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#1150
Originally Posted by zimon View Post
Oh, so not always.
I also have problems because the permissive multitasking with N900. I use FM-radio alot, almost daily. I like to surf on the web at the same time while riding a bus. Quite often when using a news portal, I tend to get 2 – 4 windows open and then FM-radio is swapped out. Also if I try to take a photo while listening radio, often FM-radio is swapped out and stops. Sometimes N900 becomes quite unresponsive. I'd rather have web-pages swapped out than FM-radio.
You should know that :
- Nokia N900 has only 256 MB of RAM and Maemo 5 is a full Linux distribution;
- Nokia N900 GUI can become more responsive with many tweaks available by the community (swappolube, etc), kernel-power with overclocking, etc;
- web pages open in Maemo 5 are full desktop web pages, not mobile versions, so there are web sites that take a lot of RAM;
- FM-Radio is a extras repository software, if it is unstable (I don't know, I don't use FM radio on my N900) or have problems, don't use it and/or report the problem to the community;
- Nokia N900 & Maemo 5 OS is a mobile computer, like a netbook using Linux, so if there are many heavy softwares open, then the OS can become slow. It is up to the user decide which softwares should remain open, for how much time, etc;
- with freedom comes responsibility.

Originally Posted by zimon View Post
I've tried the same use case with Galaxy Mini quite much during the xmas break. No problem, although I had web pages open, FM-radio listening and camera. Radio did not get swapped out nor failed to play. The device keeps going being responsive.
Galaxy Mini does have 128 MB more RAM than N900 though, but that was not the reason it worked because I also opened much more web-windows.
So what ? The cited softwares are possible well implemented in Android. The fast app switching of Android takes your freedom to decide when to close the softwares, so you have less work, less responsibility, it is easier for many users.

Originally Posted by zimon View Post
We cannot expect a normal smart phone user to use top or similar programs to monitor what happens in the system to make sure it is fluent to use the device.
top, htop, conky, etc, can be run after the user suspects some problem, i.e, detects the N900 is slow, the battery doesn't last, etc.

Nokia N900 & Maemo 5 OS is a mobile computer IMHO, so I expect the same user behaviour when using a netbook with Linux. The netbook user has the freedom to run everything, but it should know, for example, that OpenOffice will take 10-20 s to open, that Thunderbird, Firefox and OpenOffice open at the same time = lag, etc.

Originally Posted by zimon View Post
N900 was not and is not suitable for a "normal" smart phone user partly because the "real" permissive multitasking. Plain user would not accept the device going unresponsive so often, but would think the device is broken somehow. For us who know what is happening and why, it doesn't matter so much and we can try to avoid the situation by not starting too many processes.
There are some N900 users who are normal users. They barely install softwares, they don't tweak Maemo 5, etc. And they are satisfied due to some unique features of Maemo 5 OS and/or Nokia N900 : nice qwerty keyboard, almost full web desktop browsing experience, etc.

But I agree that the typical N900 user tweaks it, install a lot of community softwares, etc.

I am posting in this topic just to defeat some general comments that appear sometimes :
- iOS & Android are Linux : no, they are not Linux (but have some Unix/Linux pieces);
- iOS & Android & WP7 have multitasking : no, they do not have multitasking as it is the OS that decides when to close the softwares. They have fast app switching or another funny description.

Anyway, IMHO, the best mobile OS and celular phone for each user depends on each needs and desire. For some users, a Nokia Asha 303 with Series 40v6 is a lot better than an Nokia N9, iPhone 4S, Galaxy S2, for example.
__________________
Python, C/C++, Qt and CAS developer. For Maemo/MeeGo/Sailfish :
Integral, Derivative, Limit - calculating mathematical integrals, derivatives and limits. SymPy - Computer Algebra System.
MatPlotLib - 2D & 3D plots in Python. IPython - Python interactive shell.
-- My blog about mobile & scientific computing ---
Sailfish : Sony Xperia X, Gemini, Jolla, Jolla C, Jolla Tablet, Nexus 4. Nokia N9, N900, N810.

Last edited by rcolistete; 2012-05-08 at 17:03.