Enyibinakata | # 161 | 2009-11-24, 22:29 | Report

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.

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Last edited by Enyibinakata; 2009-11-24 at 22:32.

Texrat | # 162 | 2009-11-24, 22:30 | Report

Probability was on my side.

Megacrazy | # 163 | 2009-11-24, 22:33 | Report

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

jjx | # 164 | 2009-11-24, 22:33 | Report

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.

DaveP1 | # 165 | 2009-11-24, 22:40 | Report

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.

Devil | # 166 | 2009-11-24, 22:46 | Report

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

davetech | # 167 | 2009-11-24, 22:49 | Report

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.

jjx | # 168 | 2009-11-24, 22:54 | Report

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.

kanishou | # 169 | 2009-11-24, 22:55 | Report

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.

DaveP1 | # 170 | 2009-11-24, 22:57 | Report

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.