Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

The beauty of open source development is you can at least raise this as a bugzilla. Try and appreciate what the Maemo team have accomplished. Be glad for now that you have a decent PDF app.

Have you seen the calendar app ? Is there any other mobile calendar that compares to it ?.

How about real multitasking ? Have you seen the youtube video by mysymbian showing its multitasking power ? Is there any mobile app that can do the same ?

And the browsing ? The Video playback - at a time where other platforms are restricted in terms of codec they can play (you have to pay Archos for this, right ?), this handles divX with aplomb and resolution is top notch ? And torrent, have you seen the torrent client ? Torrent on a mobile ? wow.

Yes Maemo 5 has shortcomings and I hope these shortcomings will be addressed by the capable Maemo team.

Thank you Maemo team - I still love my Maemo 4 powered n810 and looks like you've exceeded that.

Thank you. :)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Probability was on my side. :D

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Haha...If you're coming from the N95 then you're basically time traveling into the future with the N900. I don't think you have any reasons to worry.

Most of this thread is about things not being perfect, the way they were supposed to be. In fact I am using the phone right now typing this...so it can't be all that bad :)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Actually they did :-) The first iPhone was missing a lot of what people now take for granted on it, according to numerous reports.

Therein lies the problem.

Nokia is also trying to make an open source friendly device, to tap into that enthusiasm, knowledge and skill.

"A little bit dangerous..."

Which means they needed to start a lot of things from the beginning. Or at least, they had to go back a way. They couldn't take what had taken a lot more development than you might imagine, and just drop it onto this device.

The issues that bother you are really very hard to solve and take many years to get right. Sure, you can polish one thing (like the scrolling), but then you don't finish something else.

In tapping into open source, they seem to have gone for the idea that ongoing improvement with a solid base is better than polishing the pretty bits with a weak base, because the longer term result will be better all round and make us all happy, even if this stage isn't as pretty as it could have been.

Apple went the other way: make the basic things as pretty as possible, but be quite limited underneath, and don't make everything underneath actually reliable for a few releases either :-)

Ongoing improvement is the route Apple took, too, but the way it's talked about you'd get the impression every iPhone has been perfect the day it was released.

Anyways, thanks for starting this thread. The N900 does need to be thoroughly criticised so we know what people care about and can focus on improving those in particular.

And because it's relatively open, I can say "we can improve" as a non-employee :-) You don't get that with the iPhone.

As an embedded device developer, my initial impressions (without one in my hand) are that the hardware's pretty good, and the great majority of the concerns raised so far can be fixed in software.

It remains to be seen whether they will be fixed, though. Time, attention and energy are limited. But the other platforms face that problem too. Maemo has a good chance if it excites developers to work on it - not just on apps, but core improvements. And the hardware's good enough that big improvements in the user experience are, at least, possible with software updates alone.

I agree that it may make a less good impression on "ordinary" smartphone buyers. That's unfortunate. I think Nokia's taken a gamble on releasing it in this state, and I have no idea how that's going to work out commercially or in terms of reputation. But if I worked for Nokia, I would have been pushing them to make this gamble :-)

I hope it is commercially very successful, as that'll result in more people developing for it and supporting it for longer. But it remains to be seen.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

However the N900 turns out, I think your expectations will end up a bit on the high side.

A groundbreaking device? Doubtful. It's one of several powerful phones running a version of Linux and it wasn't the first to ship.

Proved the doubters wrong? Not yet. There are still bugs that need to be ironed out. If nothing else, they proved that the doubters were right - the way it looks now, the N900 with Maemo 5 may be just a test platform for the N1000 with Maemo 6 (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Show Americans how it's done? By scrapping a major launch and then releasing a still buggy phone without much fanfare? I'd have to say no. Motorola showed everyone how it's done with the Droid. They sold an estimated 100,000 in the US in the first weekend and the first day it was available it showed up in web analytics with over 2% of all US mobile phone Internet traffic.

The N900 may turn out to be a great phone but it will always be one among many with its own strengths AND weaknesses.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

everything sucks. the only thing that rocks are socks. they keep you warm. let this be a lesson to you all.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

It's funny how when Iphone users first try a resistive touchscreen, they claim "touch is the broke!".

Resistive screens are pressure sensitive, capacitive screens are not. So you can get away with light swipes on the Iphone but with Nokia touchscreens, all but the X6 anyway, they are resistive and require different technique. Finger swipes on resistive are most effective when consistent firm pressure is applied and rolling fingerpads can mess with that consistency. That's why many resistive users simply use their fingernails. Personally, I'm fine with either screen as I find both to be quite usable in their own way. Ideally, I would prefer a multi-touch screen which won't react to the slightest of (accidental) touch but doesn't require cringe inducing pressure and can be used with any glove or stylus. I do like the glass screens found on capacitive though. :)

Maemo 5 is a merging of tablet and phone so app selection will be limited to start off (just like the Iphone didn't start with 80,000 apps).

Being that this a new platform, I'm willing to give it a chance to grow and mature. What I won't forgive is crappy build quality and OS instability. First impression videos seem to indicate a stable OS though and I'm hoping that holds true.

So the question is does it feel cheap? In my experience, I found the 5800 build quality to be disappointing whereas the N85, N97, and 5530 were ok. While I'm not a fan of the Iphone, I would rank its build quality as stellar. :)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Judging by the video posted by Megacrazy (I don't have a handset :():

1. Go to a page that's quite large, plenty of scrolling and complex layout.
2. Zoom in.
3. Scroll at high speed up and down.
4. Observe drop-outs where the rendering doesn't keep up with the scrolling.

If you can't find any I say we have a winner :-)

If it happens on some sites but not others of equal apparent complexity, I say we have a computer science problem that is fun to solve :-)

It it happens with lots of sites, that'd be a bit sad.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Calm down. :) He is just overly picky. Yes there are checkered patterns, that is because the browser prioritises to render your view right away, instead of waiting for most of the page to be rendered. Of course it will pre-render the remaining page as soon as possible, but it can't always be instant. Also, sometimes a cached rendering will be swapped out or invalidated, e.g. when you zoom in. If you scroll really fast, the browser won't have a cache yet and show you the pattern instead. However, just waiting for a second will allow it to catch up again.

Perhaps the iPhone 3GS browser is better at avoiding this, but then the iPhone browser doesn't offer you full desktop-capability rendering at near full desktop resolution.

Scrolling speed in general can be described as smooth, maybe not "silky smooth". We are talking about differences like comparing 25 FPS to 30 FPS. Calling it "jerky" would be beyond unreasonable.

It is true that playing media files in the background noticeably reduces smoothness of panning animations (we are also talking about a very minor stuttering here though, that most people will probably be hard pressed to notice). I would imagine that it would depend on the type of media being played, as some formats are more expensive to decode than others, but I haven't done any testing with this yet. This doesn't really effect the usability of the device at all, but it does slightly effect its aesthetic appeal (if you are able to notice it).

And finally, if you run too many tasks, things will start to get a little jerky of course. It doesn't mean unusable though, and everyone will have their own level of tolerance which decides how many tasks they are comfortable running at the same time. For me it is usually around six tasks, unless I have very good reason to run more than that (which is very rarely the case), as closing and opening tasks is quick and painless.

Frankly, I think it is a bit silly to pretend to speak for the "average user" at this time, when the device is actually available. Why don't we let the average user decide for themselves? If you are keeping and even enjoying the device, I find it fairly disingenuous to use catchy headlines like "yes, it sucks", which needlessly make potential users nervous.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

You forgot to mention the ultimate rock is Fox in Socks.

Kids are worth it if for no other reason than you get to read Dr. Seuss books again. :D

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

There are many more variables though. Router tech? ISP? Interference? Individual device component faults?

It isn't as simple as a handful of people experiencing poor performance of some sort and then broadly declaring "This device absolutely totally flat out sucks!!!"

Although some appear to believe that it is... :rolleyes:

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

As they say on Metafilter: Eponysterical.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

You'll love this then: http://scarabic.net/eponysterical.html

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Hey MegaCrazy - I remember you are the guy who paid $100 to take someone's place on the waiting list at the NYC store. So I believe you are for real (not a troll) and that you did not start with an agenda (although maybe you did start with unrealistic expectations). But your impressions interest me.

What I want to know is why haven't you just reflashed your device as others suggested? Can you do that and report back to us?

It seems some people are seeing the scrolling problems you mention and others are not.

From all the threads I'm reading, I am starting to think the situation is that some people are getting devices that are not functioning correctly. Other people are getting devices that are working much better. If that is the case, then you should find out rather than just assuming that every N900 has the same issues you are seeing. (Or are you just being extremely nit-picky?)

BTW, my N900 will arrive tomorrow. If mine has major issues (such as scrolling problems) like you mention, I guarantee you I will get support (probably here on the forums) and get them resolved.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

You do have to admit, MW2 failed pretty horribly for PC...I meant not just fail, but EPICFAIL :P

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Only because I like poking at people...

Yes, the original Handspring Treo, successive Palm Treos, the iPhone in all iterations, and the Palm Pre/Pixi - all without 3rd party anythings.

Yes, the Palm Pre does the same, just not with as many apps, but definitely something that can't be programmed in there in a future firmware update - whoops, shouldn't have said that ;)

Seriously... well, ok.

Browsing: iPhone and any Android device; any well RAM equipped Symbian device will also give very solid browsing experience, with a better handheld UI on the non-touchscreen ones to boot.

The Archaos Android tablet, pic a Windows Mobile device and add CorePlayer. Heck find a Palm LifeDrive and you can run a torrent app.

Functionality does not a good user experience make. Its only one part of that. For that, you (and everyone else here) are welcome.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

You'd need to solve the problem of "how to render a page faster than a user could possibly scroll, no matter how insanely complex the page layout is".

Considering the power of the N900 browser (which everyone is raving about), don't you think it's fair to cut it some slack if it occasionally needs half a second to catch up with the rendering during wild scroll-rides? :)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Does anyone know what would be causing a phone, direct from the factory, to need a reflash?

I know there was an OS update between the phones that were released before the original scheduled launch and now but do some of the sealed box phones have the old OS?

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Yup, but that means (in the posted video) you can't actually see where you've scrolled to, to stop the kinetic scrolling at the right place.

I noticed in the video that one web page was particularly slow to draw at one point in the scroll, but there wasn't much to draw. I expect that will be fixed soon, or fixed in an alternative browser.

Full desktop capability - doesn't it? The iPhone browser looks quite desktopy to me. What's missing?

Regarding resolution: yes, but on the other hand it's hardware accelerated rendering (or should be), and it turns out that resolution isn't much of a factor, because the bottleneck tends to be geometry, logic and poly/blit counts once the pixel operations are happening on high speed 3d hardware. So I'd expect the higher resolution to have little effect if the browser rendering is hardware accelerated for it's basic operations.

I agree, it's not jerky.

But (again from the video, and I appreciate Youtube adds it's own special distortion), it looks like the difference between 20fps and 50fps.

Some people cannot tell the difference at all, while others are acutely sensitive to it. It seems to be an eyesight/brain thing.

That said, are any of the other phones really that much better at scrolling in the browser? Even the last iPhone I saw (actually an iPod touch, but they are the same thing virtually) would stutter when you pushed the scrolling too hard.

The video of the ball game, assuming it's not been (insert term for photoshopping a video :)) shows the N900 can render full-screen scenes very smoothly when it's asked nicely.

I found the thread very informative and might not have noticed without the catchy title.

But I agree it may make potential users overly nervous.

I expect in the end a lot of new users won't have used an iPhone or Android phone, and won't be expecting a miracle device (after all there's not a lot of marketing for it around!), so they'll be pleased with a lot of it's nice features.

And in my experience, every phone I've ever had has been totally disappointing for the first 2 weeks while I bump into limitations and bugs, until I get used to ignoring those and using the useful bits.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

You never know....

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34973

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Very true indeed :D
As far as the web browser goes i would really want to see just simple back and forward buttons on it. Don't understand why did they brought this from S60 that i was 100% not to see. :mad: Flash performance still needs to get better and i'm confident that 10.1 will give us that. Just hoping to see it in near future. Pages drawing speed should be improved.
Other than those that i have been pleasently surprised about the browser and i do really think it's easily in the top 5 smartphone web browsers out there. Those things fixed and this will be truly amazing.

As far as rest of the phone goes i knew exactly what i was getting so no nasty problems for me, but there's lots of missing from this phone and with the hardware some performance aspects should be improved. While people want to compare Nokias past efforts with Symbian imo it's just unfair to compare very different OS and what uk based Symbian as a company was(owned by Nokia since last year) to Maemo that's in a different position than in the past inside and outside Nokia. They need to do just the same as Android no less, but wont mind if they do it faster ;) Plus i sure feel more confident about Maemo with the community around here compared to Symbian where it was really scattered around and you really where not as involved and so close to developers.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Yes, but the pages in the video didn't look that complicated. At one point, something quite simple (inside the visible area) takes half a second to appear.

That tells me that either (a) the page is very complicated but looks simple, or (b) there's scope for a nice algorithmic improvement in how the renderer decides what to draw. I'm a secret admirer of nice algorithms so it's always nice to see a potential improvement :p

One technical option might be to lower the complexity of the rendered scene when the render can't keep up - e.g. by converting letters to little squares and/or lowering the overall resolution. Then it would look very smooth, but a little blocky - better than drawing in large chunks after a delay imho. The iPhone does something like this when zooming; I don't know if it does it when scrolling.

Of course, no matter how close to perfection it gets, there will always be some difficult web page that slows it down. Same is evident on the iPhone and other mobile browser. None of them are all that great if you expect silky smooth everything,

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Yes, I think it is self-explanatory in that the scrolling looked good to me.

Don't forget - the iPhone is usually rendering pages designed for it or other mobile devices. In the N900 you are rendering full desktop web pages.

I take back what I said about your device being defective. I don't see a single thing wrong with the scrolling.

I'd like to see you post a video of the N900 and iPhone side by side and make sure the web page is exactly the same (not just the URL - the actual served up content). Make sure the CSS is the same, etc. Maybe create a test page and save it to disk.

I wager that the N900 will easily outperform the iPhone.

Yeah, I didn't see a thing wrong with the video you posted.

What am I missing?

BTW, I will have my device tomorrow. I'll test this stuff too.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Haha. With a maximum socket accept queue length of 1, just opening the port to the outside world would have bringed PalmOS to its knees.

Well how is hardware accelerated rendering going to help pushing pixels to screen? Not even for scaling hw acceleration helps (since, heh, scaling the rendered image would make fonts look blurry).



You all seem to treat "smooth scrolling" like the most important thing in the universe. If that's the case, I'm sure framerate can be tuned -- even by yourself.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

It took me two or three weeks to come around to liking my N900. In the beginning, I had a strong urge to put it back in its box and carry on using my N810. Now I couldn't go back.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

I'm a happy owner of an iPod touch 2G, but I'm having a hard time finding anything more ironic than visiting apple.com with my touch. It's one of the worst scrolling experience's one can have. Yet when I cruise apple.com with my n8x0's, the scrolling is like... Well, you know.

I'm glad to hear that people are generally happy with the n900's browser. I personally have no intention of touching microb with a ten foot pole. But worry not people, I'm guessing in the relatively not too distant future a webkit-based browser will be coming to an n900 near you. Throw in some user stylesheets and maybe a host's file, and you'll be blissfully gliding through the Web like Fred Astaire. I can almost hear the music.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

And isnt that exactly what Nokia has been saying from day one: this is step 4/5, this is NOT end user ready.

You americans with your iPhone price comparations... N900 is FREE here in Finland - with contract.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

No Problem. I will do a video of the 3GS vs the N900 scrolling this very thread. It will be pretty embarrassing mainly because the amazing browser on the N900 doesn't even render this site properly.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Somehow I missed the "this is NOT (or even not) end user ready" on Nokia's website or in their press releases. :rolleyes:

Had they sold it as a new Nokia Internet Tablet, a follow-on to the N810 with phone capabilities and an upgraded OS, the smartphone people wouldn't be on here complaining about the phone features. OTOH, they wouldn't be buying it either. I wouldn't be surprised if the N900 sells more units between now and the end of the year than the N800 and N810 (combined) did during their entire production run.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

I must have the super amazing version, because once again...

:rolleyes:

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Also do a little different experiment. Get an outdated video card. Run a game on it in 480p. Then run it in 1080p. Notice the difference?

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

This could be a case of Flash and the actual Youtube source, but Droid seems to scroll a lot smoother on the same site. update: Not so sure there is any Flash on that page. Tried several time after clearing cache. In relation to the same page, Droid scrolls smoothly like the entire page is one smooth sheet. No sign of lag.

Again, not long to test myself, since my N900 is being delivered tomorrow.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

bla bla bla ... and the amazing iphone can't multitask, can't play divx videos, can't play ogg files, doesn't support flash, can't send files via bluetooth, can't transfer videos/music without using itunes, no skype calls over 3G, no bittorrent client available, the instant messaging clients for the iphone are crappy and aren't as nicely integrated as on the n900, no adblocker for safari, you have to pay for tethering and so on ... :D

different users different needs. you prefer to scroll like a lunatic, i prefer a bittorrent client. :D

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

These guys seem to like the N900. They think it kicks the pants off of HTC HD2 and Motorola Droid.

(Also, Megacrazy, non-smooth scrolling is not normal behaviour. Your speed issues don't make sense to me at all)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Even if the iPhone 3GS can smoother scroll the page i don't get your point. A bunch of guys explained:
1) It's only the first version of firmware (i'm talking about the official ones) - so it will for sure get better (vs. iPhone's 3.0/1)
2) There is a huge difference in resolution between iPhone's and N900's screen which makes iPhone easier to scroll.
3) As we all saw your video nobody got your point, nothing sucks there except your wish to make it looks like it sucks. You're scrolling like a madman in very zoomed page and that nobody is going to do.

I think you expected iPhone like capacitive screen and smoothness^2 effects. Maybe you made a mistake choosing a phone that isn't made for you. And maybe you should admit that to yourself rather than trying to make us believe that it sucks.
Because 18 of 20 pages of this thread is about "scrolling that isn't like on iPhone, it's not 24fps, it's 16.8fps and it hurts my eyes!!". On the other hand i agree that problems with making a playlist, no email search etc are real and should be addressed to Nokia for a solutions as soon as possible.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Humm, you're not the only one :rolleyes:

Council privilege ? :D

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

I like the image. We have a few trolls around here. But Megacrazy isn't a troll.

The guy paid $100 to take someone's place on the waiting list at the NYC Nokia store! He seriously wanted the N900. Maybe his expectations were too high, but he's not a troll IMO.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

May I ask why you disabled commenting in your video ? Oh well you don't have to answer though, it's your choice after all.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Really? Well if you pay that much and build up the device so much in your mind you are willing to do anything to get it - disappointment is inevitable