Quick question:

Does the N900 support multi-tasking while on a phone call? (IE talking on speaker phone while looking up other contact info, sending sms, etc.)

This is a pretty standard feature so I'm assuming it will, but a definite yes/no?

Yes. http://www.youtube.com/user/Maemo5UITeam The "Calendar" video around 0:50 ->

It's that wretched screen that keeps me from ordering the HTC HD2. In other respects, despite being windoze, it will do everything I want out of the box. But I have serious reservations about that capacitive screen and my fingers: I have built in styli on every finger (sometimes varnished pretty pink) not to mention a habit of having my hands in water or worse when the phone rings.

The n900, on the other hand won't do what I want out of the box, and probably won't ever do some of that. But it will do all sorts of things I hadn't thought of.

I suspect in the end I shall have to go for a smart phone: I don't think the 'always on' nature of the n900 is meant for far flung rural places where there are so many spots with no signal. I fear an n900 would strangle its battery if it lived here. Many devices do.

The thing that isn't clear in that video is whether you can continue to speak with the person while the phone app isn't in focus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qkXBMOyvtU

You should watch the demo videos. There are a lot of them around now and they show most of the UI.

Of course you can. . . .

Thanks.

Oh and by the way (this might be a good thread to bring it up), have I understood it correctly that the NDA was lifted today? ...

not sure if this is already mentioned/asked: To what extent does the touch sensitive area goes? In particular, how far to the right (landscape oriented)? I get the feeling from the various videos, that the sensitive area is certainly beyond the screen.

I'm thinking, if there is enough area over there, maybe it won't be too hard to introduce/implement simple gestures such as "up" and "down" and map them to arbitrary functions... bring up the dialer for example

Hi Flandry, thanks a lot. In fact I've seen lots of videos this morning and finally I know that I don't even need two fingers anymore
Moving our finger with a spiral shape can do the zoom in and zoom out.

That's good enough for me. I can say that I'm quite satisfied with this zoom feature.

We basically can open any website, but I never seen if it can open the apple movie trailer page. I didn't even see any specification mentioned that N900 can play Quicktime videos.

I don't know if this is going to be useful in the long run, but youtube is good enough so far.