aironeous | # 691 | 2009-12-25, 03:03 | Report

Impressed with drag and drop 6gigs of music from my pc over usb and it took under ten minutes i think (well it was quick). Got mad about the battery draining really fast when I went out to do laundary and took it outside for the first time.
So i got rid of tune wiki widget. Adjusted omweather to check only once a day. Turned off wifi connect and checking, Got rid of ap news widget. I'm just trying to eliminate everything and take it one step at a time to find out where the drain is coming from.

Then i noticed I was doing something stupidly obvious this whole time.

FM transmitter widget says "on" by default. That is a button not a notification.
I thought it was a notification and i kept tapping it thinking i was turning the transmitter off because after i tapped it, it said off.
So first time i took it outside i had the transmitter on whenever the earplugs weren't in.

Mediaplayer widget is not working for me. When i tap play it won't play the song but next song works.

I keep trying to put the stylus in the upper right because that is where N810 had it and it's a convenient place for it.

The keyboard; the keys are small for me (I'm 6'1") and there is no shift on the right hand side (like N810) which means I have to be careful not to drop it when i need to hit shift or control and a character on the left hand side of the keyboard because it's an akward motion for me but i like the sure feeling of "I pressed it" unlike the non feeling i got with N810 keyboard (Many times i thought i pressed a key and i didn't) there is more travel (up down motion) in the keys on this keyboard which i like.
I cant decide if i should cut my finger nails off or keep them for the keyboard.

Love the crisp screen, love the browser, love the way it operates most of the time with the multitasking, love the headphone jack on the short side, i want the N810 kickstand back, love the accelerometer playing bounce that was fun, really like the high speed bluetooth and usb, my microphone works, phone call quality was good on edge, omweather loaded my weather from gps right away, like the 4 desktops, I like how they give you more than 4 choices of loopable wallpapers so you could at least get a chance to play with the concept before going online and hunting down more, I liked how I can stick wesbites as shortcut widgets on my desktops, I like being able to move widgets ovr to the next desktop when your in edit desktop mode, I don't like how it is less responsive in the corners of the screen because a lot of controls end up in those locations, i like typing file: into the browser and seeing every file in the system with nothing hidden if i need to, i can live with backspace to go back one page in the browser because i understand we are trying to maximize real estate.

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Last edited by aironeous; 2009-12-25 at 03:27.

abubakar | # 692 | 2009-12-26, 07:57 | Report

hi all .. my first impressions:
got it about 5 days back, been busy with it, and am very happy with it. No dead-pixel/reboot problems. Big Thanks to nokia for giving it a very nice hardware.
As someone mentioned, charging cable and headphones plugged in at the same time makes typing a bit difficult, but I somehow learned to use it without a problem.
Loved the app manager, and being able to browse the nokia repositories with it, found lots of apps, its fun to download and use them.
Calendar is awesome ! Thanks nokia and the devs who worked on it!
One thing: kinetic scrolling is good, but sometimes i do feel a need to have a solid scrol bar that I can touch and drag because sometimes some item in the list gets clicked unintentionally and it is sometimes annoying to go back and display the list again and than again start the scrolling by touch.
Camera is gud, but in the start I just was just not pressing the capture button half way to give it time to focus, leading me to think "hey the quality sucks whats wrong with this 5 mp thing", than found out "oops, I didnt know how the focus thing works", and now pretty happy with the camera ... and yea i'm new to using cameras
Stock heaphones that came with n900: Are they the worst on the planet or I dont know how to use them too (just like I didnt know how to use the camera capture button) ? Because read someone saying he foudn them to be the best compared to anything else he tried. Thats not what my experience is with them. I have my own Sennheiser PX100 and they are working excellent with n900, so they r my primary ones. Will donate the default headphones to someone.
Keyboard: I havnt used any mobile keyboard device in the past many years, so I am not used to some functionality that I would want on the keyboard, the idea to me is fresh and I'm happy with n900's kb. Although my friend has n97 and I have used it 2 or 3 times, and I'm glad the keys on the n900 r better. I know n97 has a d-pad, have never used it so I dont know what conveniences the d-pad brings.
It was pretty strange when I found out that not being able to check my balance through *135# is a bug hehehehe, one friend laughed at me, I'm not telling anyone about that again
Battery!!!!!!!!!!!! :::: ok this is the ONLY problem that I feel is a problem for me. I think my n900 is not giving me more time than my laptop with its 9 cell battery, ie max 4 hours I guess. In my experience, a continous use of device, which means that the whole time wifi is connected, browsing constantly (4 or 5 windows open max), downloading stuff, chatting (pidgin also logged in other than the default gmail client), terminal open, notes open, headphones plugged in and sometimes listening to songs, bluetooth OFF, GPS OFF, FM transmitter off, etc, and in 2 hours its like from full to less than 30% or 20% I guess. Its an inconvenience for sure, battery should have worked better. (editing: just found out a post related to bad battery performance due to too much switching between 2.5g and 3g http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38380&page=2 ... and since my cell switches between 2.5g and 3g so going to try this and update the post.)
Performance: Let me say this: On one hand, I'm simply amazed at what this device's response time is, compared to any other cell phones I have used, and specially the fact that it feels like a computer and not a mobile device with the level of multitasking. On the other hand, I havnt found it to be perfect like I sense from some ppl's comments here. For example, while listening to songs on the headphones, the sound often lagged when I have 4 or 5 windows of the browser opened (and few other apps ofcourse), specially browser version of gmail, and I had to close the media player because I just thought the media player is slowing down the browser or vice versa, I cannot listen to songs when due to something the sound is just gone for a second or two and comes back, its not a nice experience that way.
Lock Unlock button: very very very nice to have it its perfect.
Screen Shots: its soooo easy to convince a friend to buy this device hehe, while chatting to them I just take few screen shots and email them, and they r like "damn awesome, I'm buying this". One friend was cursing his xbox that he recently purchased cuz now he dont have funds to buy n900.
4 desktops: lovely idea, keep the innovations coming Nokia!
Maemo Community: loving it
The idea of having so many apps as free and open source software has unlimited potential!
Screen: pretty awesome screen, and thanks to the designers for keeping the screen free of any buttons, thats how I imagine a tablet's screen to be. Its beautiful.

(have i used too many exclamation marks and smilies? )

Nokia is an amazing company, the best company to work for .. Nokia has clearly taken the mobile market to the next level.
Love linux!

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Last edited by abubakar; 2009-12-26 at 09:11.

altomkins | # 693 | 2010-01-02, 11:28 | Report

Got mine for Christmas and my wife hates it already (spending more time with it than her).

abhisheiktripathi2007 | # 694 | 2010-01-03, 14:33 | Report

hi friends. i am going to buy a n900 very soon from USA. however i have one question. kindly clear the doubts...

is the n900 only available at nokia online store and flagship stores or it is available at all the nokia stores in the USA?

the problem is that there are only two nokia flagship stores in the US. one in new york and the other in chicago. i may not be able to go to either of these place. i will be staying in washington only. that's why i wanted to know if the phone is available at local nokia stores in washington or i will have to purchase it online only...

friends from US may help me out here

chakli | # 695 | 2010-01-03, 18:14 | Report

best bet is to buy it online...amazon.com, buy.com, dell.com or newegg.com etc...personally amazon is the best (30 day money back guarantee)

cmolson | # 696 | 2010-01-08, 16:12 | Report

Okay so I just want to share how I feel about the N900 coming from a Blackberry Bold 9000.



What I was worried about before purchasing:
-Resistive touchscreen, despite several posts/articles about how responsive it it.
-Keyboard size/layout
-All the negative posts here from people (despite the positive ones, negative ones seem to stick in my mind more).


My Impressions:

The touchscreen really is great, I found the scrolling to be fast, and the response excellent.

I don't really like the keyboard on the N900, I find it awkward to use compared to the blackberry, especially with the headphones plugged in. BUT, having the touchscreen means I use the keyboard less. If the keyboard slid out a tad more it would be more comfortable, as I find my fat thumbs hitting the screen edge when typing on the top row. The spacebar position, and symbols were easy to get used to.

I can't really comment on battery life since I have had it for only 1 day.

I really like the ability to make sip/skype calls built-in. I am just waiting for them to release the bugfix for dtmf tones during a skype call.

The screen looks very nice, the blackberry I have also had a "high-res" screen for its time, but I like the N900 screen just as much if not more.

FM Tuner worked well with headphones connected and the FM app in the repositories.

I am in Canada with Rogers (waiting for WIND possibly) so Using EDGE was not as bad as I initially thought it would be. My blackberry was on the 3G rogers network. I was able to watch youtube videos without waiting for it to completely load (it loaded as I played it on 2.5g)

Browser is amazing, I find the fennec one to be too slow right now. It is faster on 2.5G than my blackberry browser is on 3G!

It is a bit thick compared to what I am used to, but still fits in my pocket fine.

The video performance is a lot better on the N900 than my bold 900 which I believe runs a 624mhz xScale.

I am disappointed the ovi store is not available yet, but hopefully it will be soon.

Just to put things in perspective, when the Bold 9000 from RIM was released it had tons of problems. There was no app store for blackberry at the time. The battery life was horrible. It was dropping a lot of calls when switching 3G->2G. It would reboot randomly.. I could go on, but you get the idea.


So I am pretty happy with my N900 and fairly impressed with what it can do.

mas5acre | # 697 | 2010-01-08, 16:24 | Report

Your echoing my opinion. Though one feature I love and no one mentions is 32gb of storage. I have 48gb with the mirosd (+16). So it replaces my ipod. I love ipods but hate itunes...

cmolson | # 698 | 2010-01-08, 16:46 | Report

That is true, that is a lot of space for a phone. The reason I didn't mention it is that I never stored much music on my other phone as well. I tend to listen to internet radio, which works quite well on the N900, on the blackberry I was using FlyCast which chewed through the battery like crazy. I'm not sure how the N900 does with this, but I am glad it is built-in to the media player.


Some other stuff:

e-mail: this is where the blackberry is truly king. I like the blackberry's email a lot more than the N900, but it does push email. The interface and keyboard make it very nice to send emails etc.


Multi-tasking: The blackberry can do this as well, though not as well imho.

Storage: My Bold had a very limited amount of space for apps (128mb to share with the OS I believe). and 1GB flash memory for pics etc. With the blackberry there is no way currently to install apps onto a memory card or even the 1gb internal memory. While the N900 from what I read is limited, it is possible to use other memory for apps manually right now (this is the optification If I understand correctly?). Both phones can handle memory cards

Apps:
On the blackberry I used the following apps a lot:

FlyCast for internet streaming - Built-in on N900

Viigo for RSS Feeds - Also Built-in on N900 though does not have a list of common feeds

Beejive - Instant Messaging app - Also built in on N900 and expandable to more protocols easily

Google Maps - This is most likely a big one for most people, it really is a great tool, I can get my bus times here in Ottawa using it. Ovi Maps so far seems a bit more sluggish. I know you can go to maps.google.com but it is not the same as a dedicated app for it.

Obviously the built in email+sms etc is great on the blackberry (some bugs with the new OS 5, but there are work arounds).


I actually had one of the openmoko phones for a while, but found it very slow and hard to use. I use linux on a daily basis, but It was very far behind, with no real road-map of an improved device.


I wish there was a better notification system on the N900 for missed calls, emails, voice mail etc. I know this has been talked about a lot.


Again, the N900 in my opinion is a great phone and offers a pretty good experience out of the box and with a few app installs it is a lot better.

I was actually in the US last week for new years and my girlfriends phone has UMA (calls over wifi basically). Unfortunately Rogers blocks non-canadian ISPs for UMA... Now that I have the N900, there is nothing Rogers can do to stop me (not technically uma, but sip/skype)!

Thanks for moving my post, and sorry for not posting in the existing thread.

cmolson | # 699 | 2010-01-08, 17:08 | Report

Update, apparently I was unaware that after disconnecting from wifi and going to the browser, it automatically connected again.

So the above mention of network speed on edge was flawed.

It is pretty slow on edge (not a device problem, but a network one). and youtube is painfully slow lol.

ktchiu | # 700 | 2010-01-08, 17:23 | Report

I mainly wanted to write this as a message to people browsing this forum considering whether or not to buy the Nokia N900. I have had this device for over 2 days now and I'm absolutely amazed by it. Here's a little about myself so you can get a better picture:

-College student
-No programming background or experience thought I have toyed around with Ubuntu
-I am quite a tech/gadget enthusiast

I was looking to upgrade my phone (a crappy Razr) and wanted something different from everyone else (ahem.. iphone). I also wanted something with a good camera so I had also considered the N86 but I just felt like the N900 had so much more to offer (even though the N86 might have a better camera).
I found this forum and spent much time reading and debating. I finally decided to order the N900 from Dell SB (which btw I had no problems with despite all the complaints). Received the phone 2 days after i ordered it. I did have some cold feet right after I ordered it due to all the complaints about bugs, random rebooting, etc. However, I luckily have no major problems with the phone. Theres some minor bugs here and there (i.e. some duplicate folders, gmail is a little slow, no USSD dialing) but nothing that would make me consider returning it. There have been reports about dead pixels and I unfortunately have some. It doesnt really bother me since its in the top left corner and I can only see it if the screen is black.

Now on to the good stuff...
-The web browsing is second to none, I have played around with many other phones (iphone, htc hero, etc.) and it just cant compare to the N900. I pretty much can load up any website I want and view the entire content.
-The screen is gorgeous. Just watching the "9" trailer included for the first time left me in awe.
-Battery life is decent, managed to record a 3 hour lecture and use the browser the whole day at school with about 20% left over. I'm hoping it'll improve after updates and after the battery goes through a few cycles.
-I have much much more but I'll stop here

For you people that are still on the fence, go buy an N900. I think there are a lot less defective units than this forum makes it seem. I would have to agree that this device is for someone who likes to tinker with their phones. The UI isn't as simple as say the iphone which I think is due to the fact that the N900 is literally like a micro laptop - theres so much to customize.

EDIT: For those of you concerned about the typing, I'm a pretty big guy (6'2" 230 lbs) with big hands I have no problem at all typing on the keyboard.

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Last edited by ktchiu; 2010-01-08 at 17:48.