Interestingly, this article claims that a "Nokia spokesman" said the N900 will eventually support potrait mode throughout the device.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/20...winner-two.htm

I'm assuming that "the absence of landscape mode" in the second sentence is a typo and they meant "potrait mode." But anyway, the last sentence is pretty clear.

It is always interesting to read the case against portrait mode. I for one would really appreciate it, I currently have a 5800xm which i enjoy, it has no physical keyboard so I am always using the on screen one. Personally I prefer the number pad for text entry, maybe because i'm an old school texter and don't have to look at the screen to know what I am typing, but this is very helpful for sending quick messages during a meeting,

Would the lack of portrait keep me from buying the phone, no not at all, but I know a lot of consumers would get upset with it not duginr the first weeks when it is shiny and new, but rather when it a month old and getting to be routine, and the things that used to be simple, now take on an added complexity.But, this is the opposite of my best friend who has a G1 and primarily uses landscape.

So who knows, the biggest identifier may be what you used to use.

I second that. I have a 5800 as well, and while the Symbian interface is not nearly as intuitive, I love surfing in portrait mode and using the half screen keyboard. I have a feeling if it's not supported by the browser, an alternative app will do that.

Personaly i dont want it to support full portrait. Nokia for whatever reason dident implament it in the first place, perhaps it will change the way people use there devices or perhaps from testing nokia realised that although allot of people say they want it they dont actually use it.

I fail to see how people are making such a big issue of this when they havent even tryed it.

If this feature is so important to all of you then perhaps this is not the right device for you or you will have to live with it (nothings perfect).

Myself I would be very annoyed if it turned out that the current (and only) delay was caused by nokia having to implament this feature just because a load of polls from people who have never tryed the device stated this was the feature they wanted. It would annoy me more if this used more resources and compromised the device performance.

In all fairness, my iPhone spends most of it's life in landscape mode, when my n900 comes I think I'll barely notice it doesn't do portrait

I think that there should a software implemented rotary dial using the touch-screen, as the only interface for the phone in portrait mode.

There should also be no SMS (or future MMS facility), no contacts database, the only ring-tone should be a classic bell sound and the charger should have a curly cable. Obviously it must support loop-disconnect dialling and not DTMF.

Only then will the N900 resemble a proper phone.

My personal view is that Nokia are avoiding as much UI development as they can get away with. Step 4 of 5.

They are having to rebuild everything in Qt for Harmattan, the less UI there is in Fremantle the quicker they will get Step 5 out.

Mike C

Nice Article on when is a Phone not a Phone

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/...a_phone_an.php

I think Steve has been very astute here.

Trouble is, every time you tried to dial, you'd end up zooming in on the phone app...

To my surprise after using the N900 for one and a half months now, I don't miss portrait mode on the desktop any more.