Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

@GA: According to your eyes, which of 3 three examples you've given does the iPhone's screenshot (i gave) above most resemble?

ps: as attila77 said: we're not talking about lack of character definitions (visible jaggies, they all use good AA nowadays anyway) but rather the physical size of the letters.

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

Here's what I ask: once you get ahold of an N900, compare the legibility of the iPhone against the N900 at the same relative font size, then get back to me.

. . . and this doesn't have anything at all to do with anti-aliasing (in fact, with a high enough DPI, you don't need anti-aliasing).

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

@GA: I think I've mentioned that point already in a previous post of mine (that the N900 will yield crisper letters at the size required for ebook reading, but I was making the point that the iphone's screen res has passed the minimum required DPI for comfortable ebook reading).

To take this issue to the extreme.. what do you think if there's a 3.5" handheld with 1920x1080 resolution? Will it be 'so much better' because it can either:

a). display the texts at the same size with much crisper detail?

or

b). display a much smaller text clearly (if you have the eyes or loupes for it) so you can fit more on screen?

We're representing a subset of the users who can't\don't need to take advantage of (b) due to its uncomfortably small size.

And I was making a point that (a) is not necessarily that much better once you've passed the minimum DPI to have the letters legible.

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

What incredulous font size would you be talking about? Some alien numbers most people won't even be using?

At a comfortable font size range (for most), the iPhone does perfectly legible text rendering - and as ysss had said, why more clarity when it's going to be just as legible (at that font size range, I must emphasize).

Yes, at times the N900 is going to be more useful when you REALLY need to zoom in on a text till the extent in your example, GA, but what are the chances of us needing to do that. For practicality's sake, the iPhone resolution for READING, is probably just the right resolution, and the N900 is just overkill.

The iPhone still has a better zooming method than N900 though.

Again, for reading purposes, do you really need such a high DPI when an iPhone-ish one can serve majority of them?

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

For you. Personally, I can't stand reading on the iPhone and, no, its DPI is not sufficient for me. Again, please go back to the post I was quoting. I believe the DPI will have an effect for that user.

And I wholly disagree with you. End of story.

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

I've had MMS-capable devices since 2004 or so, and have in total maybe sent and received five MMSs. When I've been sending photos, email has always been the better option (images don't get downscaled etc).

MMS and the other telephony-specific protocols need to die in favor of proper internet-based protocols like email and XMPP. That way you can communicate seamlessly with people regardless of whether they're in a bus with their phone or at office with their laptop.

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

I'd never used MMS before reading this thread, so I thought I'd give it a go.
It's absolutely terrible, and the phones I sent it to just had a plain message saying "go to this url to retrieve the photo" and they are new phones bought within the last 6 months.
Completely pointless.
I assume it is supposed to actually send the photo to someone's phone, but of the three phones I sent it to none of them got a photo just a url link.

In this case it is much easier just to send it to flickr/facebook etc.

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

That's the wrong comparison. It is obvious that the N900 is better than the iphone in this category. The comparison we are interested in is with the N810, in which it is just as obvious that the N900 loses.

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

The phones get the link if the network isn't aware of their capabilities for some reason. IIRC, years ago I had to send an MMS before my network would deliver incoming ones properly.

MMS is nice for certain purposes. IMHO it can only be replaced by proper IM on phones (like on N900 ;) ). Not by email or flickr.

Re: Is N900 the best smartphone Nokia ever released?
 

I agree if everyone I knew had proper IM on their phones, but most people don't. Using flickr etc. at least allows a wider audience.
I can probably get my missus hooked on an n900, but for my parents etc. getting them to use text messages is a miracle sometimes, nevermind IM.

Also isn't MMS limited on the image size? When I tried to send the MMS it "resized" it before sending it.