The N900 comes with a generic image viewer that does a decent job for many use cases. Some scenarios are not well covered, though:

Because of the N900s high resolution, photos smaller than 800x480 (usually received by mail, bluetooth or MMS) don't use the full physical display size, which makes them less pleasant to view than would be possible. Also, when attached to a TV via TV-out cable, the display doesn't adapt to the aspect ratio/size of the TV set (which is technically possible; the Media Player plays 4:3-videos full screen on a 4:3 TV set).

So we have two use cases that need improvement:

1) George uses the N900 to show photos of his children to his parents. Some of the photos he took himself with the N900, others were taken by his wife and got re-sized to 352×288 (CIF-format) before they ended up on the N900. George's parents have a hard time viewing these small 352x288-pictures on the 3.5" screen. They think there's something wrong with the N900 because it shows some pictures full-size, while others appear to be scaled down.

2) As his parents get tired of the tiny photos, George uses TV-out and connects the N900 to the TV in the kitchen. Again, none of the photos he shows uses the full display size. There's black borders on the top and on the bottom because the N900's aspect ratio is different from the 4:3 aspect ratio on the kitchen TV. Annoyingly, the black borders are visible even if the image shown is 4:3.


Both of these problems make for an inconsistent and sometimes very disappointing user experience.