N900 - Yes, it sucks. - Page 18 - maemo.org

Texrat | # 171 | 2009-11-24, 23:00 | Report

Originally Posted by jjx View Post

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.

There are many more variables though. Router tech? ISP? Interference? Individual device component faults?

It isn't as simple as a handful of people experiencing poor performance of some sort and then broadly declaring "This device absolutely totally flat out sucks!!!"

Although some appear to believe that it is...

wierdo | # 172 | 2009-11-24, 23:00 | Report

Originally Posted by Texrat View Post

Today's nominee for best unintended irony.

As they say on Metafilter: Eponysterical.

Texrat | # 173 | 2009-11-24, 23:11 | Report

Originally Posted by wierdo View Post

As they say on Metafilter: Eponysterical.

You'll love this then: http://scarabic.net/eponysterical.html

MountainX | # 174 | 2009-11-24, 23:13 | Report

Originally Posted by Megacrazy View Post

Ok here are the issues:

- Smoothness of the scroll is not good at all. In other words if you look at an image it looks like it's jumping around, not sliding around like on other devices.
- You get checkered patterns when other devices do not get checkered patterns (especially when dealing with large images).

Reloading once you get the checkered patterns is on par with other devices or even faster sometimes. Set the N900 side by side with a 3Gs or a Droid...and if the scrolling is just as smooth (do not confuse with fast) I will not sell the N900 but eat it

un-named_user, I have noticed a lot of the problems you described but was too lazy to write it all out. Plus, it's the scrolling that really bothers me

Hey MegaCrazy - I remember you are the guy who paid $100 to take someone's place on the waiting list at the NYC store. So I believe you are for real (not a troll) and that you did not start with an agenda (although maybe you did start with unrealistic expectations). But your impressions interest me.

What I want to know is why haven't you just reflashed your device as others suggested? Can you do that and report back to us?

It seems some people are seeing the scrolling problems you mention and others are not.

From all the threads I'm reading, I am starting to think the situation is that some people are getting devices that are not functioning correctly. Other people are getting devices that are working much better. If that is the case, then you should find out rather than just assuming that every N900 has the same issues you are seeing. (Or are you just being extremely nit-picky?)

BTW, my N900 will arrive tomorrow. If mine has major issues (such as scrolling problems) like you mention, I guarantee you I will get support (probably here on the forums) and get them resolved.

Last edited by MountainX; 2009-11-24 at 23:24. Reason: typo

spinnukur | # 175 | 2009-11-24, 23:14 | Report

Originally Posted by teletappi View Post

are you the boy who cries after playing modern warfare 2?in youtube?are you going to make a vid about n900?boy who cry after having nokia n900?

You do have to admit, MW2 failed pretty horribly for PC...I meant not just fail, but EPICFAIL :P

ARJWright | # 176 | 2009-11-24, 23:15 | Report

Only because I like poking at people...

Originally Posted by Enyibinakata View Post

Have you seen the calendar app ? Is there any other mobile calendar that compares to it ?.

Yes, the original Handspring Treo, successive Palm Treos, the iPhone in all iterations, and the Palm Pre/Pixi - all without 3rd party anythings.

Originally Posted by Enyibinakata View Post

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 ?

Yes, the Palm Pre does the same, just not with as many apps, but definitely something that can't be programmed in there in a future firmware update - whoops, shouldn't have said that

Originally Posted by Enyibinakata View Post

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.

Seriously... well, ok.

Browsing: iPhone and any Android device; any well RAM equipped Symbian device will also give very solid browsing experience, with a better handheld UI on the non-touchscreen ones to boot.

The Archaos Android tablet, pic a Windows Mobile device and add CorePlayer. Heck find a Palm LifeDrive and you can run a torrent app.

Originally Posted by Enyibinakata View Post

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.

Functionality does not a good user experience make. Its only one part of that. For that, you (and everyone else here) are welcome.

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kanishou | # 177 | 2009-11-24, 23:16 | Report

Originally Posted by jjx View Post

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.

You'd need to solve the problem of "how to render a page faster than a user could possibly scroll, no matter how insanely complex the page layout is".

Considering the power of the N900 browser (which everyone is raving about), don't you think it's fair to cut it some slack if it occasionally needs half a second to catch up with the rendering during wild scroll-rides?

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DaveP1 | # 178 | 2009-11-24, 23:20 | Report

Originally Posted by MountainX View Post

What I want to know is why haven't you just reflashed your device as others suggested? Can you do that and report back to us?

Does anyone know what would be causing a phone, direct from the factory, to need a reflash?

I know there was an OS update between the phones that were released before the original scheduled launch and now but do some of the sealed box phones have the old OS?

jjx | # 179 | 2009-11-24, 23:24 | Report

Originally Posted by kanishou View Post

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.

Yup, but that means (in the posted video) you can't actually see where you've scrolled to, to stop the kinetic scrolling at the right place.

I noticed in the video that one web page was particularly slow to draw at one point in the scroll, but there wasn't much to draw. I expect that will be fixed soon, or fixed in an alternative browser.

Originally Posted by

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.

Full desktop capability - doesn't it? The iPhone browser looks quite desktopy to me. What's missing?

Regarding resolution: yes, but on the other hand it's hardware accelerated rendering (or should be), and it turns out that resolution isn't much of a factor, because the bottleneck tends to be geometry, logic and poly/blit counts once the pixel operations are happening on high speed 3d hardware. So I'd expect the higher resolution to have little effect if the browser rendering is hardware accelerated for it's basic operations.

Originally Posted by

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.

I agree, it's not jerky.

But (again from the video, and I appreciate Youtube adds it's own special distortion), it looks like the difference between 20fps and 50fps.

Some people cannot tell the difference at all, while others are acutely sensitive to it. It seems to be an eyesight/brain thing.

That said, are any of the other phones really that much better at scrolling in the browser? Even the last iPhone I saw (actually an iPod touch, but they are the same thing virtually) would stutter when you pushed the scrolling too hard.

The video of the ball game, assuming it's not been (insert term for photoshopping a video

) shows the N900 can render full-screen scenes very smoothly when it's asked nicely.

Originally Posted by

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.

I found the thread very informative and might not have noticed without the catchy title.

But I agree it may make potential users overly nervous.

I expect in the end a lot of new users won't have used an iPhone or Android phone, and won't be expecting a miracle device (after all there's not a lot of marketing for it around!), so they'll be pleased with a lot of it's nice features.

And in my experience, every phone I've ever had has been totally disappointing for the first 2 weeks while I bump into limitations and bugs, until I get used to ignoring those and using the useful bits.

misticjeff | # 180 | 2009-11-24, 23:27 | Report

Originally Posted by Megacrazy View Post

As far as the unit being defective...come on...seriously.

You never know....

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34973