishou]

God forbid you view one the the other dozens of videos which show the browser performing smoothly - or read the reviews (including engadgets, a site notoriously Nokia hating) who say that the browser is the best they have ever seen. No much better to watch a couple of videos from a guy who hasnt even bothered to TRY and fix his issue, even when other people with the device have said they have NO issues like his at all.

Yep thats the way to go

Relax, sarcasm. :)

[ArnimS]

OH.MY.GOD.

I was so looking forward to getting the N900 for cool features like this elegant way of multitasking, being able to tag and upload multiple pictures, great messaging possibilities, awesome screen resolution, TV-out, panoramic desktop & widgets, flash support......

But now that I have seen those videos about how bad the browser is.... It seems unusable!!

Sure on my iPhone there is also a delay when I scroll fast, but on the N900 there were some at least 3.3 times longer!! What a piece of crap! And ok I admit on my 3GS the mail app crashed a few times and some other apps - some even constantly - and it's a tad annoying not having the landscape keyboard in every application, and I sure miss multitasking at times or even wish it had a better camera or just a few more settings for it, I'd also love to have a decent calendar & desktop widget on it like my N79 had... - BUT PAGE SCROLL IS SMOOTH! And that's like... you know... where the game is played!
No it is not.

Comparing a computer running many things to a computer optimised to do one thing at a time is silly. Im not sure what the jerky scrolling is caused-by, but remember that the screen is twice the resolution of iphone. Pretending that you can define "the game" for the rest of the planet is amusing, at best.

In the real world there are tradeoffs. When we grow up we see this more frequently and say "OMG" less often.

[Texrat]

Also try to stay on topic. This is not a debate about me or my expectations. I have 8+ smartphones laying around on my desk so I would say that my expectations were VERY correct.

N900 is not a smartphone... sooo... do the math?

;)

[Bratag]

Ya gotta admit though, the lag is clearly present in his videos. I'd be a bit miffed too if I received mine in the same condition. Sure, I'd still hold out for updates to fix it and I would still be optimistic of its potential, but my out of the box experience would still get knocked down a notch or two. No reason not to expect better than at least S60 web browsing in Nokia's highly-touted, multi-tasking, desktop web browsing, mobile computer. Of course Nokia does have a knack for shipping buggy phones upon initial release (and releasing better firmware fixes for some regions only... what's up with that?). I can't say I have much confidence in Nokia's software side of things. Clearly, even with essentially identical hardware, Apple does a bang up job of coding the browser rendering.

I'll continue to try to keep my expectations in check and hope I don't receive a phone with similar issues. However, that's no excuse for Nokia to be shipping out some phones that do.

I do admit the problem is present on HIS machine. But I am still bound by the law of averages and when I see 20 videos none of which show the issue and read testimonial after testimonial that the browser is not only fast but amazing. I kind of have to think perhaps the problem is HIS N900 - NOT a broad issue with the N900 in general.

If he was serious about solving the issue and not just whining he would be here asking for help on flashing the latest firmware - telling us what other programs he may have installed etc. But he didnt.

[Texrat]

Cripes, I've been approaching this nuttiness all wrong.

Listen: everyone who subscribes to over-the-top negativity, and is scared off by threads like this-- please Please PLEASE do NOT buy this device!

There. I'm thinking better now.

[davetech]

I do admit the problem is present on HIS machine. But I am still bound by the law of averages and when I see 20 videos none of which show the issue and read testimonial after testimonial that the browser is not only fast but amazing. I kind of have to think perhaps the problem is HIS N900 - NOT a broad issue with the N900 in general.

If he was serious about solving the issue and not just whining he would be here asking for help on flashing the latest firmware - telling us what other programs he may have installed etc. But he didnt.

I agree, I'd try to get it at the same configuration as others who are experiencing better performance before I condemn it.

But if it still sucks after trying that, other's experiencing kickass performance whilst mine was pissing itself would be of no consolation to me. But I suppose that's a discussion for when it happens, if it happens. Fingers crossed. :)

[Megacrazy]

I do admit the problem is present on HIS machine. But I am still bound by the law of averages and when I see 20 videos none of which show the issue and read testimonial after testimonial that the browser is not only fast but amazing. I kind of have to think perhaps the problem is HIS N900 - NOT a broad issue with the N900 in general.

If he was serious about solving the issue and not just whining he would be here asking for help on flashing the latest firmware - telling us what other programs he may have installed etc. But he didnt.


WTH are you talking about? I have the latest firmware...in fact there IS only one firmware for production devices.

My machine only?

Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHa3AoNdglY. Familiar huh?

Do you even HAVE an N900?

[rundumel]

God forbid you view one the the other dozens of videos which show the browser performing smoothly - or read the reviews (including engadgets, a site notoriously Nokia hating) who say that the browser is the best they have ever seen. No much better to watch a couple of videos from a guy who hasnt even bothered to TRY and fix his issue, even when other people with the device have said they have NO issues like his at all.

Yep thats the way to go

Lol I know... I wasn't serious at all and what I actually meant so say was "I still can't wait to get my n900 and get rid of my iphone"! I don't say this scrolling thing isn't worth mentioning, but it's annoying to see a thread "n900 sucks!" and then realise that this is supposed to be the main reason why as it is being wildly discussed here. But then again it also annoys me how most tech sites do reviews of phones that do almost endless lists of things and all they do is pick 10 aspects, compare those and rate the phones according to that.

And I'm not saying the iphone sucks by the way. It is magnificent in a lot of ways, especially how beautifully and carefully the OS is animated and how images and pages you move follow your finger like you're moving physical objects... I've just always been a NSeries fan and miss my N79... :-D

[jjx]

No reason not to expect better than at least S60 web browsing in Nokia's highly-touted, multi-tasking, desktop web browsing, mobile computer.

Trust me.

Put an S60 web browser* and the N900 browser side by side.

Scroll them.

Post videos.

I guarantee the N900 will feel incredibly smooth. :D

* - on a real S60 phone, no cheating with an emulator** on a PC :p
** - I bet an S60 emulator running on an N900 will do a better job of scrolling than on a real S60 phone :D

[Texrat]

WTH are you talking about? I have the latest firmware...in fact there IS only one firmware for production devices.

My machine only?

Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHa3AoNdglY. Familiar huh?

Do you even HAVE an N900?

Have you read any of the posts by others of us who do?

You know... the ones not experiencing those issues?

The ones thinking Bratag is on to something with the Unique Device Behavior theory?

I've got a product quality assurance background. As a former Nokia engineer I helped launch the N800 and know most of its dirty little secrets. Some should easily apply to the N900. Care to chill and listen a bit?

[rundumel]

No it is not.

Comparing a computer running many things to a computer optimised to do one thing at a time is silly. Im not sure what the jerky scrolling is caused-by, but remember that the screen is twice the resolution of iphone. Pretending that you can define "the game" for the rest of the planet is amusing, at best.

In the real world there are tradeoffs. When we grow up we see this more frequently and say "OMG" less often.

People never get when I'm being sarcastic... Or ironic? I don't even know the difference... It's my problem really... :-)

[Bratag]

WTH are you talking about? I have the latest firmware...in fact there IS only one firmware for production devices.

My machine only?

Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHa3AoNdglY. Familiar huh?

Do you even HAVE an N900?

Yep looks like a video of a pre-production device from 2+ months ago. Try again.

No I don't yet have my N900 but I can read - I can see and nothing else backs up your problem.

Did you ever consider that your build may have problems and that flashing back to a base version might help with those - of course that would involve you actually having to do something to help yourself. Much easier to stick to the whining and moaning, cause you know - thats working out great for you.

[Texrat]

People never get when I'm being sarcastic... Or ironic? I don't even know the difference... It's my problem really... :-)

When you master the Force, Luke, you will be adept at both.

Patience, my young jedi.

[Megacrazy]

Yep looks like a video of a pre-production device from 2+ months ago. Try again.

No I don't yet have my N900 but I can read - I can see and nothing else backs up your problem.

Did you ever consider that your build may have problems and that flashing back to a base version might help with those - of course that would involve you actually having to do something to help yourself. Much easier to stick to the whining and moaning, cause you know - thats working out great for you.

Haha feel free to post again when you actually HAVE a phone junior. Stop wasting space in this thread with your opinions based on you've heard :)

[jjx]

You know... the ones not experiencing those issues?

The ones thinking Bratag is on to something with the Unique Device Behavior theory?

Could we perhaps have a video of the same sites being visited, at the same font size, from someone else's N900?

Several people have posted that they can't see the behaviour which is shown in the videos - in the videos!

So I'm wondering if people who say their device is fine are, in fact, seeing exactly the same thing as Megacrazy but don't mind.

With a video of someone else's N900 those of us with high frame-rate eyes can referee it :D

[Texrat]

Haha feel free to post again when you actually HAVE a phone junior. Stop wasting space in this thread with your opinions based on you've heard :)

That's TWO unintended irony nominations for you in one thread alone.

You sir are on a roll.

[davetech]

Trust me.

Put an S60 web browser* and the N900 browser side by side.

Scroll them.

Post videos.

I guarantee the N900 will feel incredibly smooth. :D

I certainly hope so! :)

Browsing on my 5800 was unbearable at a point. Then I realized it was due to the fact that I loaded most of my apps on the phone memory instead of the memory card, the free space of which was behaving as a sort of virtual memory/swap space. After moving the files to the memory card, I noticed a significant boost in browsing to the point where it was enjoyable and had me wondering why I spent almost $500 on the N900. :D

[Bratag]

Haha feel free to post again when you actually HAVE a phone junior. Stop wasting space in this thread with your opinions based on you've heard :)

Ok - its obvious you don't actually want help .You dont want to listen to logic you just want to piss and moan. Whats that old saying -

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make the ignorant ****tard listen to reason and the responses of people who DO have the phone"

Well doesnt matter to me - Good luck with your screwed up phone couldnt be happier that you wasted $100 bucks to jump the line, especially when people were just walking in off the street and getting them. Classic stuff.

On another note I very much doubt I am your junior.

[Texrat]

...aaand the thread heads for lockville.

[Bratag]

...aaand the thread heads for lockville.

Cant happen quick enough for me. Honestly waste of damn bandwidth from the moment it was first created.

[jjx]

There are many more variables though. Router tech? ISP?

The video shows it's clearly a rendering issue.

To be a router/ISP issue, the browser would have to be fetching images over the network every time you scroll to that part of the page (unlikely).

Or something perverse like the router is flooding the N900 with pings to slow it down :p

Interference?

Meaning?

Individual device component faults?

It could be, and I'd be very interested to see someone else's N900 visiting the same sites.

It could also be the RAM is too full and it's swapping. We haven't been told how many other apps it's running, or what their memory usage is.

[davetech]

No lock please. They'll stop, they promise. A stern warning should do. ;)

I'm curious to find out if others will experience similar issues, along with any remedies if available.

[Texrat]

It could also be the RAM is too full and it's swapping. We haven't been told how many other apps it's running, or what their memory usage is.

Right, which is actually my main point and sorry for any red herrings (by interference I meant wifi but as you point out that's an unlikely contributor). Too many unknowns to make any determination.

[Texrat]

No lock please. They'll stop, they promise. A stern warning should do. ;)

I'm curious to find out if others will experience similar issues, along with any remedies if available.

This thread is too inflammatory, by virtue of title alone, to be of any serious troubleshooting value IMO.

[davetech]

Can't the title just be changed then?

How about "N900, could be better, should be better - YMMV"?

[Rushmore]

Does not make sense. Droid has slightly higher res and scrolls far smoother than the N900 on the same pages in these vids. Since both have the same chipset, it must either be the browser or there is something hogging resources on Mega's N900. He shut Flash off, so that is not the problem.

I will do tests when I get my N900 tomorrow.... wait- KY plays on TV, so there might be a delay;)

[sadfist]

I'd just like to point out that while Megacrazy is exaggerating how bad the browser/scrolling issue is, everyone who is arguing with him is exaggerating how good the browser/scrolling is. It's pretty easy to get slowdown, especially with the performance of the mail client and media player.

Face it, the N900 is basically a retail boxed prototype. It's got rough edges. It will improve, the community is awesome. I just hope I won't have to get an N1000 to get a lot of these things people take for granted fixed :-D

[Megacrazy]

Just to satisfy everyone, the phone has been flashed. The behavior is unchanged. It's just what it is.

It wasn't running any apps when the videos were made.

Anyway, I think I've accomplished what I set out to do with this thread and that was to demonstrate that Nokia has added another unpolished product to their collection. I hope they will learn from their mistakes and continue developing the N900 (which I love) and not jump to another product in 3 months that will be just as unpolished. Apple has shown that it is all about software and sticking with something that works and bringing it to an end.

On the other hand, you guys need to stop generating excuses for Nokia such as "it's version 4 of 5, great effort Maemo team, it will be better with updates etc etc...". Keep in mind that the people who developed this product were paid to work and you and I owe them nothing. On the contrary, they owe us 600$ worth of product that they (IMO) did not fully deliver.

I will be around and follow all the developments of cool apps for the N900 (even if the scrolling sucks) and enjoy the phone for some time to come. Do not kid yourselves though, this product falls short of the iPhone and the Droid (which also just came out) bigtime. It is unfair to average users to sweep problems under the carpet. Admitting a problem is the first step to solving it.

[Texrat]

Admitting a problem is the first step to solving it.

Ok, that's it. No more irony for you young man. That exceeds the threshold. :p

[Devil]

texrat, what if im scared just a little bit about the negative commentary's?

buy it or not?

see... my problem is.. i don't see other alternatives. n900 is best ATM

but i am not on the road that much.
could just as well save up for a nice very portable laptop.
i'm at home/university. so... 11 inch sony vaio hmm come here baby :rolleyes:

[Texrat]

texrat, what if im scared just a little bit about the negative commentary's?

buy it or not?

see... my problem is.. i don't see other alternatives. n900 is best ATM

but i am not on the road that much.
could just as well save up for a nice very portable laptop.
i'm at home/university. so... 11 inch sony vaio hmm come here baby :rolleyes:

Is leasing an option for you? :D

[kyle]

Megacrazy, have you tried increasing the memory cache setting to 40 mb and then doing the same test? It seems quite a bit better to me after I did that- I still see the checkered pattern occasionally, but it seems to go away in just a fraction of a second.

It makes sense that this would be the case, because the engadget homepage is big and must take up a lot of memory in rendered form. Increasing the cache size means that it has to do a lot less rerendering. There is also an "automatic" setting that I haven't tried yet.

Of course, some other smartphones that don't do true multitasking can afford to always use the maximum amount of memory available. ;)