Hello, had the n900 for a few days now, and I must admit I love, got rid of my iphone and jumped ship.

While the whole maemo os is cool, I feel like I'm missing the point of it all, I work at CPW in the UK and after many demos of the n900 by our Nokia rep I decided that I would give it a go, but I am a little disappointed with what you can actually do with it!! The n900 is pegged as a hackers dream device and that the linux os will open a whole world of apps and advantages over other devices....... but Ill be dammed if I can find anything on the n900 that other devices don't already have.

I have activated the extras and testing repo's, but still cant find anything that really sets it apart from other devices, I know im gonna have my face ripped off for that statement but I feel like ive missed something important with the n900, the only thing that does set it apart from other devices is the multitasking which is sublime, but as a whole the OS is still a phone OS.

Can anyone provide any feedback or links to some cool n900 stuff that is unique to the device?

Cheers

Xterm installed by default. A full desktop browser with real flash support.

I think that ... If something is very cool and useful to have on a mobile device, it won't remain unique to any device for very long. Generally the unique stuff is the not-so-useful stuff.

the point is that if you need something that doesn't exist and that isn't popular at all, you have best changes to get it with maemo.

There are loads of things I think. I must admit though that loads of it is still in testing or devels.

For Example, Quake and all the emu's with wiimote etc.
Then you have SSH, VNC RDP (ok I know other phones have this as well).
The browser as mentioned. The fully intergrated conversations is a massive big up for me.

But as mention if you can think of something and it's possible chances are someone will make it for you. this is key to the open OS of Maemo.

Precsiely Can I refer you to our 'sheep' thread? I am a total newcomer to all this. I don't code. I don't design. I barely know my root from my elbow.

But a month after I had an idea for a game using the acceleromoter, people who shared the idea have drawn it, created it, and got the first edition in extras-devel. It may not be 'new' in the sense that other devices don't have something sort of like it. But find me another phone platform with a community who can or will do that?

The point is you gotta wait until the great stuff appears.

Everything is great about the N900, all the time!

Hi Starman,
the n900 is many things at the same time... some users will find some things extremely useful - other users will prefer other features.

What is useful to me

a) voip application (i am not speaking about skype) but the possibility to use real voip. This is interesting for me because I make a lot of long distance calls and travel a lot. Everywhere I have WIFI and even where I have 3G i can use the VOIP (or SIP) calling to call friends almost free: Here is an example how to set up sip using voipcheap

b) a scond strong point as mentioned above is you can see the REAL internet... you do not have to refer to mobile pages where flash (embedded videos like youtube or vimeo) is disabled.

Also if you look at this screen comparison you will see that you see much more with the n900.

c) OPEN: my dad has the 3gs and i wanted to "free" his phone so that he can use a different sim on holiday. We needed to do a jailbreak and i almost bricked the phone (in fact I did brick it but I got help unbricking and jailbreaking it. With the n900 you don't need to jailbreak because it is OPEN to do whatever you like to do. It is your device. You own it

d) I have a popcorn hour in my home.. it has the possibility to offer videos and music to other devices via my network. The N900 can be plugged in to the bedroom TV and I can watch movies that are on my Popcorn Hour in the living room. (via wifi) If travelling I can also put movies on the phone directly and watch them on the great screen in the plane or even connect the phone to the TV in the hotel room...

I have limited this list to my favourite 4 but there are many more of my favourites... Hope it helps a little

As stated, it has a browser that support Flash, so in many cases, an "app" is not necessary. I was up really late configuring/testing a pbx trunk for my SIP solution for the 900. I thought it would be great to be able to do while in bed, but hesitated because I didn't want to drag out my old, slow laptop. Then I realized I could do it all on the 900.

Coming from the Droid, it was great having a fairly substantial apps market, and I was able to replicate most all the functionality from my Motorola Q (save for Slingmobile support). I had to get some 3rd party apps to replace the Droid's buggy ones (email, contacts mgt., SIP, etc). However with the 900, I didn't have to download any apps. I was pretty much able to hit the ground running (except for the LED Flashlight...a "must have" ).

For me, it felt like the 900 didn't have much to offer at first, as it lacks a few customization options. But after I dug a little deeper, there is a lot of features/functionality "built-in", but its more discrete. For whatever reason, I still think that being able to adjust WiFi radio power is one of the cooler features.