Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Well, I've been pretty quiet in this thread, and I've just skimmed some of the pages (some of you guys type way too much :p), but I'll throw my opinion in the mix.

If the next tablet is not a tablet, but a phone, then I might not get one unless there's some sort of developer discount I can get... I'm not looking for a phone, I'm looking for an internet tablet. A more powerful device to replace my N800. Really, though, I'm going to wait for an official product announcement to make any judgement about purchasing.

If it's a phone... maybe I'll switch to pandora... if they ever release some hardware :p

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I really don't thing this unit would be able to go against Iphone - if the specs are correct. Nokia has once again gone the "fatty" design - but of course, that's what they (sadly) do most of the time.

I get that they want do make it smaller than the N810 - but who in this day and age wants a unit that is that thick. In the renderings it looks to be 1.5 times the n810 in thickness.....

Furthermore if this is a phone - aren't they killing the N97 before it's even launched?

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Yes, it does. If you add a HSPA modem with an antenna to a device, you need a space in the industrial design where to put it. Putting the antenna behind the display or a generic metal piece is not a particular good idea, especially if you want to meet US network requirements. And you add other radios into the picture such as Bluetooth, FM radio, FM transmitter, and/or WIFI, then you need really good industrial designers to get it done without it becoming a oversized piece of consumer electronics. Anyway, for touchscreen-based devices built with Maemo, this meant in the past, now, and in the future that we will have some stuff around the display to place the antennas. So, when talking about certain use cases for a Maemo 5 device, don't forget that not only the display size defines the maximum size of the device but also all these radios you integrate.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Ah, this wonderful taking statement out of context... Yes, 3 inch displays are large in Nokia device portfolio. In the world of TV, I would say 50 inch is large. So, it all depends, doesn't it?

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

iPhone vs this design

Actually, even factoring in all of my disappointments that I've already mentioned, I'd probably still take this thing over an iPhone.

But I'm sure a rare minority in that regard.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

That doesn't in any way allay our fears.

( i know that is a dumb statement but just wanted to make peter talk a litlle more ):confused:

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Is there an English word that means "overreaction", only squared or cubed ?...

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

There won't be another Nokia tablet. Stop obsessing yourself. If you do want a new tablet, pick SmartQ5 or SmartQ7: they may not be as well built, but seem to do the job, and do not cost a lot.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I just saw it on ebay 235$. I m still in denial mode regarding nokia.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

For the "tablet" issue, at least relating to display sizes (then again, even from this thread it's quite obvious that there is no consensus over what actually constitutes a "tablet"):

As said for instance in the current human interface guidelines version ("You must always keep in mind not only the small size of screens where your application will be displayed but also how much they will vary."), and as said consistently: there are plans to support multiple different screen sizes, i.e. provide UI scalability to certain extents. A good software platform is able to do that.

Naturally we don't want to do that just for fun.

That's for the Maemo side. But please don't expect anybody with any real information from Nokia to comment prematurely on upcoming future devices. :)

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

You might be surprised how much people in Nokia are reading your comments. Many people more that do not put their comments to talk.maemo.org (maybe, we should call it t.m.o. after all...;) For example, our manager that it responsible for bringing the next Maemo device to the market globally is listening and interpreting what you say. So, does the director in product management responsible for the next device.

Naturally, we don't make product decision in a instant's notice. It takes a good amount of time from concept to product shipment. And the influence of Maemo Software will actually grow starting from 1st of June when we will become Maemo Devices, when our hardware, software and product integration folks are joined to one unit being able to work together even better and faster.

Whether the business of investing to devices such as pure tablets is attractive enough to keep an organization such as Maemo running is naturally business confidential. But you might have seen that organizations such as UIQ that built an UI on Symbian based devices for Motorola and SonyEriccson was not sustainable. And they had some 400 people to build on top of existing Symbian. They pretty much all got the pink slip in the beginning of the year. We are building Maemo on open source but we do need a decent amount of folks to crunch out attractive devices. Gotta make money to pay those salaries.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Well i beg to differ.

There is a huge majority here

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...t=alleged+n900

wanting a large screen, d-pad and may be a stylus which actually constitute as far as nokia is concerned a tablet.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Has Nokia ever used a capacitive touch screen? I don't know of any and I wouldn't be surprised if the RX-51 will have a resistive touch screen ever for finger usage.

Most likely not. See the G1. The hardware could do multitouch but the OS has this feature locked because Apple is furiously fighting anyone selling devices with multitouch.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

For those who still hope to fiddle with openoffice.org, I have prepared a comparison of the mockups of the oowriter screen, as displayed by the n810 versus the... err... thing :D

It's attached in openoffice.org draw format, zip-compressed. To have a correct feeling of dimensions, you have to print the file yourself, otherwise your computer screen won't show the pics the right way unless you fiddle with zooming.

I'm not so upset now, I can live with that, even if I'm presbyops. Only need a new set of glasess :cool: and a stylus, a thin one :rolleyes:

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I would be careful about such assumptions. After all this is all biz and Apple and Nokia do play ball (in comparison to some Chinese vendors). Obviously, the iPhone 3G has 3G. And you need access to the 3G IPRs for that. And who is owning a lot of IPRs for 3G? Let's see...would that be Qualcomm and Nokia? Yes.
Nokia is not preventing Apple to use 3G, so why would Apple prevent Nokia from multitouch? It's all biz.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

That actually sounds quite promising -- I'm not sure that I'll necessarily get devices I like more that way, as I'm totally unclear which internal departments are more on "my side" of the various debates, but at least it should be more efficient and unified. Hopefully that enables more devices, and that in turn should mean new devices more often, if nothing else.:)

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Do I seem to be one of the only people who is genuinely excited about the new maemo phone?
I've never seen anyone else with a N7xx/N8xx and everyone I have spoken to and shown my tablets have all said that it is a shame that it isn't a phone otherwise they would definitely buy one.
So if these specs are true then I know of about ten people who will probably buy one
I may miss a decent size screen as this is what really set it apart from the iphone for internet usage for me, but if there is wider take up of maemo, then I am more than happy as long as the device is still functional.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

So with this new Maemo phone (N97 bastard-brother)
are we looking at the du-rigor mobile-telephony pricing scheme?
Should we plan on paying 799$ for unlocked
or 399$ for a contract + phone?

.....If that is the case, and if someone in the know doesn't 'accidentally' reveal SOMETHING about a larger screen, extended UI Maemo5 model, then count me out of this sick little leak game, cause we've been here on "ITT" too long to be bamboozled and nuanced into a bunch of potential phone-switching townies....

dcarter

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

There's Proxoid, which provides a proxy for tethering. It works on any system where you can run adb from the SDK, and this includes Linux.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I'm not in the know of course but recent msrp prices on unlocked smartphones from Nokia have been dropping. The price will probably be closer to $399 to $699 unlocked and $99 to $299 on contract.

http://www.nokiausa.com/buy-online

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I assume it would be even sufficient for Apple to simply announce such a thing in time to their fanboys and release that locked-down crap significantly later than Nokia's next tablet.
The loyal fanboys would spread the news like a wildfire. I can understand why Nokia is very careful with releasing information and specs.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Some things to note:

• If the smaller screen means the bevel around the screen is gone (and I can touch the edges of the screen with my finger without being blocked by the bevel), that's an improvement over the N8x0 devices (just a thought by looking at that picture)
• Multitouch would be very welcome. Even if not used in apps (yet), it allows for better usability of the on-screen keyboard (when I type text, the left thumb has not always been lifted when I touch the next character with the right thumb, resulting in the second or first touch not being detected correctly).

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

So I should be excited because... this thing (which, hypothetically, I really don't like that much) will be more popular with everyone else? I'm not one of those people who gets excited about "Is it the year of Linux on The Desktop?" either -- I buy my gadgets to please myself, and I'm not going to be excited about some gadget just because other people like it, or dismayed just because they don't.

While wider uptake is certainly good news for Maemo's continued development, if it appears that's because Maemo is moving away from what I want in a tablet, it's not going to do me much good, so it's not making me excited.

That said, I'm actually rather interested (I wouldn't quite say excited) because this new phone will deliver a lot of things I do like, and (assuming the d-pad, or more generally arrow keys, isn't quite as gone as it appears) seems to be an overall step up. But my interest is centered around a device I'm going to find useful, not around its wider market appeal.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I've been reading e-books quite happily with Stanza for iPhone, even though the iPhone has much smaller screen and lower resolution than my N810. The big point here is formatting the books correctly, not the screen size.

Of course, with PDFs optimized for A4 paper size that might be more of an issue...

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Obviously "cameraphone quality" is always bad, but with these additions on top of earlier N810 specs, the new tablet would be the perfect device for documenting my adventures.

The Death Monkey tour we documented completely with off-the-shelf N-series phones, posting blog entries using the email client, publishing pictures taken with the phone camera, and phoning in reports to the radio station. If I could do all that with an open Maemo device, I'd be really happy.

More steps taken towards the Universal Communicator.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Wonder how well that would work when it's stashed in my car mount as I drive down the motorway at 70mph trying to pick a new song, set satnav, etc... ?

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Maybe the accelerometers of the new device will be called "shuffle"... :D

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Yes, I agree. But of course that statement is now being made on a forum that was merged into maemo.org.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I have to say, I made the same motion back when it was announced that the itt forum would be merged into maemo.org. Go back and review the comments in that thread.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...654#post260654

My objection died too, or should I say was drowned out by the usual suspects.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Maybe. But I don't want a netbook running Maemo. I have a netbook, it runs (very happily) full Fedora Linux.

I don't want a phone, smart or otherwise. I have to carry a crackberry (pearl) for work that I can't get rid of.

What I want is an upgraded version of my n800, _with_ hardware keyboard, and integrated HSDPA so that I can get rid of the Nokia 6120 that I currently carry for sole use as a bluetooth modem.

And to resurrect an earlier question: I use my n800 for satnav, browsing (tear), email (modest), music (canola), audio-books (pannuci), geocaching (gpxview), ebooks (fbreader). All full screen except pannuci which doens't support fullscreen.

I could do all this on my crackberry with it's pitifully small screen, but I DON'T WANT TO. I want to do this on a device with a good screen. I was hoping for an increase, not a decrease. I might just sacrifice decent mobile browsing, and buy a dedicated e-ink ebook reader instead of the n900 - I wouldn't lose much functionality when combined with my crackberry.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

But lets not forget the role that a larger community plays in getting what pleases us. A larger community means more ports, more developments, more apps, more news, more conversation, etc. In other words, it provides more opportunities for getting what we want.

I'm like you: I will buy the device that most pleasing, but I wouldn't be so quick to remove the size of the community from that equation.


YARR!
}:^)~
Capt'n=Corrupt^2

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

A complete line with a Maemo phone, a Maemo pocket tablet (4 to 5") a Maemo bigger tablet (7") and a Maemo netbook would be nice ...

...

...

Ok, please, let me dream ...

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Yes, you should be excited.

We like tablets, but commercially they are an unproven, perhaps perpetually niche, market. Like it or not (and I don't, personally), the future of tablets at Nokia is tied to Maemo. By pulling together a great number of resources under the Maemo platform, that increases the chances that there will be a tablet in the future. By producing a cell phone that uses Maemo, but has broad market appeal, there will be large volumes of sales, which means revenue, which means financial stability for the Maemo platform. Read Peter's post #531. Yes, the tablet form factor may be overshadowed by Maemo and by a different device, but Nokia is not necessarily moving away from it.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I'm not sure about the netbook and the 7"-device... the Maemo 5 user interface elements would be frighteningly large on these.

Hardware-wise, tough, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Archos does exactly that. They have a lineup from 1.8" to 7" (including the 4.3" and 5" sweet spots), and nobody's talking about "niche markets" and "consumers don't want that" when they see their products.

Maybe with the Moblin UI instead of the upcoming Maemo UI, this sort of devices would be a dream. (I'm stressing "UI" here, beneath the UI Maemo is great. Moblin too, probably, I don't know how far they are apart, anyway... there are many familiar boxes in the Moblin Core overview)

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

I have even been reading ebooks on a 352x416 Nokia E70. No matter how you format them, smaller screen either makes you squint or taxes your fingers by forcing you to scroll. This is a hard limitation that cannot be avoided by any amount of formatting.

Now, I do have a few ideas about making FBReader more usable on a physically smaller display, both by zooming parts of the text above your finger touching it and by scrolling text when your finger reaches bottom of the screen and/or you tilt the device. These ideas (if FBReader guys choose to implement them of course) will ease the pain of reading books on N900. But having a bigger screen would obviously make things better.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Here's the problem as I see it:

How many iphone users do you know that are active in an iphone community? Most of the ones I know just use their iphone, they don't get in online forums and discuss, test, develop, etc. Even if the maemo phone gets a large market share (which I doubt, there is a lot of competition in that market), many of the users will be just that: users. People that are unlikely to join the community. I don't think we'll see a large influx of new community members, sure there will be some, but not a lot.

I also think the smaller screen lends itself to a different class of applications. Many of the applications I use would have a very different user experience on a smaller screen. Some of them may not even have been ported/developed or be too cumbersome to be interesting. Lack of a stylus on the smaller screen will play a large role in the type of programs developed.

On the whole, a larger market share may not have as beneficial impact as some believe.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Last night, I tried using my N810 exclusively in windowed mode (which is ~3.5"). I surfed a page, did a little command line hacking, listened to some tunes, and watched a movie. I found that the reduction in screen size (and resolution) was TRIVIAL and did not in any discernible way affect my enjoyment with these tasks. Of course this is personal experience.

When you think about it, given the specs the N900 has gained much more functionality than it has had removed. We can now surf in the park, take pictures of our friends, light our way with the camera flash (flashlight app, which is sure to come), enjoy content on a big external screen, enjoy a higher performance environment, take and make calls, and to what we could do before. A reduction in screen prevents none of these possibilities.

The only potential removal of functionality is the stylus, but the jury's still out on weather the device will be capacitive or resistive.

I suspect that the community will come to understand this, and love the N900. Besides the increase in capability, the only thing that's likely changed is the device name and its descriptor.


YARR!
}:^)~
HugsCorrupt

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Some common sense at last, thanks :-)

Peter is really trying to help us out here, with very large writing between the lines, which I interpreted the same way you did :

Maemo needs to move up from an experimental skunkworks operation in a dark corner inside Nokia, and become an integrated, bone fida Business Unit. Thus it needs to prove its mettle and sustain itself : at Nokia, that means selling units, lots of units, preferrably making some money along the way.

Nokia and the general consumer public being what they currently are, that probably means putting Maemo under the mass market spotlight by way of a Maemo smartphone.

Maybe a few hundred vocal, hardcore veterans on ItT/Tmo (me included, perhaps) will pass on that device because it is not a "true" Internet tablet in their eyes. But that is not a problem, not the issue : if, on the other hand, Nokia moves millions of those gizmos to the iPhone/Pre/Android target crowd (which doesn't buy Internet tablets), it means securing Maemo's continued livelihood, more developpers, more apps, more third-party deals (remember Flash and Skype ?)...

It may actually be the only chance that the new Maemo BU could maintain that little project on the side, building on maemo's new fame and its own autonomy : a more confidential, non-phone offer for the enthusiast crowd -- sort of like an Internet tablet.

Maybe I'm reading too much in there but it seems to make a lot of real-world, economic sense. Anyway, as I've already said, I'm prepared to give it time and see it through. Meanwhile, shooting the very people who bring us what little information they're allowed to provide... is not going to get us anywhere :-)

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Well all this talk about the will they wont they release a tablet.
Quote
"But what struck me during Vanjoki’s presentation was the realization that the N810 was the third of five in this product line that Nokia is in the process of releasing over several years. The first, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, was launched in May of 2005. It was targeted at “named super geeks;” the company’s goal was to sell a mere two thousand of them to specific users. The sequel, the N800, was launched in January of this year and was targeted at a somewhat broader geek segment — “prosumers” who are early adopters.

According to Tom Dunmore of Stuff.tv, around 300,000 of the earlier models were sold (surpassing the company’s projections.) But to hear Vanjoki tell it, selling units wasn’t the point."
Acourding to this review of the 2007 web 2.0 summit and internet tablets in general.

Re: N900 specs revealed
 

Really with data and voice? That'd explain oFone, but it seems early result then. Also, what type of screen, capacitive or resistive? Stylus? Dpad? Not mentioned does not mean it is there yes/no.

I think this is an exciting development, I'm looking forward to see how this competes with iPhone, Android, and Nokia N97. A Linux phone implies also certain features like PIM. Think of this: would this be the device you'd carry around to give you most features you need, and also function as a flexible gateway for other devices like a netbook/laptop/dap/digital_camera? And add to that being able to export the screen to another device? For me this would be definately a candidate.

Hmm, and, what is the other device? A netbook?

I really hope its not tied to T-Mobile. I don't like their coverage here, and I'm already on a good Vodafone contract without being tied to SIM. So I could switch from Nokia E71 to Nokia N900 right away if I could buy a Nokia N900 unbranded without SIMlock.

It isn't gone, it is far less useful. There is also notification if I understood correct, so that becomes your new starting point.

If you want to hack around this you can still use screen and then create 2 splitted windows. Works great with something like tail -f.

eading e-books is a niche, and I don't understand your workflow. You want a mobile device to be used as an e-book reader, then (for lots of reading) your screen is indeed too small in this and many other mobile hardware cases. But how would a slightly bigger screen (Nokia N8x0) compete with something like a Kindle or a netbook? Do you think that the general public will consider a device with a screen like Nokia N8x0 with a device with a screen like a Kindle for reading? And, do you think that people who enjoy e-book reading on an iPhone would not enjoy this on Nokia N900?

You could on Nokia N900 use an external screen instead. The power of a device like this lies in being easily able to extend its features (e.g. synchronisation, UPnP, USB). An example of that is a dumb device with a screen which only outputs what it gets from input (e.g. Nokia N900). This should not be too expensive while the format of the main device (Nokia N900) remains mobile & portable. In the future, it might even be interesting if it can be combined with one of those foldable screens.