I have had stutters on the phone, with any firmware. And on all my PCs that doesn't have dual core CPUs.

There's a very simple explanation: You're multitasking.

One or more of your programs are using more resources than you can afford, and there's not reserved resources for other activities, be it music playback (should have low priority) or incoming phones (should have high priority).

The N900 is more likely to stutter than many other phones. Reason? You're multitasking more than on your Nokia 3210. The OS itself has a heavy footprint, it's a shrunken computer OS but only phone hardware. The phone can do lots and lots of stuff, but it doesn't have supercomputer power.

You can always stop doing all this stuff, and it will not stutter any much. But then, why have a N900?

You can contribute to reducing stutter, right now. Try to find out if any applications or processes use too much resources, and report back to the developers.

Nokia can contribute, too. It's really heavy though, and they will not, this late in the game. But they could rewrite resource management. Reserve or reallocate a minimum of resources to prioritized real time tasks at time of need. Different OSs have different algorithms here, some will spend extra resources to have smooth gfx, some other things. But it's really a weighting system, there's no perfect algorithm available. I think Maemo should probably push "receive incoming call" higher on the list so that chatting + listening to music + something more doesn't prevent you from receiving a call. It does now, sometimes.

In future smartphones, this problem will be reduced, because multicore CPUs are coming. It reduced the old "99% CPU crashes your computer" problems on PCs, now it will make your cell phone more responsive while multitasking.

This problem also exists on Windows Mobile 6, where I have experienced it. It will probably not exist on Windows Phone 7, cause they followed someone's example of claiming singletasking is a feature. But soon enough they'll follow same someone's example of adding it anyway.

So, there you have it. You wanted multitasking. You got it. There's a cost.

even if i record video it stutters. didn't have all these problems before.

for me it stutters particularly bad when i start mp3s. After the first couple of seconds its fine, but occationally if i'm playing a long mp3 podcast i'll have stutters throughout the entire podcast. A bit annoying. One of my few gripes about the n900.

mine deosnt stutter ever and i have never exsperianced this since pr1.1. one of the first things i did was to flash from standard bought firmware to online downloaded firmware. maybe this wil help you out if there are problems.

Same here. It was this way since day 1, it seems to be worse with PR1.2. Now system sounds (SMS alert, ring tone) stutter really bad sometimes too... Whole phone in general is slower and less responsive after PR1.2...

I just got my n900 last week, updated to PR1.2 right away, and the first issue I noticed was the audio stuttering. It seems like this issue has been reported to Nokia and will be fixed with the next release of Qt - http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-8991

Hope so!

Shuttering - since PR 1.2
Different kind than in PR 1.1.1 - there was some kind of looping (like DJ's does) and has occured realy rare.

PR 1.2 - audio just stop playing at a second(s) ,At any konditions reproducable example - rotating web browser or phone app.

Renicing did not help in this case. This is realy pissing me of ...

Lol did Nokia give you my phone when I sent it in for repairs? Mine has always stuttered like crazy.

Yes.....it feels like a different kind of stuttering!Like a DJ just pressed a button and all of the sudden the audio just repeats itself for a few seconds!

Also, I found this app spiking APT-WORKER!

It`s definitely worse than before!Something must be done with this.....it starts to annoy me....and I`m not doing intensive multitasking stuff......listening to an mp3 and surf at the same time is not suppose to be heavy on the resources of this device....and especially when it is overclocked as well....