Allright so like someone (jalyst perhaps? let me know if I am mistaken) posted in one of the bigger N9 threads, there was this:

http://konttoristhoughts.blogspot.co...few-other.html

I did a little narrowing down and posted the "Q&A" of sorts on a norwegian forum for easy reference to what he actually answers.

Figured you might like it too. Ill try to keep it updated as more questions are answered.



Q: "But is it so that N9&Meego will only be a test platform for example for future UI ideas but there will be no new Meego devices? Or is there any commercial future for Meego devices?"

A: "Yes, the UX will continue on, as has been stated multiple times.
Based on Meego? I dare not comment."


Q: "I totally agree that some UI elements need a larger invisible hit area."

A: "I also agree on the hit area issue for buttons. But not only invisible hit area, perhaps the buttons themselves should also be a bit bigger. We have been discussing that recently a bit."


Q: "Another example where I can't understand the UI idea - in the clock app you have to press such a small button to add an alarm. Please make the hole line/text touchable. (I think it would look even nicer without the 'plus' button)"

A: "Yes, clock hit area might be the entire area indeed."


Q: "things that need to be solved in current release. I just hope this is already fixed in upcoming firmware.

* "services connections" seems to dissapear sometimes :-/

* file upload in browser.

* when in landscape the toolbar should be at bottom instead of top. Why? Well this is because several times a have by mistake pressed on the menu button when "scrolling" (holding my tumb to near the menu)

* a "small delay" in event view when pressing on a message so user doesn't by mistake open the twitter/facebook app. (Done that several times when scrolling the feed :-/

* make sure scrolling is "saved" when pressing on a feed so next time swipe back I dont have to scroll done too position I was.

* Mediaplayer if clicking on albumimage show the albumstrack instead of pause/play

* cursorkeys on vkb, and make the magnification glass work in qt-components and better than current its seems very buggy atm. :-/"

A: "Browser toolbar in landscape should indeed be at the bottom. We are planning to get it to autohide in 1.2, but no promises (it's not on the top of the to-do list)

Event feed scroll position remembering: It will remember your position if you open a feed item and the swipe from the side and you'll be at the original position. But when you pan in homescreens, the paradigm dictates that we always show the top area of each view. Sorry.

Media player album to show album and not play random track. I could not agree more. I have been whining about that since spring.

Magnifier works in 1.1 much better than in 1.0."


Q: "I love my N9 so far, but I`m concerned about the battery. It lasts ca 24h on average use (I expected more...). The "battery usage" app shows that powerconsumption in idle-mode varies from 10 to 15 mA. At 15 the app shows a warning of "battery draining" (has happened twise). Is my battery a "rotten" one??"

A: "You don't have a rotten battery. The applet just has a threshold of saying when the idle consumption is so high that you won't get near optimal standby time, but less. The variance is greatly dependendent how misbehaving the apps & bg services happen to be. N9 is slightly uncontrolled system compared to WP of iphone (for the good and bad)."


Q: "One thing I would love to see on the N9 is the possibility to write text messages using a classic numeric keypad with T9. Using the tiny qwerty buttons can get annoying."

A: "our input method framework (MALIIT) http://wiki.maliit.org/Main_Page is very flexible input framework and putting T9 there should be easy peazy. Come to think of it, I've even seen it. ANyway, won't come from Nokia, but you could easily get some other developer to do it."


Q: "I hope there will be folders for the app screen. It can get pretty tedious to look for an app once you've installed more.

The wi-fi reception is quite weak compared to other phones. My N9 can't even detect a wi-fi network which my Galaxy can detect, connect and surf. Can anything be done in firmware to improve this?"

A: "Folders will come in 1.2 to home screen. And it's not only apps that need it. If you start using bookmarks a bit more, it's really irritating to not to have bookmarks. Guys in Oulu say that the work should be complete for the feature, so it's about 3 weeks to have decent polish on it. It's one of the "big" features of 1.2

Wifi reception was one of the issues where we had to be dancing on the SAR boundaries. Although wifi in general has been improved by leaps and bounds in 1.1. For me at least, the reception is now perfectly good."


Q: "The missing back button issue can be solved easily. Actually the "swipe down to close" should be standard behavior. But you must land in the calling app, or higher level menu. Currently you get to the multitasking view and are lost somehow.

Another small issue are those switches you have to flick. If they are close to the screen edge and you want to flick them screen inwards, you can have some problems. Tapping them should be enough. Visually they can remain flick switches.

Where is the nice media player we had on the N900?"

A: "We did make swipe to close as default in 1.1. For the exact reasons that everybody agrees. We actually made the feature just in time for the launch event (like few days before it), and while everybody loved it, we weren't sure that do we make it as default or not. So, being rather on the safe side, we put it off by default. Then after longer period of use, we cannot live without it anymore, and all resistance for having it on by default was gone by the end of the summer. In 1.2, the close will also switch to just close the window, so, it should be exactly what you want. We added some visual hint that close is about to happen so that the switcher view wasn't necessary anymore. Originally we rooted user there in swipe-to-close case so that user would see the window closing and hence undestand that the action actually toggled closing. Anyway, by default in 1.1 and more logical and visual in 1.2.


The switches are tappable, at least in 1.1.

We have now two distinct players: music and movie. I think music player is much better than the one in N900, except for missing dlna, and the poor main view album cover UX blooper."


Q: "Great post. Thanks for keeping us in the know. Also, thanks for those 3500+ improvements coming the N9's way. What is 1.2 about? Any new features or bug fixes/improvements. Are you allowed to speak on that yet?"

A: "1.1 is all about reliability, performance and polish. 1.2 is all about adding new features. As it turned out, 1.1 already had plenty of features, mostly due to slipped schedule."


Q: "In one-handed operation, using the thumb to tap and swipe, the palm touches easily the screen edges on the long side. This leads e.g. to unwanted jumping into RSS items on the notification screen. Sometimes other unwanted side effects can be observed.

There should be a guard stripe on both long sides, maybe 5mm wide. Within those stripes, no tapping is accepted. This area can only be used for swiping.
This should not have any side effect to applications. At least the notification/feeds screen would not suffer, normally you would tap clearly inside the screen, not at the edges. This guard area could be configurable per app, as some apps might need those edge stripes."

A: "Yes, we could think about disabling touch interaction for the side margins."


Q: "Another thing, how about a graphic equalizer for the music player? I agree with Mike7b4, tapping on the album image should show the tracklist, not pause/play. Also there should be a facility to delete music files within the player."

A: "I think graphic equalizer would be better served as a standalone app. (show effects on currently being played back music)"


Q: "Swan song...No more effort will be done on Meego?
Sad...very very sad"

A: "Certainly more effort will be put, but no more products. Plan is of course that the qt as a development platform continues."


Q: "how about notification/notes, upcomming events on home screen ( after you double tap to unlock )?

and a flash player 10.3 on browser?"

A: "upcoming calendar notifications has been discussed a lot. I can't remember why it's not there, but there was some reason for it...
No comment on the flash support."


Q: "Is there copy/paste feature in the upcoming update?"

A: " There is "universal copy/paste" in 1.2. Of course there is partial copy paste already in 1.0 and 1.1."


Q: "I would REALLY appreciate if you could clarify a bit on the surprise issues that held back the release? more precisely, a lot of people seem to interpret that as a validation of their theories that the N9 was intentionally delayed becuse of the WP strategy or because Mr. Elop simply wants to sabotage it. needless to say, I don't believe that was the case.

so, if/when if you cannot say what caused the delays, can you PLEASE at least put an end to these silly conspiracy theories? unless they are true of course. "

A: "There was no conspiracy behind the delay, just **** ups on multiple different things that were all found one at a time. In HW, SW and production. If I compare this with N900 sales start, we knew all the issues n900 would have pretty much a month before we hoped to make a sales release, then on the last days we agreed that what we have done so far isn't good enough, and delayed it by 2 weeks or so. But it was perfectly trackable. On N9 these issues were coming totally from the blue sky on last minute. One at a time. Fluke of bad luck. I hope you understand that I don't want to be more exact about the issues."


Q: "Since you seem to know a lot about the N9, I would like to bring to your attention a small bug in the email application. Mail for exchange works fine, but when I add a second email that requires information on the outgoing server the programme does not let me do that without adding a username, i.e. the programme requires that I give a username also for the outgoing server. Annoying problem, since if I add a username emails are not sent .... (at least I think that is why there is an error message when I try to send emails from this other account)."

A: "I hope the issue is solved already. Please create a bug to : www.developer.nokia.com/bugs"


Q: "How much are you expecting Nokia to improve on the Maps and Drive applications?"

A: "maps and drive will likely have quite low amount of improvements after pr1.1."