I played with the N900 today at the Nokia store in NYC and was thoroughly disappointed. From reading all those fanboy posts out there, I expected the most awesome telephone ever, but instead I was presented with the following cons:
- It is clunky. Really clunky. It’s very thick and does not fit into the pocket well.
- The keyboard is too tiny. Maybe this just takes some getting used to, but I couldn’t do it.
- No multi-touch. The little swirling gesture to zoom is a cop-out for a much needed multi-touch screen.
- Unintuitive user-interface. Some things made sense, but generally operations took one too many clicks. Making phone calls should be easy and fast.
- The user interface does not rotate.
- The web browser is turkey slow, even for cached pages.
- Ovi maps is uglier than GMaps, and again – no multi-touch.
Oh well. I guess I’ll wait until the N900+1, especially considering that Maemo 5 will soon be obsolete.
Or maybe I’m just approaching it the wrong way? I dunno. After all, it does run Linux, can run KDE, and is extremely open… but still: it’s lacking heavily in several areas.
Ugh. I hate how horribly slow the browser is on the n810. I had hoped that it would be better on the n900. Now I am *definitely* not going to get one.
Well, you can’t fault the device for lacking multitouch, X doesn’t support it yet.
Maemo 6 is interesting, with Minno on the way and all(minno.sf.net). Not working yet, but the design work is being very carefully done.
There is a new proof-of-consept multitouch.
http://www.osnews.com/story/21669/Linux_Gets_Native_Multitouch_Support/
But I have seen earlier multitouch (do not mistake to multipoint) implentations. But Nokia just did not implent such. Nokia does not seem to even care about multitouch on any it’s devices by same level as Apple or other phone manufacturers.
I think what you need is the Nokia N920 due to be released hopefully mid to late next year.
It will have multi touch, is keyboardless, aka thin, 4.13-inch capacitive, multitouch screen and maemo 6.
Because of maemo 6 it will have a lot of other good things like rotating user interface etc.
The Nokia N900 is not quite a match for something like the iphone but its certainly a step in the right direction and at least it seems Nokia is aware of what needs to be improved hence them working hard on maemo 6 and nokia n920.
Although I haven’t personally seen the N900, I have a N97 which I guess is comparebly clunky with a small keyboard. It has lots of faults, probably even worse than the N900, but if there is one thing good about the phone then it is the keyboard. Compared to my iphone typing text is so MUCH more relax, it is not even funny. I also have the impression I am faster with the N97 but that might just my mind tricking itself because entering text on it is a pleasure instead of a chore with an iphone. Unfortunatly the trade off for a physical keyboard+large screen is that the whole thing becomes thick.
I don’t find the size clunky, just about right for me. I haven’t held one but I found an old phone with the same dimensions and it’s fine for me.
Every other review I’ve seen prases the keyboard to high heaven so I’m not put off by that.
From what I’ve seen the UI looks like it works exactly how I’d want it too. I guess different minds find different thing intuative. That being said there is a big difference between using something and watching people use something so mayybe I’ll change my mind when I get my hands on it.
I’m not overly fussed with multi-touch. The swirling thing does look lame but you can use the volume keys instead.
The rotation thing is a big one. However, the hardware has the ability and 3rd party apps can utilise the functionality. The phone app does, the browser will in pre-xmas update. The messaging app badly needs portrait mode with portrait on screen keyboard (even if just T9) . The rest of the phone I don’t mind being landscape.
Shame about the browser, wonder what this is down to. Maybe fennec will improve matters. I’ll make sure to test the speed out before I buy.
The demos I’ve seen of Ovi Maps on the device it does look pretty crap.
Thanks for the rundown, it’s good to hear from folk that don’t like it so I can take a balanced look at it. I think I’m going to love the phone, time will tell.
It has already been announced that Nokia will fix the software issues via updates. Considering that — according to Nokia — users will be able to install custom ROMs, installing Maemo 6 shouldn’t be a problem.
Capacitive multi-touch is not a desirable feature in cold climates — as anyone who has tried to use an iPhone while wearing leather gloves will tell you. Resistive touch screens do not suffer from this issue. Moreover there is currently no support from X.org or mainstream releases of any of the major widget toolkits.
“Capacitive multi-touch is not a desirable feature in cold climates — as anyone who has tried to use an iPhone while wearing leather gloves will tell you.”
Using phone at all on cold climates (over -30°C) is not something what everyone like to do. Being without glows under -30°C is easily done. Not just too long (5min so on). So making calls and answering phones, even writing SMS is very easy.
Some people (like me as example) need to work every winter over -40°C temperature. And on that temperature it is even easy just to go jogging with only short underwear and the sport suit what is used on summer and winter. Nothing fancy than just the wool cap and glows + ear protectors. And you do just fine over 40 mins. But that’s jogging. Standing still would be harder.
I would even take that capacitive is worser than resistive -card up. In the end you do not even want to use such device on such temperature. I would (and I do) use handsfree what allows you to answer calls by pressing a button on. But even those cables freeze easily on such temperature for what I have used.
>Moreover there is currently no support from X.org or mainstream releases of any of the major widget toolkits.
X Server 1.7, released earlier this month, has MPX. It is true that it is too new for the N900, and that GTK and QT don’t yet support MPX
WTF do you mean no multitouch?
Theres more to it than saying ‘Oh theres no multitouch!’, multitouch basically means you need a capacitive screen and that in turn means no stylus, so I can only use my fingers with the touch screen nothing else!
I’d prefer a resistive touch screen, so I can can use practically anything on the screen.
Ovi maps is probably not very good, but its more than just maps – it’s fully fledged GPS system. Comparable to the likes of TomTom. But there will be a Google maps soon enough.
Also web browser being slow – were you on 3G, Wifi or 2G?
(Also let me guess – you use an iPhone?)