A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

While not a programmer, I am a geek, otherwise I wouldn't own the N9, right? :D

Quick background: I own an iPod Touch 4th gen, a Nexus 7 tablet, an HP Touchpad and, up till last Wednesday, had been using Windows Phone. I have owned a Nokia N810 (still one of the greatest pieces of tech I've ever owned) and a Nokia N900.

Even more background: I don't care about apps. I read email, use the camera, check some web sites and use Spotify. All doable on the N9. Yes, the app store is tiny, but I knew that going in and didn't care. This phone may be a hard sell to a 19 year old, but I am in my 30s and am way over the "i need 5000 apps" thing.

So, how am I getting on? Well, after a bunch of tweaks, I now have the N9 where I want it. I am using it on T-Mobile in the USA, depending on where I am in my city, I get everything from 3.5G to 2G.

When I tried to use the N9 as I did my Windows Phone, it was almost unusable. Windows Phone seems to be able to handle "being on" all the time, running background tasks without slowing the phone down. The N9, didn't like that. It's not a big deal for me. I had to find the perfect balance between refreshing my RSS feeds and my email. I had to turn off Facebook feeds.

I installed FasterN9 which, I guess, works. I almost see no difference, then again, I really only have emails constantly updating. I imagine I could tweak endlessly (from reading these forums) and get it faster and have it operate the way I want, but I am quite alright with how it is running now.

Now, the phone is responsive. It works at the speed I want. Sure, when I manually refresh my feeds it slows down a bit, but that is a 1st-world problem. Having to wait an extra 10 seconds will not ruin my day.

Amazingly, Spotify on MeeGo kills the Windows Phone version. It is MUCH faster and has more options. I am very happy with that.

Vimeo on Meego is good, not great. The video quality makes it almost unusable.

My verdict: N9 is a great phone. Sure, you need to poke and prod to get it where you want to go, but once you get there, it is solid. Also, if you care about these things, almost everyone I know has asked about the phone since I started carrying it. And not just asked, they grab it, caress it and want to know more. It's like walking in to a room with a 2-headed snake. :D

I plan on getting a Lumia 920 when they are released. Ultimately, I've grown accustomed to WP and its fluidity. But I always wanted to try MeeGo and I felt this was a good month to do it. Who knows, perhaps the N9 will help push my L920 lust back a month or so.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

am 19, this was the easiest sell in my life. am currently suffering from terrible battery drain but its because its not calibrated

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

That's great! I should have said MOST 19 year olds. I have a hard time getting my cousins to look at anything other than iPhone or Android.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

try the N9 QuickTweak app tweak C

And if you have that battery monitor app, just remove it, i found it actually drains battery

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

Vimeo app; you mean the official one that was released less than 2weeks ago? I haven't tried it yet but the screeshots looked quite okay to me so I assumed the app plays back acceptable quality videos too...

If your email is set to push via MfE why worry about constantly refreshing it? RSS feeds when you update manually and try to swipe away yes it may lag but then that's due to the heavy load onto the system for the few seconds...

You find it acceptable hence I wouldn't suggest any tweaks :p

Running background tasks is quite smooth on the N9...Personally, I'm quite moody; at times i vigorously close any app I am not using otherwise I keep my frequently used apps like phone, contacts, messages, web, music, calculator, documents, mail in the background so whenever I click on them they open speedily and switching between them is pretty smooth too unless of course a call comes in while doing the swiping...

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

The video quality on the Vimeo app is abysmal -- compared to the WP, Android and iOS versions. The app itself is beautifully designed. I'm not too concerned though as I don't watch too many videos on the go now that I am stuck editing most days.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

I have the same problem with occasional slowness and degradation of experience over time. It's certainly something specific because while I have never been able to pass the 11 day uptime mark without the phone being unusable, there are guys over at the uptime thread with >140 days of uptime. I checked dmesg, xorg logs and syslog without seeing anything suspicious. I have spotted the messageserver eating 100% cpu some times, but it's like the N9 is teasing me, every time I get near a pc and ssh to it to try and find the culprit, it goes all smooth and all. I guess I have to reflash some time.

I also suspect that if I remove gmail altogether everything will be ok.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

So you recommend a restart every 5 days or so? When you say reflash, do you mean a total reset of the phone?

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

I can't manage to keep my phone going without a reboot for more than 2-3 days for some reason or another...The people who manage to do it really my hats off to them...

Its quite a challenge for me to withstand any signs of lag and delay so the moment i see them I reboot to ensure its nothing untoward...

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

i can, i managed to keep it from rebooting pretty well actually, my n900 had like 3 reboots a day, but the n9 has been solid for a week at times, i just at times boot into android

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

I like your username :D I'm not sure where in the world you are, but we have cream for things with that name over here ;)

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

I don't know if it would make any difference to you but whenever I have it more than 5 days on it's like it starts falling apart. Slowness is one thing, and bugs that show up then as well as crashing apps are another. Gtalk fails to sign in (green dot flashes forever) mail is mostly non-responsive, main menu becomes so laggy that interprets taps as tap-n-holds. I'm sure its some specific thing I use that goes rogue because my N950 is always fast and smooth, though I don't use it as a daily phone, and doesn't have feeds and all that stuff.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

Just checked my wife's pink N9;

~ $ uptime
22:20:09 up 36 days, 8:42, load average: 0.04, 0.06, 0.07
~ $
~ $
~ $ free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 1008648 906996 101652 0 32292
-/+ buffers: 874704 133944
Swap: 262136 2812 259324
~ $

No mods on that phone at all except for developer mode and increased text size on messaging. She uses the phone for calls, texting, regular browsing, videos, wlan hotspot and occasional navigation.

I, on the other hand have totally different setup on my N9; open mode, nitdroid, debian, whole load of tweaks and mods... For me the device is a hackers swiss-army multitool rather than just a fone. At any given time there is several python scripts and just-cooked utilities running on the device. (and I just love the fact that it behaves like my desktop, I can pull stuff directly there with svn and compile it on the device!)

I couldn't ever go back to using anything less than that... I mean who cares about million apps? It's nice I can have some games, meetrainer, navigation apps etc on there but the important thing is it runs python and gcc :D

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

[offtopic]
try: as root (if that's possible on the N9 ?!?:confused:) :cool:
[/offtopic]

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

Never had to reboot, because it became slow or laggy, sometimes use DropCache and it's ok again.

There also was a thread about using DropCache and Profilematic in combination, result was to drop cache every morning and everything works fine if i remember right.

I never used gmail...

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

qwazix,
the gtalk issue is faced here too due to the changing of connections several times a day... What i do is open the availability menu and click all online and then all offline 2s later... Then once it stops flashing, click on your desired status and it works...

My review
 

1 word to describe n9 - beauty.

Been using it for 4 days now. Very good although theres a sudden slight hiccup now and then. Txting and calling was a breeze considering im migrating from ios and android.

Things that need improvement (at least for me)
- facebook app need to be update
- front facing camera is .... Lost of word.
- need maemo.org app :)
- what is ur normal charing time from 40% to 100%? Mine seem to be longer then expected.
- bareable sound quality ( too much something ..)

other then that it feel amazing. Whens the last time nokia make phone this good? And yes, no regret on running away from those typical android and ios.

ps - what other thing that u do to ur n9 to make it more butter smooth and would not interfere with daily usage.
- faster n9 mod? Do suggest.

currently running pr 1.3 with no mod.

Re: My review
 

From 20% to 100%: 2 - 2 1/4 hrs in house and 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 hrs in car.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

@Forged yes, install FasterN9 and most of the slight hiccups and lags will disappear.

I noticed that if I use the cable given by Nokia and charge from my laptop.. it charges faster. Through a wall charger, it's kinda slower. Perhaps it's just me.. I have no idea why.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

im 19..easy sell..got an n9 n an n900...mostly using the n900 atm cuz of yappari .. had the battery drain issue after intalling nitroid 4 on my n9..love both my devices..also got an ipad.. the n9 is perfect for me..im not into 5000 apps also..need a good torrent app..the only thing i think the n9/00 misses is a good icp proxy app..the n900s got your-freedom but its not enough..the n9 is perfect for day-day living

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

I've also grown accustomed to WP because of it's fluidity.
It simply amazed me from the start I used WP compared to Android and IOS which didn't get me going.

The more the WP8 phone release date nears, the more i'm thinking to myself if I really need to exchange the N9 for the WP8 (L920 in particular).
I'm very curious about what WP8 brings compared to WP7, but the user experience of the N9 just keeps pulling me back.
The swipe gestures, and most of all the LPS customisation will definately be missed, and don't know if I want to live without that.

I don't miss particular apps (learned to live without most of them is a better phrase), but if I go WP8, I know what i've missed app wize.
Also the L920 camera compels.

Will probably try one out in the shop, and be sold I think :S

PS: Heard Jolla will be showing their phone very soon too...

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

That fluidity is the polish on a turd iyam. In reality, what you will get is an extremely closed OS. Ars had an article about WinRT today about this, and WP8 will be worse if anything.

If you find any value in control over your own device, stay very clear of windows phone. As it is, the N9 is very open OOTB, and they even allow you to flash an even more open kernel, if you want. (Note: the N900 scores far better in openess.)

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

Maybe its closed, but WP does its basics well. I will agree that N9 is georgeous, but it really doesnt do basics well. Email doesnt update on N9. Its horrible. the lag is horrible too. the virtual keyboard not good either. That is why abandoned N9. Lumia 800 sucks because of lack of multitasking and chat app is horrible. but email, calls, texts, it does them flawlessly. I hope Jolla peops learn from their N9 fiasco.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

There is a maemo.org app on apps4meego but it doesn't work correctly since PR1.2, maybe there is an update somewhere else

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

The average consumer doesn't care about openness.

Also, calling the N9 open is laughable.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

I've seen you calling the N9 a "fiasco" in several posts.

Really? The N9 was a fiasco? Says who?
The positive reviews from almost every corner or the world?
The huge impact it made when it was announced?
The air of new and fresh the swipe ui brought?
The absolutely stunning looks (still copied to Nokia Lumias even today)?

If something was a fiasco , it was the wp7.5 Lumia phones.
Fiasco from every aspect.
Rapid loss of value/price, no update to wp8, super locked OS, average impact and average reviews.
The laughable percentage of wp7 sales in general (competing with Bada OS)

What the hell are you comparing? Were you hiding in cave a year ago?
If the N9 was a fiasco , Ellop wouldn't have minded releasing it globally.
But yeah... had it a strong marketing behind it combined with a global release.. the Lumia series would have been "raped". He knew it was a gem that could threaten the wp nokia line.

Meego team knew it as well, that's why they created Jolla.


*I know you like the N900. I like as well.
I even like it more than the N9.
But calling (in numerous of your posts) the N9 a "fiasco" is a sin dude. You're either living in your own alternate universe or just trying to troll.

: (

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

Yeah, I think this just kinda sums up the entire industry, doesn't it? The effort to combine the features of a PDA and a cell phone led to the start of the "smart phone" market, and a series of truly amazing tiny devices, each of which could do more than the previous one. But now we've got devices moving towards minimalist user interfaces, towards locked-down app ecosystems, towards a focus on doing just a few things very well. Really, just e-mail, calls, and texts. Other than the ability to play video media, isn't this just another name for a "feature phone"?

The smart phone is dead and gone.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

I love you man, but here is why I think its a fiasco. To come off a device such as N900, and not evolve it, improve it, make it smoother, fix the bugs, the stutters, the email.....come on bro, tells you the incompetence. N9 had since 2008 to be better and we got a beta OS. Pathetic and in my book fiasco.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

Bloggers and tech journos are easily impressed by shiny stuff.

See above.

I would call it novelty. It got boring for me after having to swipe several times to get to my web bookmarks (used to pressing CTRL+B).

Meh. Just another rectangle with a screen.

Some reasons to consider the N9 a fiasco:

• Use of APIs that were later deprecated before the device was released.
• Lack of real equivelent to fremantle extras repositories due to 'beggar-thy-neighbour' tactics from Intel and the Linux Foundation, which resulted from the break-up of the Nokia-Intel partnership.
• The worst email client I have ever used on a mobile device.
• The worst video player I have ever used on a modern mobile device, combined with video playback capabilities surpassed by devices manufactured by the same company costing half the price.
• A lame web browser that is several steps backwards from what they had previously developed.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

I respect your opinions. Thank God the vast majority were impressed by the N9 in many levels.

N9 is not a perfect phone, if it was i wouldn't be typing this from my N900.
...but it's light years far from being called a "fiasco"!

wth! "fiasco" is a crazy way to describe this masterpiece.

N97,E72, N96, X7, L900 (the beta test is over, remember?)
those were some fiascos

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

As impressive as the N9 was, it honestly was a fiasco. It was the first (and final) public attempt to take Maemo into the typical consumer range and yet it didn't receive a push like it should, it wasn't as finished as it could have been, it got accolades by bloggers and the like, but yet it wasn't impressive enough to be fought for by others inside of Nokia, it didn't get the fanfare it could have gotten if the industry got behind it (carriers, media providers, developers, et al) and while things could have been solely blamed on Nokia/Elop... if Maemo had not been under the rug and placed there by Symbian, Elop couldn't have been able to have kept it there.

It's a fiasco because they sold it to Azerbaijan but not to Germany, UK, France or other countries. It didn't get a deal from many carriers. It was hard as hell to find - I had to source them for other people on top of finding two for myself - and ultimately it was EOL in under a year despite "years and years of support" only to be lied to. And hell, if my Nokia N9 breaks now, I'm ****ed.

Fiasco in deployment, support and marketing outside of a few areas. Fiasco in how they went about things. Sure, it won some awards. But so did the Yugo.

About the "beta test being over"... they're right. Now they're out to plain out screw us. Release the Lumia 900, no upgrade path. It's dead about a year later.

Sounds familiar? The problem isn't the operating system. It's Nokia's management. They screwed over each iteration of Maemo. They thought that Microsoft wouldn't have done the same - but they did. Trust in the wrong people... totally.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

So in short what you mean is the fiasco is nothing to do with the device's abilities but with its "deployment, support and marketing"...

So if you are able to get thru those 3 fiascos the n9 is a pretty sweet device ;)

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

yeah, the marketing plan, the promotion the support etc etc... were indeed a fiasco.

but this has nothing to do with the N9 as a device.

this phone with an "Apple-like promotion"... had it been Apple's let's say... it would had broke any smartphone selling record.


the device is stunningly beautiful, the UI is revolutionary.
with proper (apple-like) support and the bug fixes it would have gotten along the way (eliminating most of the OS's shortcomings) the N9 could have been a game changer.

so, with all respect to you guys, I disagree. It's Nokia's strategy that was a fiasco (combined with non-existant Meego harmattan polishing) that is the real fiasco here.. not the N9

Hell, I've been a cellphone enthusiast since the 7110.
the N9 (along with 7650 & N900) was the only device that kept me awake at night just thinking about what I saw.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

the example of the N97 though...

that was the exact opposite. a great promotion of the device in all levels. great hype and everything... and a total failure of a product.

that's a textbook ****ing Nokia fiasco right there.
and I own the God damn thing. it' only good as a 32gb flash drive and that's it.

it was heavily promoted, costed almost 700euros in summer 2009 (even more in some regions)...

or the N96 before it... almost the same , buggy, overpiced failure and a disgrace to N95's legacy.

those 2 phones took down Nokia... and Elop finished what they started

Look, all of these points are valid. The N9 is gorgeous. I love the swipe UI. The notification screen and overall setup are nice, though I do miss the widgets and homescreens of the N900.

But the N9 has MANY problems, far too many to leave it as a genuine competitor to iOS and Android. Think of it this way, if either one of those companies would have released the N9, their customers would have said, "This sucks!" A gorgeous phone that's dumb as a post and can't get even the BASICS right, like video playback, tracker, email, is just unsatisfactory. The N900 had email problems, too. They all feel like beta devices, with my E7 being the most reliable and app-rich out of my three Nokia phones, but still no match for the chief competitors. It must have been all of those squandered man-years that the Nokia folks spent in-fighting. Well, I suppose that most lost their jobs anyways, or worse they have to support WP, so punishment has been applied.

My hope is that Nokia is forced to produce an Android phone early next year, along with a swipe UI, MeeGo-style skin that looks like the 920. And maybe another WP 8 device, if there's a reason to do so. I hope Elop's successor does it, makes money at it, and shows Elop to be a ***** for choosing WP7x over Android.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

What is to say that the tracker and email issues wouldn't have been solved (after all aren't we the only OSes (Fremantle & Harmattan) to have solved Hotmail Exchange issues among iOS, Android, WM, webOS etc) if not for the sub-contractors who were messing up till Elop announced WP as the OS of choice and the Harmattan team blanked out those sub-contractors just to ensure they managed to get a device out of the door?

Android releases a lot of s*it too so let's not get there...Android covers from one of the lowest price-points to the highest so you might want to refer to a flagship Android being released the way the N9 was instead of generic Android ;)

Then again the resources a flagship Android is given much outweigh what the N9 had after Feb.'11 so its pretty moot...

Lastly, again what is to say Nokia+Android would have been a successful match? Samsung and others would have had Nokia for breakfast with the slowness with which Nokia updates devices with latest tech...

Remember if employees and middle-managers are in-fighting in an organization, then it means those at the top are seriously lacking in leadership skills so pre-Elop already you had a rudderless leadership...

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

Don't get me wrong. It's a nice device. But I cannot shake the feeing that it is an incomplete device.

Since I'm part of this community, I know of the Nokians that have described their struggles to get something out of the door that we'd like. The N900, I wasn't initially a fan, panned it due to the screen. Got one, loved it... but the long lock in time on the GPS - and it didn't work well for me when I lived in Pittsburgh, PA - and lack of true 3G speeds (I'm with AT&T) bothered me.

But the N9. I get 3G speeds, love swipe UI, but Aegis screwed whatever freedom I wanted and the unlocked kernel brings more issues than resolving problems around perceived freedom.

And how it was regarded and pushed out, I'd say it easily fits under the fiasco category. At least it wasn't like the catastrophe that the Lumia series has been so far. That's a different story.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

So... we agree?

Ok... so we disagree. But as it stands, all of the above - marketing, promotion and support - led to a lifespan that was rather disappointing and cut off at the knees. They all added to the pending issues of where the N9 was a limited released, limited supported, limited shipped, limited purchased device that ended up being a dead-end product that we all like, love... but ultimately we can't even fix all of it because it's also limited in openness.

Fiasco to me. Nokia bigwigs are to blame.

And here... we agree. I guess I'm a bit disgruntled only because of the fact that it didn't live up to limits that I know it could have. It's good, close to great, could have been ****ing awesome.

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

The unlocked kernel only disables you from having a device lock or MfE account code...Everything else works fine (i'm in open mode since it was first released)...

Yes its incomplete; nothing to hide there...The community however has done much to cover the perceived flaws but some like video playback are hw issues that may / may not be solved...

Mentioning Nokians, you would then know that those very Nokians wouldn't stand for a sub-standard product but they needed to get it out of the door and did the best they could in those circumstances wrt the N9...

For Lumia its a ship-wreck since day 1 so its useless even mentioning it :p


Oh and gerbick you are a gadget junkie aren't you? Then why do you still use the one-year old dated N9? :p Due to it being in your own words "great but could have been f***ing awesome"? Says alot about the n9's pull doesnt it regardless of the fiascos?

Re: A Non-Programmer Review of the N9 as your daily phone.
 

gerbick, I'm losing you there.

first you agree with previous posters it was a fiasco , then you call it "great" and coulda been awesome.

maybe we perceive the word "fiasco" differently. english is not my native language but I think fiasco means disaster..total failure

so you contradict yourself cause deep inside you seem to like the N9. you just had somewhat higher expectations. i see you.


but.. a "fiasco". i mean... you can't call it like that dude... we'll catch an old maemian (like the egyptian) curse or something : p