Originally Posted by mhammo

These are my impressions after using the N900 for about an hour at the Nokia store in Chicago, IL.

I am not a current Nokia user and have no current Nokia devices. I have never used any of the tablet devices. The last Nokie device I used was several years ago. So, my thoughts and opnions are more from a Nokia Neophyte point of view.

Having said the above, I am a techy and know my way around computers, software, and smartphones and really like Nokia products.

Fit and Finish
In a word, fantastic. No question this is a high quality device that is extremely well made. The screen is beautiful and very easy to read. Expanding the device to reveal the keyboard has nice, smooth, action and a solid thunk when opening and closing with no wiggles or niggles. It is a solid feeling device and feels impressive. It is a little heavier than I expected, but perfectly acceptable. It does not feel cheap like many devices on the market.

Keyboard
The manufacturing quality of the keyboard is spot on, however, the feel and spacing, at least for me, was not optimal. I have had better keyboards. Maybe it's because I have been using a BB for a while now and I am spoiled in that regard. The keys have no gaps between them, basically they touch each other so it is harder to tell where one begins and ends. It is also too easy to accidentally hit the wrong key. The action was ok, better than a lot, but has major room for improvement. I prefer a little more spring or click to the keys. The space bar, not good, why they put it off to the right I cannot imagine, wrong move. I'm sure I could eventually get use to the keyboard, even the space bar, over time, but I was really hoping for a better experience there.

Dashboard
Very cool and polished. Nice swooping action when you switch from one screen to the next. The floating windows are cool. Response is snappy and smooth. Probably the best dashboard implementation I have ever seen or experienced. Very well done in this regard.

Applications
I am primarily focusing on things like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Web mail, Digg, etc. Wonderful integration with the desktop. Very easy to access once on the desktop and very cool that they update in real time. A little disappointing that there is no integration of these apps, rather they are just the same applications you access via your desktop or laptop. I was hoping for a little more of an application experience that links them all together. For example, let me post to one or more at the same with the same message. The current approach I have to copy/paste or retype for each app I have open. It would be nice to have something that consolidates them all. Perhaps that is what the community is for, but it would have been another ace if Nokia provided this out of the box.

MMS won't be in the initial release, bad, for me. I like that functionality. Seems strange they would not one up the iPhone on this one (since iPhone still does not have this either). Failing grade for not having this.

Application usage - only designed for landscape mode. You cannot use the applications in portrait mode. To me another failing grade. I should be able to view the apps in either mode, the way I want to see them. Landscape tends to force 2 handed usage, sometimes I just want to do a quick update or see something very quickly, it really sucks that I have to flip the device to the side and open the keyboard just to do this. Another fail for me.

Phone - unfortunately, does NOT play to Nokia's strength. I know, they have been clear about N900 being a computer in your hand, and not really a phone, but come on, your core strength is the phone, play it up. This is the only application that works in portrait mode, and oddly, not any other mode. So again, I cannot decide how I want to use it, Nokia has decided for me. The other really annoying thing was no soft key or hard key to get to the phone app. E.g. if you are on the desktop, it is a minimum of 3 clicks to get to the phone. You have go to the main desktop, go to apps, then find phone then click it, then it automatically flips the screen to portrait and you have to close the keyboard and turn it right side up to use it. This is a HUGE disappointment to me.

Overall Impression
I was truly excited and hopeful that this was going to be THE one kick *** combined device that had everything I wanted. At least for this initial release, and for me, I am thinking it's not going to be, at least in it's initial release.

So, ultimately, while it pains me to say this, I will probably be skipping this version. Maybe in 6 months an update will fix some of these things and then I will make the jump. Or, perhaps I will just have to wait until Maemo 6 devices area available.

M

Originally Posted by sachin007

The phone can be used in both landscape and portrait mode. Also there is a setting where you can automatically make the phone launch if you hold the device in the portrait mode.

Thanks for the review.

Originally Posted by zerojay

Phone can be opened in any orientation.

Those of you who, like me, want to integrate several websites together and post the same things to multiple places will want an account on Pixelpipe right away. The N900 add-on for Pixelpipe support is already out allowing sharing photos to multiple services. Status messages can be sent via Google Talk or XMPP. Sign up and try it out.