Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

The headphone jack and the usb placing is rather annoying with Landscape mode. Basically if you charging the device and listening to the music at the same time while texting someone then its totally a mission. My battery is nearly 12hours long now. To be precise its 9hours and its down to 35% with my extreme usage. lol. Wifi, checking emails, text messaging none stop, play some videos, some music, some game, take some video and pictures (a few) constantly learning how to use it.

It's doing pretty well I guess. This is my first charge by the way.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

There are a couple of things that are still sub-standard compared to my N800, particularly that I haven't yet found a way to completely replace how I use fit-to-width mode with the OS2007 Opera browser (the N900 browser is good for gmail in browser, double-tapping when reading a message, but the only way I've found to read slashdot/palm is to temporarily increase the font size).

But other than that -- I like the N900 more and more, as I find how to do stuff, and getting the right apps installed (eagerly waiting for the upcoming Nagios application). It's way better than I thought it would be. I basically got one so I could still hang around here and be of some use (can't repackage stuff for Maemo 5 if you've only got an N800! :)). And as I don't have any battery issues either it's all great.

What I'm missing most at the moment is email, which I simply can't use at the moment because the current version can't download headers only. No email is the major missing point. I read private mail via gmail, but I need to read work mail too, which needs imap and a better mail client than what's currently available. When that one gets fixed I'm close to 100% -- Maemo mapper is next in the waitlist, but I always have my N800 for that anyway.

Happy camper here! :D

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

Hit Ctrl+Shift+i to get the browser to reflow the text. A button or context menu item for this would be much easier though.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

i love it to pieces..

i have an iphone, and the usability on the go with the nokia (sitting in traffic etc)- isnt close to the iphone..

i have spent hours trying to fix the reboot problem- but its done now -

i have installed the vgba emulator- and that took me ages as well. the feeling when the code started running down the sreen was great..

i am enjoying this machine, its nice to actually learn about stuff,

in a wierd way i am glad that i had problems(emulators wnet from the app manager, power reboot problems)- as i feel as though i have accomplished something..(still feel abit conned mind!)

i am gonna start playing about with linux because of this phone- so all is good,

things i love

the open source os
the geeky side of the phone
the media player and the fm transmitor
the phone/skype intergration
the im/text intergration
the screen is gourgous- not missing the capactive screen at all- its also nice to have a really precise creen for apps that need it(htc hd2's problem- a reason why i sent it back and got this phone)
the customisation of the home screens
the community
the phone feels solid
the full browser

things i dont like
as a phone not great- but adequate
feel abit conned (and have had to buy another battery)- by doing the reboot fix costs me a power save mode.
more apps needed(esp games)
emu's not running perfect yet
would love to get my work email pushed to my phone.
gps software could be better- although its as usable as the iphone's
needs a dedictaed iplayer(as it cant handle the full browser one)

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

Thanks! That worked. Now when I zoom it reflows.

But it's the most tricky key combo I've tried yet.. I just don't have the fingers for it. Button or config for this would indeed be much better.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

I had high hopes for fit.text.to.screen=true in about:config, but it didn't work for me. I even tried rebooting :mad:

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

Sadly enough i cant dig much into the "geek" part of the phone, but i got mine today, and i'm SO happy =D.

It took some time getting used to having to put abit more force when i press, most likely still will. But yeah, i love it to bits =D
and it's working just fine, no problems so far xD

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

I will be getting my n900 on Saturday and had just one quick question.

I text more than I talk, so was wondering what is the easiest way to get to sms on the N900? I'm use to my E71 where I type a contact name and the contact appears along with the options of calling, texting, etc...

If I place a contact shortcut onto my homescreen, can I set it to do either automatically call or text pending on the contact once pressed? Or does it give me a list of options once I press the icon?

Thanks guys!

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

Click on the multi task virtual button, If you have a text message waiting for you then you should see it there. Else create a short cut on the screen. tab on an empty space area on the screen, the configuration setting will appear at the top. Click on the task bar then add short cut to Conversation.

Done! :) tha'ts what I did. I add the short cuts to my home screens. Do not put too many on your main home screen. Else it will slow you down when you start up the device.

Lol take a look at my first owner impression :D

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

Just got mine, and overall very nice product, better put together than feared, feels better than my N97, even though I like the slider mechanism better from the N97.

Just sync 1608 songs with WMP11, impressed with the speed, with my N97 it just took ages, but now done in very short time.

Keyboard is very good, better than on N810, but I still like the one on N97 better, not for the feal but for the d-pad, and really miss long press for sybols/numbers, strange they removed that feature since it was on the N810.

Anyway just happy with my new companion, nice to get a speed boost from the sometimes choppy N97, and a real WEB2.0 browser in the pocket, man this thing rocks!

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

Impressed with drag and drop 6gigs of music from my pc over usb and it took under ten minutes i think (well it was quick). Got mad about the battery draining really fast when I went out to do laundary and took it outside for the first time.
So i got rid of tune wiki widget. Adjusted omweather to check only once a day. Turned off wifi connect and checking, Got rid of ap news widget. I'm just trying to eliminate everything and take it one step at a time to find out where the drain is coming from.

Then i noticed I was doing something stupidly obvious this whole time.

FM transmitter widget says "on" by default. That is a button not a notification.
I thought it was a notification and i kept tapping it thinking i was turning the transmitter off because after i tapped it, it said off.
So first time i took it outside i had the transmitter on whenever the earplugs weren't in.

Mediaplayer widget is not working for me. When i tap play it won't play the song but next song works.

I keep trying to put the stylus in the upper right because that is where N810 had it and it's a convenient place for it.

The keyboard; the keys are small for me (I'm 6'1") and there is no shift on the right hand side (like N810) which means I have to be careful not to drop it when i need to hit shift or control and a character on the left hand side of the keyboard because it's an akward motion for me but i like the sure feeling of "I pressed it" unlike the non feeling i got with N810 keyboard (Many times i thought i pressed a key and i didn't) there is more travel (up down motion) in the keys on this keyboard which i like.
I cant decide if i should cut my finger nails off or keep them for the keyboard.

Love the crisp screen, love the browser, love the way it operates most of the time with the multitasking, love the headphone jack on the short side, i want the N810 kickstand back, love the accelerometer playing bounce that was fun, really like the high speed bluetooth and usb, my microphone works, phone call quality was good on edge, omweather loaded my weather from gps right away, like the 4 desktops, I like how they give you more than 4 choices of loopable wallpapers so you could at least get a chance to play with the concept before going online and hunting down more, I liked how I can stick wesbites as shortcut widgets on my desktops, I like being able to move widgets ovr to the next desktop when your in edit desktop mode, I don't like how it is less responsive in the corners of the screen because a lot of controls end up in those locations, i like typing file: into the browser and seeing every file in the system with nothing hidden if i need to, i can live with backspace to go back one page in the browser because i understand we are trying to maximize real estate.

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

hi all .. my first impressions:
got it about 5 days back, been busy with it, and am very happy with it. No dead-pixel/reboot problems. Big Thanks to nokia for giving it a very nice hardware.
As someone mentioned, charging cable and headphones plugged in at the same time makes typing a bit difficult, but I somehow learned to use it without a problem.
Loved the app manager, and being able to browse the nokia repositories with it, found lots of apps, its fun to download and use them.
Calendar is awesome ! Thanks nokia and the devs who worked on it!
One thing: kinetic scrolling is good, but sometimes i do feel a need to have a solid scrol bar that I can touch and drag because sometimes some item in the list gets clicked unintentionally and it is sometimes annoying to go back and display the list again and than again start the scrolling by touch.
Camera is gud, but in the start I just was just not pressing the capture button half way to give it time to focus, leading me to think "hey the quality sucks whats wrong with this 5 mp thing", than found out "oops, I didnt know how the focus thing works", and now pretty happy with the camera :) ... and yea i'm new to using cameras :p
Stock heaphones that came with n900: Are they the worst on the planet or I dont know how to use them too (just like I didnt know how to use the camera capture button) ? Because read someone saying he foudn them to be the best compared to anything else he tried. Thats not what my experience is with them. I have my own Sennheiser PX100 and they are working excellent with n900, so they r my primary ones. Will donate the default headphones to someone.
Keyboard: I havnt used any mobile keyboard device in the past many years, so I am not used to some functionality that I would want on the keyboard, the idea to me is fresh and I'm happy with n900's kb. Although my friend has n97 and I have used it 2 or 3 times, and I'm glad the keys on the n900 r better. I know n97 has a d-pad, have never used it so I dont know what conveniences the d-pad brings.
It was pretty strange when I found out that not being able to check my balance through *135# is a bug :p hehehehe, one friend laughed at me, I'm not telling anyone about that again :p
Battery!!!!!!!!!!!! :::: ok this is the ONLY problem that I feel is a problem for me. I think my n900 is not giving me more time than my laptop with its 9 cell battery, ie max 4 hours I guess. In my experience, a continous use of device, which means that the whole time wifi is connected, browsing constantly (4 or 5 windows open max), downloading stuff, chatting (pidgin also logged in other than the default gmail client), terminal open, notes open, headphones plugged in and sometimes listening to songs, bluetooth OFF, GPS OFF, FM transmitter off, etc, and in 2 hours its like from full to less than 30% or 20% I guess. Its an inconvenience for sure, battery should have worked better. (editing: just found out a post related to bad battery performance due to too much switching between 2.5g and 3g http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38380&page=2 ... and since my cell switches between 2.5g and 3g so going to try this and update the post.)
Performance: Let me say this: On one hand, I'm simply amazed at what this device's response time is, compared to any other cell phones I have used, and specially the fact that it feels like a computer and not a mobile device with the level of multitasking. On the other hand, I havnt found it to be perfect like I sense from some ppl's comments here. For example, while listening to songs on the headphones, the sound often lagged when I have 4 or 5 windows of the browser opened (and few other apps ofcourse), specially browser version of gmail, and I had to close the media player because I just thought the media player is slowing down the browser or vice versa, I cannot listen to songs when due to something the sound is just gone for a second or two and comes back, its not a nice experience that way.
Lock Unlock button: very very very nice to have it :) its perfect.
Screen Shots: its soooo easy to convince a friend to buy this device hehe, while chatting to them I just take few screen shots and email them, and they r like "damn awesome, I'm buying this". One friend was cursing his xbox that he recently purchased cuz now he dont have funds to buy n900.
4 desktops: lovely idea, keep the innovations coming Nokia!
Maemo Community: loving it :)
The idea of having so many apps as free and open source software has unlimited potential!
Screen: pretty awesome screen, and thanks to the designers for keeping the screen free of any buttons, thats how I imagine a tablet's screen to be. Its beautiful.

(have i used too many exclamation marks and smilies? :p )

Nokia is an amazing company, the best company to work for :) .. Nokia has clearly taken the mobile market to the next level.
Love linux!

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

Got mine for Christmas and my wife hates it already (spending more time with it than her).
:D

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

hi friends. i am going to buy a n900 very soon from USA. however i have one question. kindly clear the doubts...

is the n900 only available at nokia online store and flagship stores or it is available at all the nokia stores in the USA?

the problem is that there are only two nokia flagship stores in the US. one in new york and the other in chicago. i may not be able to go to either of these place. i will be staying in washington only. that's why i wanted to know if the phone is available at local nokia stores in washington or i will have to purchase it online only...

friends from US may help me out here

Re: N900 Owners Thread (First impressions, ...)
 

best bet is to buy it online...amazon.com, buy.com, dell.com or newegg.com etc...personally amazon is the best (30 day money back guarantee)

New N900 User - my experience after 24hrs usage
 

Okay so I just want to share how I feel about the N900 coming from a Blackberry Bold 9000.



What I was worried about before purchasing:
-Resistive touchscreen, despite several posts/articles about how responsive it it.
-Keyboard size/layout
-All the negative posts here from people (despite the positive ones, negative ones seem to stick in my mind more).


My Impressions:

The touchscreen really is great, I found the scrolling to be fast, and the response excellent.

I don't really like the keyboard on the N900, I find it awkward to use compared to the blackberry, especially with the headphones plugged in. BUT, having the touchscreen means I use the keyboard less. If the keyboard slid out a tad more it would be more comfortable, as I find my fat thumbs hitting the screen edge when typing on the top row. The spacebar position, and symbols were easy to get used to.

I can't really comment on battery life since I have had it for only 1 day.

I really like the ability to make sip/skype calls built-in. I am just waiting for them to release the bugfix for dtmf tones during a skype call.

The screen looks very nice, the blackberry I have also had a "high-res" screen for its time, but I like the N900 screen just as much if not more.

FM Tuner worked well with headphones connected and the FM app in the repositories.

I am in Canada with Rogers (waiting for WIND possibly) so Using EDGE was not as bad as I initially thought it would be. My blackberry was on the 3G rogers network. I was able to watch youtube videos without waiting for it to completely load (it loaded as I played it on 2.5g)

Browser is amazing, I find the fennec one to be too slow right now. It is faster on 2.5G than my blackberry browser is on 3G!

It is a bit thick compared to what I am used to, but still fits in my pocket fine.

The video performance is a lot better on the N900 than my bold 900 which I believe runs a 624mhz xScale.

I am disappointed the ovi store is not available yet, but hopefully it will be soon.

Just to put things in perspective, when the Bold 9000 from RIM was released it had tons of problems. There was no app store for blackberry at the time. The battery life was horrible. It was dropping a lot of calls when switching 3G->2G. It would reboot randomly.. I could go on, but you get the idea.


So I am pretty happy with my N900 and fairly impressed with what it can do.

Re: New N900 User - my experience after 24hrs usage
 

Your echoing my opinion. Though one feature I love and no one mentions is 32gb of storage. I have 48gb with the mirosd (+16). So it replaces my ipod. I love ipods but hate itunes...

Re: New N900 User - my experience after 24hrs usage
 

That is true, that is a lot of space for a phone. The reason I didn't mention it is that I never stored much music on my other phone as well. I tend to listen to internet radio, which works quite well on the N900, on the blackberry I was using FlyCast which chewed through the battery like crazy. I'm not sure how the N900 does with this, but I am glad it is built-in to the media player.


Some other stuff:

e-mail: this is where the blackberry is truly king. I like the blackberry's email a lot more than the N900, but it does push email. The interface and keyboard make it very nice to send emails etc.


Multi-tasking: The blackberry can do this as well, though not as well imho.

Storage: My Bold had a very limited amount of space for apps (128mb to share with the OS I believe). and 1GB flash memory for pics etc. With the blackberry there is no way currently to install apps onto a memory card or even the 1gb internal memory. While the N900 from what I read is limited, it is possible to use other memory for apps manually right now (this is the optification If I understand correctly?). Both phones can handle memory cards

Apps:
On the blackberry I used the following apps a lot:

FlyCast for internet streaming - Built-in on N900

Viigo for RSS Feeds - Also Built-in on N900 though does not have a list of common feeds

Beejive - Instant Messaging app - Also built in on N900 and expandable to more protocols easily

Google Maps - This is most likely a big one for most people, it really is a great tool, I can get my bus times here in Ottawa using it. Ovi Maps so far seems a bit more sluggish. I know you can go to maps.google.com but it is not the same as a dedicated app for it.

Obviously the built in email+sms etc is great on the blackberry (some bugs with the new OS 5, but there are work arounds).


I actually had one of the openmoko phones for a while, but found it very slow and hard to use. I use linux on a daily basis, but It was very far behind, with no real road-map of an improved device.


I wish there was a better notification system on the N900 for missed calls, emails, voice mail etc. I know this has been talked about a lot.


Again, the N900 in my opinion is a great phone and offers a pretty good experience out of the box and with a few app installs it is a lot better.

I was actually in the US last week for new years and my girlfriends phone has UMA (calls over wifi basically). Unfortunately Rogers blocks non-canadian ISPs for UMA... Now that I have the N900, there is nothing Rogers can do to stop me (not technically uma, but sip/skype)!

Thanks for moving my post, and sorry for not posting in the existing thread.

Re: N900: The First Impressions Thread
 

Update, apparently I was unaware that after disconnecting from wifi and going to the browser, it automatically connected again.

So the above mention of network speed on edge was flawed.

It is pretty slow on edge (not a device problem, but a network one). and youtube is painfully slow lol.

First impressions of the N900 from a new owner =)
 

I mainly wanted to write this as a message to people browsing this forum considering whether or not to buy the Nokia N900. I have had this device for over 2 days now and I'm absolutely amazed by it. Here's a little about myself so you can get a better picture:

-College student
-No programming background or experience thought I have toyed around with Ubuntu
-I am quite a tech/gadget enthusiast

I was looking to upgrade my phone (a crappy Razr) and wanted something different from everyone else (ahem.. iphone). I also wanted something with a good camera so I had also considered the N86 but I just felt like the N900 had so much more to offer (even though the N86 might have a better camera).
I found this forum and spent much time reading and debating. I finally decided to order the N900 from Dell SB (which btw I had no problems with despite all the complaints). Received the phone 2 days after i ordered it. I did have some cold feet right after I ordered it due to all the complaints about bugs, random rebooting, etc. However, I luckily have no major problems with the phone. Theres some minor bugs here and there (i.e. some duplicate folders, gmail is a little slow, no USSD dialing) but nothing that would make me consider returning it. There have been reports about dead pixels and I unfortunately have some. It doesnt really bother me since its in the top left corner and I can only see it if the screen is black.

Now on to the good stuff...
-The web browsing is second to none, I have played around with many other phones (iphone, htc hero, etc.) and it just cant compare to the N900. I pretty much can load up any website I want and view the entire content.
-The screen is gorgeous. Just watching the "9" trailer included for the first time left me in awe.
-Battery life is decent, managed to record a 3 hour lecture and use the browser the whole day at school with about 20% left over. I'm hoping it'll improve after updates and after the battery goes through a few cycles.
-I have much much more but I'll stop here

For you people that are still on the fence, go buy an N900. I think there are a lot less defective units than this forum makes it seem. I would have to agree that this device is for someone who likes to tinker with their phones. The UI isn't as simple as say the iphone which I think is due to the fact that the N900 is literally like a micro laptop - theres so much to customize.

EDIT: For those of you concerned about the typing, I'm a pretty big guy (6'2" 230 lbs) with big hands I have no problem at all typing on the keyboard.

Re: First impressions of the N900 from a new owner =)
 

"Battery life is decent, managed to record a 3 hour lecture and use the browser the whole day at school with about 20% left over. I'm hoping it'll improve after updates and after the battery goes through a few cycles."

HOW have you got this good battery life

Re: First impressions of the N900 from a new owner =)
 

-I dont use any widgets
-My phone is on GSM only (im on AT&T)
-I turn off wifi when im not using the phone
- I turn down the brightness a little (which btw is good for me since it makes it harder to see the dead pixels)

I should clarify a little also, by "the whole day", I mean from 8am until around 6 pm, I just charged the phone when i got home.

Re: First impressions of the N900 from a new owner =)
 

i know some do

i dont get anything like that- i am just annoyed

Re: First impressions of the N900 from a new owner =)
 

I'm getting about 12-18hrs., depending on how much browsing I'm doing, on T-Mobile USA 3G, and being logged into WiFi "all day" (I work from home). I have (2) POP3 clients, and Gmail updating every hour, along with OM Weather updating every hour. I also am logged into my SIP client and Skype.

Once my girl gets back to the states tomorrow, I won't need to be logged in to any "VoIP/IM" accounts...hopefully that will get me over the 24hr. barrier, even though I don't see much processor, nor any data activity, per Conky.

Re: First impressions of the N900 from a new owner =)
 

My story is identical to yours, except the dead pixels. I have received my device in perfect order, and I'm really happy about going with Nokia. I kinda swayed between Droid and the n900 after seeing how many users had problems with their devices, but in the end I'm happy I made the right choice. I simply love this device! (it's silly to just call it a "phone")

Battery life is pretty much the same for me. I don't need to use 3G since I have no data plan in my subscription; also I always keep WiFi on "on demand" setting, and the same GPS.

All I can say is that if you're a techie, then you're going to love the n900!

Re: First impressions of the N900 from a new owner =)
 

I noticed leaving it logged into a network either wifi or 2G drains the battery much faster even if it is not actively being used. I've seen battery life go from 18 hours or so to 2+ days if I only connect to 2g manually when needed. It's too bad though would like to leave my IM running in the background and still get 1 day + of battery life...

Re: N900: The First Impressions Thread
 

Threads merged.

Re: N900: The First Impressions Thread
 

Hi cmolson

I did not know the Bold had so many issues, back in 2008 I was looking at getting a Blackberry Bold, I remember it got really good reviews and people were amazed by the screen quality. I ended up getting a Nokia E71 but always wondered how things would have been if I got the Bold :p

The only thing I really miss from my E71 is of course the battery life which was amazing. For now I am struggling to get through a full day if I leave my 2G or Wifi running in the background all the time. I wouldn't mind taking it off and increasing battery life alot but then I would lose out on my IM connectivity :(

Re: N900: The First Impressions Thread
 

ditto on the E71. I often wonder is it the actual "battery" that makes the E71 last 60hrs on 2G with a continous connection to gtalk+skype (via fring) or is Symbian crazy optimized?

I'm lucky to get a 24 hours under 2G (switch to GSM only) with continous gtalk+skype on the N900.

Re: N900: The First Impressions Thread
 

Super ditto! Indeed I would get ridiculous battery life on the e71 dunno what voodoo they did there lol

Re: New N900 User - my experience after 24hrs usage
 

A set of Bluetooth headphones would address this. I like the Nokia BH-214 since I can connect my own choice of earphones to it. Note that Bluetooth and streaming music over WiFi have contention problems and the music may pause a lot.

As a side note, you can hook the pod bit of the BH-214 up to your computer speakers or stereo. This gives you nicer sounding music while you still have the N900 in hand for other uses.

Re: N900: The First Impressions Thread
 

Here's my impression after using for good couple of weeks. I apologize in advance if i'm being a little bias on my phone. But again, I think i'm a lot less bias than the other techncial reviews out there online who does not use Linux based products in their day to day life.

Overall:
I LOVE my phone, really responsive, space is almost endless (wait until another phone with this kind of capacity...).

The good:
I don't want to put too much word to discribe this part. Afterall, I don't want to be a typical ***** kissing user of the device.
The maemo 5 OS: Being a everyday linux user, and you give me a phone with full linux support and environment to fuss around, i'm game. :)

Speed: LIGHTENING Fast! that's while i'm play EightyOne (Sudoku clone), playing music, and also doing texting like 5 people.

memory size: It feels like i can download the universe (in a mobile perspective) into this phone. With a 16GB ext card, this phone can store more data than a couple old computers i have at home already.

Hardware architecture: one word to describe will be AWESOME. the OpenGL ES make this phone that much stronger in the GUI display. And a couple games of Quake3 while waiting for people make this phone worth while already :)

Software Support: Although alot of people on the web is critizing how the app system does not compare to the fruity phone or the robot phone system. What I would say to those critics are A) You don't know where to get the good stuff and B)You are paying too much. Yes, I got to admit there's less apps.. but we are not talking about USEFUL apps. Who cares if my phone doesn't give me a fake lighter which I can play with?

Music format support: Having OSS support and FLAC support on my phone, I can listen to lossless music on my phone, and it's DRM Free as well.

Device space availbity: The phone's space is easily accessible as a massive storage drive. I don't need to download any I am so hippy Music player to sync stuff on my phone.



The bad:
Keyboard - I do not mind the keyboard keys itself, but as a hacker and a guy that lives in the terminal world, there's things that is lacking on the keyboard.
Here's some of the keys that is really useful that is missing on the keyboard: ~ | ` < >.
I can't even do proper debugging in the terminal because of this, the way to fix this is either use the bluetooth keyboard patch or ssh into the phone with a full environment, which is still a pain in the butt.

FM Transmitter - This is a well known issue, I think we can almost dismiss this feature altogether. I was really excited that I got it working like the UI developer demo on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n99S8iMYKRY) The catch here is that it only works the way the UI developer had shown, which is place on the speedometer, when car is idle. It doesn't even get the channel once I start my engine!

OpenSSH server - the ssh works fine when I am trying to ssh in as localhost (no duh!). When I try to ssh in from any full computers, it works but sometime the server is not responsive, it just stuck in some lala land for no reason. This delay may sometime be more than a 5 minutes or so! I don't think this is a phone specific thing but it's worth mentioning I guess.

No voice recognition phone book - Living in a suburban area around Toronto, driving is like a manditory thing. Also with the new cellphone laws in Ontario, it's a pain in the butt to call someone with this phone while driving. Not to mention if you put lock code on the phone, to call someone will take like a good minimum 10-15 seconds total. That's if you have the number memorized by heart. I hope some 3rd party addon will be available later on this.

Other "Undocumented features" worth mentioning:
Headset/Headphone system: It's a hit and miss with this one. If you have a physical headphone for music listening on, and also a bluetooth headset for phone, it's virtually impossible to distingish which is which for the media player. On the other hand, the sound quality of whoever call you is that much nicer because again, you are listening to it with a really nice headset which is meant for music...

Battery life: much less than the n810 for sure. But again, system is just like a millionth time more sophisticated, shorter life is expected. I got a spare battery and that just fixes this problem right away.

Unfortunately the wait was not worth it in my view
 

I was looking forward very much to getting an N900. So much so I bought one directly from Nokia rather than waiting for operators in the UK to include in their portfolios. Was the wait worth it? Disappointingly NO.

The device is well built, feels robust and has a great display. Unfortunately it is clear this device has been rushed out and the usual care and attention to detail we expect from Nokia seems to have been bypassed. Putting aside the bells and whistles that proclaim much the underlying device has some significant problems. At this point I can hear the developers going "idiot!", "nutter" and much more however for real market penetration, which a new device needs you can not afford to have a device purchased on the 1st, and dead on the 9th. After resets daily (4-8) the device shut off and would not recover. I am still waiting for a replacement! Seems Nokia are happy to take £500 of my money but in no rush to return it.

Enough of that however. What of the device:

It is not a good phone, it does not react and provide good basic user experience for POTS. Basics such as a search facility when entering contacts for a phone call are missing. I have over 2000 contacts. Can you imagine how long it takes to find the one I want!

Web experience is good, intuitive and simple to use.

Mail set up good however I am amazed the unit supports Exchange 2007 and not 2003. This is really a very curious omission for a device that is going to be attractive to the corporate market. Why!!!!!

Basic USB and sync capabilitiers are missing which make the use of the device a challenge. Whislt those of you who are developers, or techno types will probably accept this. The vaste majority of users will find it a bad user experience and taint the reputation of Nokia (with some justification).

For my part, there is much Synbian need to address as their platform becomes blooted and slow however my experience has always been of a reasonable degree of stability for new devices. Certainly more than for this device. Even the first R380s felt more like a phone. Keep in mind the phone is a very personal piece of technology. The users expectation is for far greater reliability and privacy. Any device that comes with a "bluescreen of death" reputation will not recover, which would be a shame in this case as I think the underlying platform and capability is their. It seems to be let down by premature release and inadequate testing and integration.

So, I have said my piece, let the hords come forth and call me all sorts of names for criticising their long awaited baby.

Re: Unfortunately the wait was not worth it in my view
 

orange box is back with a new user name.
too many coincidences in the writing style

Re: Unfortunately the wait was not worth it in my view
 

"purchased on the 1st, and dead on the 9th. After resets daily (4-8) the device shut off and would not recover. I am still waiting for a replacement!"

... if you only had one device and by your own admission you never got it to work properly, how on earth do you expect us to take your "review" seriously?

That's like someone buying a rotten apple and then saying that all apples are bad.

Re: Unfortunately the wait was not worth it in my view
 

You say you have over 2000 contacts... Firstly - why? Secondly - can ANY phone handle that in a reasonable way?

Re: Unfortunately the wait was not worth it in my view
 

VERY orangebox-esque...

Re: Unfortunately the wait was not worth it in my view
 

You know you can start typing a name with the keyboard when you are in the contacs list, right?

Besides, this is not a device for the average user, and Nokia has never claimed that either. It's a device for people who like to tinker, play around, find solutions.

EDIT: 2003 server support was added today. (your valid complaints are decreasing in number:p)

Re: Unfortunately the wait was not worth it in my view
 

You don't even need to do that. You can start typing on the desktop and it will automatically open the contacts list at that letter.

I've just done a video tutorial explaining it, will upload it now.

Re: Unfortunately the wait was not worth it in my view
 

Just start typing (when the "Select contact" dialog appears). It filters as you type.

Why indeed... but 2003 support was added via an update today.

I wouldn't use Nokia's PC sync software even if it existed, but I do wish for better google calendar sync.

You're right that the N900 has some rough edges compared to 'other' smartphones, but many of these are being actively worked on and it has some amazing advantages.

I did my research, bought it, tried not to be disappointed by the limitations which I -knew- were present, and am still mostly blown away.