Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

We have not seen anything yet. Smartphoners expecting high-end phone function will swarm on this board like fruit flies to spilled Pepsi. ;)

People can laugh now, but you might not be later ;)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Commenting in the videos is disabled because I don't want the usual iPhone forever vs you're a mactard debate. Simple videos take them as you may.

2 more videos are added. The purpose of these videos is to compare browser rendering and general user experience. Cut the comments about fanboys, trolls etc.

1. iPhone 3Gs running maemo.org and engadget while a podcast is playing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcHOd-iEEJM

2. N900 running maemo.org and engadget while music is playing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEnRTbRqYwg

The browser crashed in the video so let's see who's trolling.

A couple of things I have noticed about the Maemo browser:

1. Larger text makes it work smoother (less text on the screen to render at 1 time I assume)
2. Scrolling up produces more checker patterns than scrolling down.
3. Seems to be slightly faster after the site has been sitting there for a while.

If I have time I will add windows mobile to the mix as well...which will be extremely embarrassing.

Don't complain about video quality because they are still 'processing' whatever that means :)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Gotta tell you man its sounding more and more like your device is the problem - have you thought about reflashing it?

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Also try to stay on topic. This is not a debate about me or my expectations. I have 8+ smartphones laying around on my desk so I would say that my expectations were VERY correct.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

And you are basing this on what? Let's see a video on your device going to the same sites and I'll think about flashing it. Do you even have your phone yet? hmmm.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Stay classy. It pays off at some point in life

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

The fact that no one else is reporting these issues except one first time poster no one ever heard of before and the fact the several other people have in fact reported the exact opposite of your experience. But hey man whatever you do doesnt really affect me. You come onto community forums with a post titled to annoy people off the bat. You refuse to listen to anyones offers of help or suggestions - preferring instead to waste your time making mini dramas filming other phones, when you could be spending that time doing even basic triage or reflashing and confirming once and for all that it is your build/device or a broader issue.
You wasted 100 dollars to get your device a few days earlier and now you are angry at the world that it doesnt live up to your expectations.

Oh and I have 4 smart phones with 4 diff OS's within arms reach of me - does that make me special as well?

God I hate people who feel the need to play My dicks bigger than yours

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

I wouldn't laugh if browser on my N900 had crashed.
Btw, could you reply on my previous post?
I see interesting that even Engadget found N900's browser better than iPhone's. That says a lot.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Well typically, modern hardware acceleration uses a 3d capable chip, and pixel operations tend not to be the primary bottleneck nowadays. They can still be a bottleneck, for example if you're drawing lots of blended layers on top of each other, but it's quite different from the old days where you did everything you could to minimise the number of pixels written.

Basic pixel filling by 3d chips is pretty darn fast. So rendering algorithms these days don't try to minimise pixels; they try to minimise lots of other things, including pixels in the overall balance but not so much.

Did I mention that pixels are drawn in parallel with CPU calculations deciding what to send the GPU? So drawing 4 times the pixels does not mean taking 4 times as long for the render, any more.

I say typically. I don't know what the 3d chip and memory is like in the N900. It might be a rubbish one :)

If it's anything like the Intel Poulsbo debacle, which uses a similar 3d core from the same company, it'll be reasonably good performance (though not latest Nvidia/ATI class), with awful drivers that don't take advantage of it's features despite being closed source. Let's see if Nokia had better luck getting proper drivers for it than regular Linux users have managed (or even Windows users apparently) on Intel Poulsbo chipsets.

From the videos, it looks like the N900 is having no difficulty actually drawing any part of the web page to the screen. That's supported by watching the ball game videos, where the whole 3d scene is running quite smoothly. Much smoother than these scrolling web pages, in fact, despite being a full screen 3d render.

So it looks like the slowness is in calculating what to draw, and with images it's possibly decompressing them on demand into a cache. You can see all that because when the delay finishes and it does finally get round to drawing, it fills in everything rather quickly.

I agree. If there was only one browser I'd look forward to doing that :) But it turns out there are several alternative browsers already in the pipeline. I'm confident at least one of them will have very smooth scrolling. (And if there isn't, I see an app waiting to be written :D) It looks like a microb problem more than a device problem - similar visual artifacts to rendering on Netscape Navigator 4 and IE 4.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

I agree, those videos show a clear difference in scrolling and general rendering speed between the two devices.

However, it's a mistake to dwell on this even though it's going to be a big part of the "feel" of the device for new users.

It looks to me like a software problem, not a hardware problem. And not an especially hard software problem either.

The browser scrolling - and crash - will be fixed, one way or another. Either by updates, or replacement with another browser, and there are several other browser groups eager to please so there's a healthy competition to do a good job.

That's a key difference from the iPhone. You can count on healthy competition among browser people keen to impress, to try and get the most out of the hardware in time.

You may find that's a big part of the different philosophy between this phone and the others. This one can expect continuous improvement once it's released, independent of what Nokia does. Especially in areas that lots of users care about. The others are at the whim of their parent company.

So, expect it a bit like desktop Linux distros operate: imperfect in many areas that you can see, but expect to enjoy the pleasure of regular improvements without having to pay for them.

That is totally due to the community and open sourceness.

Once you (or any user) "gets" the difference in philosophy, you may find yourself dwelling less on specific but superficial irritations (the scrolling doesn't stop you using it), focusing less on the "what can it do out of the box", and more interested in what it's going to do when a lot of people get up to speed seriously developing stuff for it. Unlike the other devices, this community and Nokia's seemingly good relationship with it means we can improve more of the "core" user experience that we're allowed to on other devices.

Let's move on from scrolling: The browser is quite capable as browsers go on a phone, isn't it?

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

So Safari is quite obviously somewhat faster at redrawing pages. This isn't really unexpected.

If you expected that MicroB would run circles around Safari, despite the higher resolution, despite using the Firefox / Gecko engine, despite offering support for Flash, and despite Apple's years of experience on fine-tuning the browser for exactly this kind of device and user-experience, then this was an unfortunate misunderstanding. Speed is not the selling point of MicroB, capability is. The fact that it is as fast and usable as it is is the remarkable thing.

What matters is that the browser is convenient to use and gets you as close as possible to the desktop browser experience. Both Safari and MicroB have some things going for them in this regard. But this kind of analysis and direct comparison of rendering speed is ultimately pedantry, and if you truly think that this is what matters most to the average user, then I believe that you will be in for a surprise.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Will the N900 fully utilize the speed advantage of a Class 6 Micro SDHC card? If not, which class should I get?

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

OH.MY.GOD.

I was so looking forward to getting the N900 for cool features like this elegant way of multitasking, being able to tag and upload multiple pictures, great messaging possibilities, awesome screen resolution, TV-out, panoramic desktop & widgets, flash support......

But now that I have seen those videos about how bad the browser is.... It seems unusable!!

Sure on my iPhone there is also a delay when I scroll fast, but on the N900 there were some at least 3.3 times longer!! What a piece of crap! And ok I admit on my 3GS the mail app crashed a few times and some other apps - some even constantly - and it's a tad annoying not having the landscape keyboard in every application, and I sure miss multitasking at times or even wish it had a better camera or just a few more settings for it, I'd also love to have a decent calendar & desktop widget on it like my N79 had... - BUT PAGE SCROLL IS SMOOTH! And that's like... you know... where the game is played!

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

God forbid you view one the the other dozens of videos which show the browser performing smoothly - or read the reviews (including engadgets, a site notoriously Nokia hating) who say that the browser is the best they have ever seen. No much better to watch a couple of videos from a guy who hasnt even bothered to TRY and fix his issue, even when other people with the device have said they have NO issues like his at all.

Yep thats the way to go

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Hey, I suffer from bipolar disorder, aka manic depression, and I'm not this crazy. (...am I? :confused:)This dude has multiple personality disorder. Big difference. :p

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Well let's look at that closely. Get an iPhone for a faux ~$200 or the N900 FREE ON CONTRACT? Not everyone is given subsidized iPhones, but in most markets, the N900 is cheaper than the iPhone unsubsidized or on contract. Check the UK for proof. Only in America...

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

What definition of smartphone is everyone using to make these claims? Some say it isn't because it doesn't support autorotation, but neither did the N73 or 6600. They say because it doesn't have call and end buttons, but neither does the iPhone. They say because it lacks this or that, it isn't. I totally disagree. I don't think all smartphones are portable desktop devices, but all portable desktop devices with calling features are smartphones. They are multitasking computing platforms with cellular telephony capabilities and native application frameworks. Many of the features it lacks that people claim make it not a smartphone postdate the arrival of smartphones. So please get off the gas...:rolleyes:

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Ya gotta admit though, the lag is clearly present in his videos. I'd be a bit miffed too if I received mine in the same condition. Sure, I'd still hold out for updates to fix it and I would still be optimistic of its potential, but my out of the box experience would still get knocked down a notch or two. No reason not to expect better than at least S60 web browsing in Nokia's highly-touted, multi-tasking, desktop web browsing, mobile computer. Of course Nokia does have a knack for shipping buggy phones upon initial release (and releasing better firmware fixes for some regions only... what's up with that?). I can't say I have much confidence in Nokia's software side of things. Clearly, even with essentially identical hardware, Apple does a bang up job of coding the browser rendering.

I'll continue to try to keep my expectations in check and hope I don't receive a phone with similar issues. However, that's no excuse for Nokia to be shipping out some phones that do.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Relax, sarcasm. :)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

No it is not.

Comparing a computer running many things to a computer optimised to do one thing at a time is silly. Im not sure what the jerky scrolling is caused-by, but remember that the screen is twice the resolution of iphone. Pretending that you can define "the game" for the rest of the planet is amusing, at best.

In the real world there are tradeoffs. When we grow up we see this more frequently and say "OMG" less often.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

N900 is not a smartphone... sooo... do the math?

;)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

I do admit the problem is present on HIS machine. But I am still bound by the law of averages and when I see 20 videos none of which show the issue and read testimonial after testimonial that the browser is not only fast but amazing. I kind of have to think perhaps the problem is HIS N900 - NOT a broad issue with the N900 in general.

If he was serious about solving the issue and not just whining he would be here asking for help on flashing the latest firmware - telling us what other programs he may have installed etc. But he didnt.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Cripes, I've been approaching this nuttiness all wrong.

Listen: everyone who subscribes to over-the-top negativity, and is scared off by threads like this-- please Please PLEASE do NOT buy this device!

There. I'm thinking better now.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

I agree, I'd try to get it at the same configuration as others who are experiencing better performance before I condemn it.

But if it still sucks after trying that, other's experiencing kickass performance whilst mine was pissing itself would be of no consolation to me. But I suppose that's a discussion for when it happens, if it happens. Fingers crossed. :)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

WTH are you talking about? I have the latest firmware...in fact there IS only one firmware for production devices.

My machine only?

Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHa3AoNdglY. Familiar huh?

Do you even HAVE an N900?

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Lol I know... I wasn't serious at all and what I actually meant so say was "I still can't wait to get my n900 and get rid of my iphone"! I don't say this scrolling thing isn't worth mentioning, but it's annoying to see a thread "n900 sucks!" and then realise that this is supposed to be the main reason why as it is being wildly discussed here. But then again it also annoys me how most tech sites do reviews of phones that do almost endless lists of things and all they do is pick 10 aspects, compare those and rate the phones according to that.

And I'm not saying the iphone sucks by the way. It is magnificent in a lot of ways, especially how beautifully and carefully the OS is animated and how images and pages you move follow your finger like you're moving physical objects... I've just always been a NSeries fan and miss my N79... :-D

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Trust me.

Put an S60 web browser* and the N900 browser side by side.

Scroll them.

Post videos.

I guarantee the N900 will feel incredibly smooth. :D

* - on a real S60 phone, no cheating with an emulator** on a PC :p
** - I bet an S60 emulator running on an N900 will do a better job of scrolling than on a real S60 phone :D

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Have you read any of the posts by others of us who do?

You know... the ones not experiencing those issues?

The ones thinking Bratag is on to something with the Unique Device Behavior theory?

I've got a product quality assurance background. As a former Nokia engineer I helped launch the N800 and know most of its dirty little secrets. Some should easily apply to the N900. Care to chill and listen a bit?

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

People never get when I'm being sarcastic... Or ironic? I don't even know the difference... It's my problem really... :-)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Yep looks like a video of a pre-production device from 2+ months ago. Try again.

No I don't yet have my N900 but I can read - I can see and nothing else backs up your problem.

Did you ever consider that your build may have problems and that flashing back to a base version might help with those - of course that would involve you actually having to do something to help yourself. Much easier to stick to the whining and moaning, cause you know - thats working out great for you.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

When you master the Force, Luke, you will be adept at both.

Patience, my young jedi.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Haha feel free to post again when you actually HAVE a phone junior. Stop wasting space in this thread with your opinions based on you've heard :)

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Could we perhaps have a video of the same sites being visited, at the same font size, from someone else's N900?

Several people have posted that they can't see the behaviour which is shown in the videos - in the videos!

So I'm wondering if people who say their device is fine are, in fact, seeing exactly the same thing as Megacrazy but don't mind.

With a video of someone else's N900 those of us with high frame-rate eyes can referee it :D

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

That's TWO unintended irony nominations for you in one thread alone.

You sir are on a roll.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

I certainly hope so! :)

Browsing on my 5800 was unbearable at a point. Then I realized it was due to the fact that I loaded most of my apps on the phone memory instead of the memory card, the free space of which was behaving as a sort of virtual memory/swap space. After moving the files to the memory card, I noticed a significant boost in browsing to the point where it was enjoyable and had me wondering why I spent almost $500 on the N900. :D

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Ok - its obvious you don't actually want help .You dont want to listen to logic you just want to piss and moan. Whats that old saying -

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make the ignorant ****tard listen to reason and the responses of people who DO have the phone"

Well doesnt matter to me - Good luck with your screwed up phone couldnt be happier that you wasted $100 bucks to jump the line, especially when people were just walking in off the street and getting them. Classic stuff.

On another note I very much doubt I am your junior.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

...aaand the thread heads for lockville.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

Cant happen quick enough for me. Honestly waste of damn bandwidth from the moment it was first created.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

The video shows it's clearly a rendering issue.

To be a router/ISP issue, the browser would have to be fetching images over the network every time you scroll to that part of the page (unlikely).

Or something perverse like the router is flooding the N900 with pings to slow it down :p

Meaning?

It could be, and I'd be very interested to see someone else's N900 visiting the same sites.

It could also be the RAM is too full and it's swapping. We haven't been told how many other apps it's running, or what their memory usage is.

Re: N900 - Yes, it sucks.
 

No lock please. They'll stop, they promise. A stern warning should do. ;)

I'm curious to find out if others will experience similar issues, along with any remedies if available.