tissot | # 181 | 2009-11-24, 23:29 | Report

Very true indeed
As far as the web browser goes i would really want to see just simple back and forward buttons on it. Don't understand why did they brought this from S60 that i was 100% not to see. Flash performance still needs to get better and i'm confident that 10.1 will give us that. Just hoping to see it in near future. Pages drawing speed should be improved.
Other than those that i have been pleasently surprised about the browser and i do really think it's easily in the top 5 smartphone web browsers out there. Those things fixed and this will be truly amazing.

As far as rest of the phone goes i knew exactly what i was getting so no nasty problems for me, but there's lots of missing from this phone and with the hardware some performance aspects should be improved. While people want to compare Nokias past efforts with Symbian imo it's just unfair to compare very different OS and what uk based Symbian as a company was(owned by Nokia since last year) to Maemo that's in a different position than in the past inside and outside Nokia. They need to do just the same as Android no less, but wont mind if they do it faster Plus i sure feel more confident about Maemo with the community around here compared to Symbian where it was really scattered around and you really where not as involved and so close to developers.

jjx | # 182 | 2009-11-24, 23:31 | Report

Yes, but the pages in the video didn't look that complicated. At one point, something quite simple (inside the visible area) takes half a second to appear.

That tells me that either (a) the page is very complicated but looks simple, or (b) there's scope for a nice algorithmic improvement in how the renderer decides what to draw. I'm a secret admirer of nice algorithms so it's always nice to see a potential improvement

One technical option might be to lower the complexity of the rendered scene when the render can't keep up - e.g. by converting letters to little squares and/or lowering the overall resolution. Then it would look very smooth, but a little blocky - better than drawing in large chunks after a delay imho. The iPhone does something like this when zooming; I don't know if it does it when scrolling.

Of course, no matter how close to perfection it gets, there will always be some difficult web page that slows it down. Same is evident on the iPhone and other mobile browser. None of them are all that great if you expect silky smooth everything,

MountainX | # 183 | 2009-11-24, 23:35 | Report

Yes, I think it is self-explanatory in that the scrolling looked good to me.

Don't forget - the iPhone is usually rendering pages designed for it or other mobile devices. In the N900 you are rendering full desktop web pages.

I take back what I said about your device being defective. I don't see a single thing wrong with the scrolling.

I'd like to see you post a video of the N900 and iPhone side by side and make sure the web page is exactly the same (not just the URL - the actual served up content). Make sure the CSS is the same, etc. Maybe create a test page and save it to disk.

I wager that the N900 will easily outperform the iPhone.

Yeah, I didn't see a thing wrong with the video you posted.

What am I missing?

BTW, I will have my device tomorrow. I'll test this stuff too.

javispedro | # 184 | 2009-11-24, 23:39 | Report

Haha. With a maximum socket accept queue length of 1, just opening the port to the outside world would have bringed PalmOS to its knees.

Well how is hardware accelerated rendering going to help pushing pixels to screen? Not even for scaling hw acceleration helps (since, heh, scaling the rendered image would make fonts look blurry).



You all seem to treat "smooth scrolling" like the most important thing in the universe. If that's the case, I'm sure framerate can be tuned -- even by yourself.

sjgadsby | # 185 | 2009-11-24, 23:41 | Report

It took me two or three weeks to come around to liking my N900. In the beginning, I had a strong urge to put it back in its box and carry on using my N810. Now I couldn't go back.

daperl | # 186 | 2009-11-24, 23:52 | Report

I'm a happy owner of an iPod touch 2G, but I'm having a hard time finding anything more ironic than visiting apple.com with my touch. It's one of the worst scrolling experience's one can have. Yet when I cruise apple.com with my n8x0's, the scrolling is like... Well, you know.

I'm glad to hear that people are generally happy with the n900's browser. I personally have no intention of touching microb with a ten foot pole. But worry not people, I'm guessing in the relatively not too distant future a webkit-based browser will be coming to an n900 near you. Throw in some user stylesheets and maybe a host's file, and you'll be blissfully gliding through the Web like Fred Astaire. I can almost hear the music.

kalle | # 187 | 2009-11-24, 23:59 | Report

And isnt that exactly what Nokia has been saying from day one: this is step 4/5, this is NOT end user ready.

You americans with your iPhone price comparations... N900 is FREE here in Finland - with contract.

Megacrazy | # 188 | 2009-11-25, 00:01 | Report

No Problem. I will do a video of the 3GS vs the N900 scrolling this very thread. It will be pretty embarrassing mainly because the amazing browser on the N900 doesn't even render this site properly.

DaveP1 | # 189 | 2009-11-25, 00:05 | Report

Somehow I missed the "this is NOT (or even not) end user ready" on Nokia's website or in their press releases.

Had they sold it as a new Nokia Internet Tablet, a follow-on to the N810 with phone capabilities and an upgraded OS, the smartphone people wouldn't be on here complaining about the phone features. OTOH, they wouldn't be buying it either. I wouldn't be surprised if the N900 sells more units between now and the end of the year than the N800 and N810 (combined) did during their entire production run.

Texrat | # 190 | 2009-11-25, 00:15 | Report

I must have the super amazing version, because once again...