Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Believe what you will. One of the guys at work here is ready to sell his iphone now and pick up the N900. :D He even JUST bought the new 3G iphone.

John P xxxxx/IT... (9:07 AM) did you get it off amazon?
Sean D xxxxxxx... (9:07 AM) nokiausa.com
Sean D xxxxxxx... (9:07 AM) amazon out of stock
John P xxxxx/IT... (9:08 AM) hmm
John P xxxxx/IT... (9:08 AM) yeah i cant do it
John P xxxxx/IT... (9:08 AM) i just got this iphone
John P xxxxx/IT... (9:08 AM) i'll wait haha

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

hey whats wrong about the 80's i love that era. You better so watch your mouth!


:)

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Depends on the type of iphone user. vain self absorbed iphone users, No. Geeky, iphone users, yes.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Man it just sounds like you now start work as soon as you wake up!
Give it 3 months and your employers will be taking it for granted :D

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

I have a bluetooth keyboard that folds up for those situations. I'm not writing code on it or anything, it'd be a nightmare to do so. I keep the bluetooth keyboard in my Jeep console so if it gets that bad and I'm out somewhere where I really got to hack around on it, I'll just fire it up and off I go.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

1: MMS (it's a very useful feature & in my case I get them from my girlfriend, so I'd expect it to have it)

2: Portrait (there'll be some portrait coming soon, but not enough for me & the day-to-day end-user)

3: It lacks phone functionalities, which normal users look for now a days. So Nokia failed at that aspect, it's just a better N810

4: No Navigator and stand-alone number keys which makes the physical full QWERTY keyboard less usable.

5: Reduced screen size comparing with N810 and the battery is a lot bit too small for this kind device.

6: Lack of Capacitive screen + with multitouch (it's a step back in technology, at least to the normal users)

Over-all, the device is a powerful machine, but it just doesn't bring it to todays expectations. The freedom + power isn't enough to sell to those people who expect more phone-power (yes, I know, phone second, etc, etc....still disappointing for most people looking for an all-in-one device)
I'd only recommend it to techies.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

He did say from an IT Professional.

Great story. Really nice to hear how you can really push this device.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

It's not too bad. And there are ctrl,alt, esc and a few other control buttons on the bottom of vi on the touchscreen. I found it somewhat of a hassle to press ctrl+a to switch windows with screen. The two keys are too close together.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Well I've NEVER listened to music heavily on phones, or given a **** about pictures and facebook and all that crap.

I call that stuff "Sheepware", stuff that everyone does which to me is a waste of time. If a phone can't vpn, ssh, telnet, ping, df, ls, vi, |, <, >, then I don't want it.

Which means I've never wanted a phone until now. :D

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Exactly - They can have my command line when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

@OP: Thanks for reminding me what its like to be an admin again instead of a code jockey. I need to get back to it.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

You asked for it :p

I try to sync my Google services (contacts, mail, calendar) via Exchange and it fails.

I can sync the contacts & calendar via Exchange occasionally but that means I then can't sync my work email up. (Maemo 5 at the moment does not support multiple exchange accounts)

Gmail via IMAP is incredibly slow. This is due to a bug that if you have a very large Inbox, it tries to process the whole thing.

I'd like to fire up my twitter app and get @ notifications when they come in, but OH WAIT, there IS NO twitter app that would do such a thing.

I'd like to set different phone profiles based on work location & home, and even when I'm asleep except right now there are 2 Profiles. Vibrate or Normal...That's it.

It would also be nice to set specific ringtones for contacts...but wait, I can't do that either.

I got a text message, I'd love to just whip it out and answer the text message with one hand by using an onscreen keyboard with possibly T9....but I can't.

These are what I would consider some normal use cases. Obviously the N900 is a small computer first and phone second. I would not consider it a true mobile device since it doesn't really cater to the fact that you have to have 2 hands to use the device. You can't just be walking down the street, pause, take out your phone with one hand, and do something with it. Nor can it handle things like email that easily, although every other device out there on the market has overcome most of the issues that come from just opening up an email.

Its not a phone, I get it, but its not really a true mobile device beyond the fact that you can sort of stuff it into your pocket.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Moderator - can you paste this into the other "I've got my device" thread?

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

It just got fun.

It was painful before, having to worry about lugging my laptop around in the Jeep with me day to day just in case I got called.

Now it's all in my pocket. It's really hard to describe just how much something as simple as having everything you do be accessible from a device that sits in your pocket can really change your mood.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

must most important of all is vlc that is coming so i can stream tv from home on the go!

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Haha all this story needs is a cool 80's theme song. I vote on this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcIK3akktLU

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

@Laughingstok

i feel you!!

i'm not a unix professional but i'm also in the it buisness so i led a very geekish live too somewhat compared to yours, and this is exactly the group of people this phone was made for in my opinion ;)

if you're a normal user expectin just another phone get an iphone. i can live with the small flaws but the features it has to offere .. there is just no competition for it yet!

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

As soon as Perl gets ported over, I've already written a simple webserver so I can host webpages off it.. if I feel so inclined. ;)

Just another example of what you can do with it. I'm sure someone will get Apache ready for it too, but the fact that I can write my own on it makes it really awesome.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

There probably already is a perl version for debian armel, it probably just needs to be optified so it doesn't fill up the rootfs.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Uh, duh...Have you not read anything published about this device? Even from Nokia? They never intended it to go to the general public, it was always designed for early adopters, techies, and developers. N900 is perfect for folks like us. (yes, I'm a Unix systems engineer as well.)

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

God:

I *love* my N900. It's a phone. And it's a cool Linux box.

I've never sent an MMS, so I don't miss that. And I surprisingly find myself not caring about portrait mode.

That said: the lack of a home button that cycles between desktop, task manager and apps is completely bizarre.

Early adopters, who don't mind very slightly unfinished software, will love this phone.

The funny bit is, people forget how unfinished the iPhone was when it was first released: no apps, no 3G, only a few apps supported portrait and landscape, limited email server support, no mms, no sms to multiple people.

I, and many others, are happy to deal with a slight lack of polish (for now), in return for an enormously capable device.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

I understand that Nokia are making sure their devices will focus more, have fewer features, but do them exceptionally well. However some of these functions I expect out of the box for a €500 phone in 2009. I certainly expect voice dialing through the head set for example. My SonyEricsson P800 had that back in 2003. So it's the phone features that are lagging behind. It's great that it's a mobile computer, but I expect it to handle the phone features really well, too. Otherwise statements such as "No compromises", as stated by Alberto Torres EVP, Solutions in Nokia's presentation to the financial community today ring hollow.

Although the next point has less to do with Nokia, and all to do with Maemo penetration, I miss running certain personal productivity apps, which currently run on WinMo, and where the developer is putting out a version for iPhone, and for Android. So I ask the devleoper, well what about Maemo? No, "We do not have Debian plans at the moment." Hopefully this will change as Maemo6 hits the market, because if it will be as good as Nokia says, it will penetrate the market really rapidly. Could there be any other reasons why developers wouldn't develop for Maemo and through Qt, extend it to Symbian? Certainly Nokia expect a mass following of developers for the Maemo6 platform. I also hope so.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Great, now i want it to arrive even more.

I've tried something similar with the fruitphone. Unfortunately neither the WIFI (frequent dropouts), nor the onscreen "keyboard" are up to the task. Can't wait to be rid of it.

Work at home day just got a lot more bedtime, oh yeah! :D

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Based on the amount of mainstream advertising Nokia is pushing for the N900, I'd say this tired old line was:
a) false
b) a weak excuse for some shockingly rough edges.

I'm in the techie crowd too so I don't mind the lack of polish so much, but "not a smartphone" is just a fig leaf to spare Nokia's (well-deserved) blushes.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

I doubt you'll see the *return* on your N900. If anything on a new Maemo 6 Platform on a new device. But time will tell.

It's just cheeky from Nokia, asking for so much money & you're getting a device with good PC-Features, but where's the basic 2003 stuff? :S! It's like 5 steps forward & 4 steps back. Pretty stupid imho, they could have taken some time on that...but oh well

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

You're just a complainer. On the one hand, you complain that it doesn't have multi-touch and on the other that it doesn't have a screen as large as the N810 ... as if your "normal" user currently expects to have both of those in the same device.

As for your problem #1, why don't you just get a new girlfriend?

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

I love this device and want to adopt it as part of the family, but the freakin' GPRS signal for weaker areas is sucky.

If you live in a good coverage area and do not plan on driving in weak areas, there is no better device.

But the N900 is a netbook with phone function. Not a phone.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

The more I play with my phone and the more I read others complaining about crap like MMS and twitter, the more I want to point them elsewhere.

This is a fluke meter for techies folks.

If you don't know what a Fluke device is, you probably shouldn't own this phone either. I guess that about sums it up.

It's a Linux box.. with a phone.

It's not a phone, with "some OS" on it.

If you don't know how to even check your phones uptime, you probably shouldn't own it. This phone is definitely targeted for people who really do some serious IT work.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

There's already an Apache webserver, not sure if its been adjusted for Maemo 5 though.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

I just love this device. I don't have it (it hasn't arrived to Portugal, yet) but I try to follow it in maemo and youtube. I'm a software developer but my company uses .Net so unfortunantly I don't have any experience in any other language. So, since (some of) you are advanced linux users, I ask: what are my options? I really like .Net framework (but I would really like to learn others) so the nearest thing would be mono... Did any of you tried to code using N900? Is it acceptable? How about UI designers, do they exist?

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Are you looking for something more than the perl that comes with

I have already run a few perl scripts - had to bring down some extras for it and would much rather it was optified but ...

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Holy crap man.. thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Hahaha, it just got EVEN better. Unbelievable.

Re: N900 review... pros and cons
 

So what, we should only praise the device from now on? What is the point of this forum then? How about if you don't want what people have to say, you just leave the thread instead? I swear, the Maemo fan boys are worse than apple fanboys

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Someone on here asked for what phone features it's missing. Someone provides a reply, and your retort is "you're just a complainer." If Nokia wants Maemo6 to be the success it painted to the fincancial community today I certainly hope they don't rely on you (as in GeraldKo) to make it happen. If Maemo doesn't acquire appeal and significant penetration of the top of the line segment and just remains a tool for system administrators and command line wizards its unlikely Nokia will continue to invest heavily in the platform. It just doesn't make business sense. We will all lose if that's the case. So at least try to be a little open minded.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Then it should be better specified for those normal users, or only sold in a "techgeek shop", which doesn't even exist. If Nokia is going all the way to incorporate a phone functionality in a PC-like phone, then they should do it properly? Because if people were going to buy an N800/N810, they knew 90% what they were going to buy. But the N900 is just confusing to those normal users (which is a lot more than the percentage of techies/geeks). You can argue as long as you want about it, it's facts. If Nokia want to keep up with the competition, they better make the next device adequate for everyone - or they will get them all sent back.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

While I agree that perhaps this should be better advertised to users, Nokia has NEVER EVER represented this phone in interviews etc as anything other than a device aimed at tech people. The responsibility for deciding what features are necessary for you BEFORE you buy the device is on the end user. A simple hour or so spent googling and reading this site would have revealed most of the shortcomings (email issue excepted and thats fixed already for the next firmware).

There is a growing trend for people to want to be spoon fed all information and to believe what THEY choose to believe rather than getting the facts.

Now if you will excuse me I have to get back to packaging up Proftpd.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

You haven't lived...

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

I'm not arguing at all with what and how Nokia has marketed the device. I don't really care. In fact, I didn't even know about this device except through this forum. I've never seen a t.v. ad for it, I've never heard anyone talk about it, I've never seen a webpage ad for it. Ever.

The only reason I knew about this device was because there was a new forum on maemo.org called "N900" and I thought, "oh sweet, they're coming out with a new device."
Then I discovered it was also a phone and knew it was going to finally have what I've always needed.

I could personally care less about what the sheep use or don't like about it. A guy comes up and shows me some cool app on his phone that makes a sheep jump higher and higher as you tap it.

I shrug and show him the perl code I'm about to execute on my phone which will go out and retrieve all the sectors from astroempires.com.

Different types of people. Cute little phone games and what outfit Sally dressed her chihuahua up in don't concern me, and I don't care about facebooking it.

The fact that I can be out camping in my Jeep, fishing by a campfire, and still be able to connect to work and control the point of sale system for over 800 stores, is what I care about.

"What, you want to work all the time?!"

No, my point is that BECAUSE of this phone, I can now DO the stuff I want to do without fear that I may be called in the middle of nowhere and have to drive back to town for some hotspot to work.

Yes, I'm that important at my company.. unfortunately. :( But because of this phone, my freedom to truly go anywhere has exploded.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

All excited upon reading your posting, I typed screen into the terminal. Not found.

Man, I was so looking forward to it.

Where are people installing screen and ssh from?

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

You can find the ssh, client and server, in the repository.


On another note, I just discovered that for some reason I can't "chmod +x file.pl"

User doesnt gain execute permissions. Hmmm.

Re: This phone is freaking amazing.. day in the life..
 

Back to the OP here, I am SO glad you chronicled all of this. This is EXACTLY why I bought one of these - I am a network manager of a major web company, and I have the need to do this kind of thing all the time.

Tell me, whats your VPN - traditional IPSEC or SSL? I admin a Juniper SSL based one today and I am curious if you can hook up to one with the N900.

Cheers

J