Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

I'm actually glad I don't have the SIM Menu... yes I've seen it on my SIM(even on the contract one). But it never had a single usable thing but could never get rid of it. Atleast now I don't have some pointelss crap around.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

If you don't know, ask.

SIM application toolkit is mandatory for ME, as described in GSM REF 11.14.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

what are we missing by not having access to sim card menus??

I think the last time I navigated the menus in a sim was when i had the Sony z5 (damm i miss that phone)

Im on Vodafone UK, what am i missing out on then??

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

This is to do with the lack of USSD support, not sim menus.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

I can see mention of the support but notng that states it is mandatory. thanks for the pointer though, education is always welcome. can you point me to the section on which parts are mandatory? All I can find is mention that the ME initiates the requests to the SIM for functionality that the ME understands.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Its been 3 months since I got the n900 and in my opinion, its really a half baked product - I just tried taking a video and the OS just slowed to a crawl not to talk of audio that stutters like crazy; even my cheap sony phone is better at audio than this brick. Only Nokia can get away with launching such a beta product but for how long?. I only got it because of the philosophy of openness behind it so no regrets. Dont buy a Nokia phone if you want an out of box experience - try Sony, Apple or even HTC for that.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Yes I know that. I was pointing how incomplete the N900's phone funtions are.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Your cheap Sony phone is probably running an extremely closed RTOS and has few functions aside from what's available in the UI as it stands. I've had mine stutter occasionally (mostly during high CPU usage) but by and large, I'll tolerate that in exchange for capability that would otherwise be completely unavailable to me.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

why dont you just get a different phone?

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Get another N900!

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

I actually appreciate this thread. I didn't even know that GSM phones had these menus.. and I can absolutely understand why he might be peeved by this issue. If I were to buy this PHONE (ala http://www.nokia.co.uk/find-products...nes/nokia-n900) under similar circumstances, I'd be angry too.

Anyway, the point is--I didn't even know this was an issue.

You may be right but going to the 'you didn't research it' trough is becoming akin to repeatedly telling people Nokia didn't want customers to buy this product.

That's cold comfort to someone that bought this as a smart phone. More importantly, if Nokia is trying to turn this around as a cell phone, there really needs to be more development in the cell phone client software. Maybe this device should have been sold to the development/testing/geek crowd for a little baking before it was marketed as a cell phone. (What happened to it being a computer first? That ad REALLY rubs me the wrong way, now.) The theater of providing them ONLY to attendees who physically made the trek to the show is clearly now demonstrating itself as a poor example of a release to developers and testers.

Here's the prescient question to ask: Is there anybody in the community that understands what needs to happen to implement this and do they have the time and resources to do so.. and will Nokia roll that improvement to the phone client out ahead of any OS upgrades so that the phone might actually be useful to customers in his situation?

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

On the other hand, this old point will always have merit: check the product out extensively before shelling out a large amount of money.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

lol illegal advertising

it can be considered a phone. but its more of a tablet thats how i see it

they probably advertise it as a phone so they can get it out to consumers. i dont think consumers search for a tablet too much unless they looking for the itablet

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

oh make no mistake, the n900 is the best gadget I've ever had. I would pay double the price for it because there is nothing like it. I know of its potential and hope Nokia will invest more in fixing it. Ignore the occassional whine, just frustration and emotions - u know. A million stutters will not keep me from this treasure.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

it has phone capabilities? yes,so its ALSO a phone.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

And by the way, someone has managed to get ofono working on their N900. I don't know how much functionality that gives you.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

That probably helps Mer more. I'd love to see Mer reach a point where I can apt-get a package and have it support all the phone capabilities.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

I also suspect that consumers searching for a phone have a lot of expectations of what a smart phone should be able to do, without digging through forums.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

That 's what you get for living on the cutting edge!

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

It gives you almost nothing now; the meat of my comment was/is missed.

Maemo 6 adds the element for carriers to customize parts of the OS for their carrier deck.

Ofono allows Intel, Nokia, and carrier partners so standardize on elements like a SIM menu, SIM services, etc., along with fixing the rest of the phone stack - instead of what was hacked together for the N900 which was announced initially to only do celluar data but a loud group of open source fans happened to change Nokia's mind towards such an effort. The effort given gave base voice functionality but was never intended to replace one's mobile - hence Nokia's advertising of the N900 as a mobile computer. The framework to do common features from the SIM just couldn't be built in time.

The Ofono partnership would be realized in about a year's time with Maemo 6 and the next version of Moblin. Hence why its not much of anything now, and why thinking of the Maemo 5 platform for more than what it is shows little insight towards the platform as its been released.

The expectation to have the SIM menu and SIM services is ok, but this isn't just a Nokia issue, its also a carrier one. And since you purchased a device that may not be on your carrier deck, and your carrier sells you a SIM that does not contain such applications on it, you are essentially walking into misplaced expectations.

The OP isn't wrong for feeling the way they are; and to some extent needs to get some push-back. But the solution is not as simple as "add Java and my menus back." Such statements are disrespectful to Nokia, who has not only been listening to the complaints, but where possible has spoken up to address them.

Its easy to complain about what's not there, but much harder to appreciate the effort that went into what is.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

By the way, where are you guys from? You who have problems with sim menu etc. Does Nokia sell N900 there locally or have you ordered the phone through Internet?

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Forgive my ignorance but what does the SIM menu do? I can find references to weather reports and horosopes (neither of which seem essential to a device that has a full browser) but I can't find any reference to anythiing votal that this service does.

Soemone who is missing it - exactly what are you mising?

Please excuse my ignorance - I had never even heard of there being anything other than contacts and connection details on the SIM before.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

It depends on the carrier; hence why I asked the OP whom their carrier was early in the convo. And its not something backed into the SIM as much as it is activated by the SIM but baked into the OS.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

This sim menu, the only time I remember using it was on PAYG on Orange to get my credit balance via text message.

I'm now on o2 and I've never used it for anything when I owned a S40 or S60 phone.

I could throw another spanner into the works and say, no mobile phone is a phone, its a mobile radio like a CB or Marine radio. They all use the airwaves there for techincally making them a radio and not a telephone because it doesn't directly plug into a telephone line.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

To just use a SIM card to store contacts is greatly under-utilizing the tech. Thing is, because mobiles in many markets are locked, the idea of SIM services is a harder sell/jump than to those markets where mobiles are more open (anyone seeing the connection to Nokia's success yet).

SIM cards can
- play the role of an ID card
- contain credit card authentication data/protocols
- be a wireless contact card (NFC, RFID, etc. like stuff)
- contain a WIFi access point
- contain an Apache web server
- contain an entire mobile OS
- contain up to 2GB of external storage memory

SIM cards also have enough admin and analytic software that if a person had the time and hardware to pull it out and analyze it, could create all kinds of services, conditions, and ascertain all kinds of behavioral information about you and those you connect with.

SIM services only allow the user to access a piece of this, usually to keep that person tied into a carrier for some kind of feature/service. As mobiles get a lot more open, and (a bit) less carrier-driven, these kinds of services will become common knolwedge and in common use to more mobile users.

The OP's carrier should have some condition mandating that mobiles on their network have to support XYZ services... but most likely, they haven't gotten to that point in their mobile governance and support processes just yet. Hence why it looks like to the OP that Nokia dropped the ball, when really the fault was Nokia listening to this community and others who beamoned the lack of voice cellular for Maemo 5, and then hacked something together without understanding the implications beyond voice.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

To be fair, there are a lot of things that many people do with their GSM phones that are actually relying on the so-called "SIM menu" and other SIM features, without knowing that this is so. I can, for example, pay stuff with my "other" phone by charging my Visa card. There's a whole lot of communication going forth and back (pin codes, for example) that kind of look like SMS messages but aren't the normal ones. All this is made possible by low-level SIM card features, and they are regularly getting updated by the carrier, directly to the SIM.

I happens to know (being a technical kind of person) that this is how it works, so I use another, "regular" GSM phone with that card. In the N900 I use another card which I only use for simple calls and data transfer.

My point is that it's difficult for a regular user to know that things they take for granted in a GSM phone may rely on GSM/SIM features not currently supported by the N900.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Hey, would it be possible to "emulate" a SIM menu by manually sending and analyzing SMS's? First we sould have to figure out the codes.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

and this merit only holds when there is a full detail of the product you are purchasing. When nokia lists a phone as GSM phone, there should not be a need for me to start looking to see what could be missing. All GSM phones come with standard features; hence, I expect these features to be included when you said the phone is a GSM phone. Or when it said the phone is GPS capable, we expect it to perform standard GPS navigation which includes re-routing. Mind you, I did not say voice command... which is a different ball game because I have abouth 2 years worth of Nokia voice command, whuch I believe is "transferable to any other Nokia navigation devices", sitting on my N95 unused. Should we not believe what Nokia tells us their future devices will contain or should we do an extensive research to ensure that those features are what what they ought to contain.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

This is what's called the open-source community. You suggest an idea in the right place such as brainstorm or the bug tracker. Then the community decides what to do, then implements what it has decided to do.

A rant thread in the forums is not going to do that. Especially not quickly.

And again, nothing will ever happen at light speed just because this is the open source community. Did we get immediate features/bug fixes for Ubuntu or Windows?

The moral is; and will always be, don't rat out something because it doesn't suit your needs.

I use both Ubuntu and Windows. Why? Because Ubuntu doesn't sustain all of my needs.

Other people get by fine with Ubuntu alone.

Things will, in due time, be implemented. (unless it's an wontfix issue, that could take a while)

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

I read the first two pages, and then I noticed that I haven't actually used the SIM card menus of the various cards I've had even one single time. I have given them a glance, but I still haven't found any actual use for them.

I have Nokia N900. I didn't buy it for the SIM card menu (I don't even know if my current Vodafone IE prepay card has one). I bought it for web browsing, email and messaging. And videos. And music.

If I want to check my balance, I can do it online.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

...

that is YOUR view....

other people need a sim tool kit for changing between buiseness part and non buiseness part of their provided card contract.

another useful feature is the possibillity to use twin card adaptors. also to switch between the cards (one for phoning with gsm, one for internet with 3g)

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Its advertised as an internet tablet with an ability to make phone calls with restricted functionality.Pretty much serves the purpose though it would be nice to have extra phone features. But then phones like the HTC touch pro2 for example can do most things like the n900. Its a bit over hyped tbh

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Is it really advertised like that anywhere? Link?

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Not advertised quote verbatim "Internet phone with an ability to make phone calls with restricted functionality".:D but it sells like one thanks to reviews.
I think its pretty much true.

http://www.nokia.co.uk/find-products...#/main/landing

Top of page - N900 Mobile phone.
Bottom left hand corner of page - Mobile Computer.

Looks like Nokia is confused

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

i think it is completely useless to talk about the way of advertising...

is it a quad-band gsm mobile and an internet tablet or an internet tablet with an quad-band mobile? who cares?

it is both, and so the people need funktions for both ways of using.

one of them is the sim tool kit...

a lot of people need these funktions.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

Why cant people learn to read threads!!

Ï have seen several people ask what is sim menu. Whats is used for. Why even care and so on. Maybe you dont need it so why bother or answering this thread with answers like "you should have inestigate it before bought N900" and so on.

I like my N900 and prefer it over other broken Linux phones like Android. But still this is an issue that is a problem for me and others.

As a swedish N900 customer i really need this feature.

In several post the answer is simple:

SIM menus or sim card toolkit is used for bank and identifieing systems in many european countrys including sweden.


This should be highpripority for nokia. IMHO, a dont care a mush about Flash 10.1 but for me SIM card toolkit is important more important.

I am for sure is not intrested to have two mobiles in my pockets, one for ringing, one for "internet" I want ONE that works for everything! And not a an Iphone or Android I want N900 to do the job!

But I can understand if nokia will not implement this in N900 this phone was to test the market. But I really hope nextgen Maeo6/Meego phone/tablet has this feature else nokia has no chance to compete with other smartphones or infact not normal phones.

But the important question now is if its even is possible for the OSS community to implement this future, is the phone stack opensources for example?

As far as i know it is not but maybe its possible via dbus to send commands? Or using ofono libs?


I dont have a clue would be great if someone could give a better direction on this issue instead of wining aboput how stupid we are that bought wrong phone?

The brainstorms says nothing. just some wining about "nokia engineers should doit"

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

people, what is wrong with this reseach thing? i did reseach and i found a lot of things nokia officially promised to do. i found a lot of bugs of maemo they worked on. yes - i do not conplain about no video calls over phone or portrait mode - as that wasn't promised, but still there are basic stuff it has to do, there are still a lot of bugs(some are serious things that need to be resolved but they wouldn't), nokia promised flash, but most sites work with flash 10 only. and i don't care how they call n900 - as the maemo is not finished, and n900 is test platform (it was sold more than the test thing would be sold), why would it would be sold as phone at all? and the headshot is "maemo is dead, nokia moved to meego"

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

The problem is, this started off as a "We should sue Nokia for false advertising" thread, so you'll most probably not get any benevolent answers in here.

Try to open a request thread back in the developer forum - there's quite a couple of people messing with dbus already, so maybe either one of them will take the bait and start developing something, or at least you'll get an answer as to what would be possible.

Sadly, I'm not much into OS hacking, or else I'd take up the challenge myself. But chances for finding someone over at the development forum are at least higher than here on a whine thread.

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

"Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone? "

Because it is a great but very special smart phone/micro computer, it still is a phone for "most of the customers" I think. It is for me. There is of course loads of quirks and problems I wish was fixed. If I should buy another phone now, I would still go for the N900 (time, price and what else is available).

Re: Why does Nokia keep selling the N900 as a phone?
 

It's not like that at all, a better analogy would be buying a computer and expecting it to be able to play certain video games, but it not having the specs to do so, or the games not being available on the operating system you're using.