Nokia N900 – The Penguin Has Landed
You may have noticed that I’ve dropped off the side of the Internet somewhat. Life can get busy at times, especially for someone who sometimes gets muddled up with time management and priorities. Another compelling reason for this is that I recently bought a Nokia N900. And I’m still getting used to incorporating it into my day to day activities.
Getting It Home
Unfortunately, Nokia does not sell the N900 in Canada. In theory it might eventually. But I wasn’t going until the Canadian duopoly of Rogers and Bell along with the CRTC got around to doing so. So much for Canada being a leader in telecommunications technology. Instead I bought my N900 through Amazon and used Shipito to forward my parcel. Later I found out that buying from Dell may have been a cheaper and faster alternative. It took about three weeks but I eventually got my toy.
Hardware
I must congratulate the engineers at Nokia for coming up with solid feel to the N900. I would of preferred a metal body like my old N810. But the N900 is definitely not as flimsy and plasticky like my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone. The touchscreen is quite sensitive and responsive much like the iPhone’s. The sliding keyboard also feels great. Each key nicely rounded, depresses in a solid quiet manner and gets illuminated in low light conditions. The 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss camera takes great pictures with good resolution and great colour balance. My 5800 in comparison took decent photos but everything was a shade of grainy grey. The auto-focus on the camera leaves much to desire. But it might be a case of my not knowing how to use the software. The N900 takes MicroSD cards, which helped with migration away from my old phone. The internal memory is a massive 32 GB. Sound quality of the speakers is excellent. Great feeling stylus as well.
I loved the large full kickstand on my N810. Apparently the preproduction units of the N900 also had this design. However the production N900s have a small kickstand built into the lower frame of the camera. It took my quite some time to find it. And since the kickstand is off-center the whole device wobbles on its kickstand. Not cool. The real scary thing is the micro-USB connector. The power adapter for the N900 recharges the device using the micro-USB. And the port itself is surface mounted to the circuitry. I’ve read quite a few horror stories involved where the port detached from the device! So I’m paranoid, and extra careful with plugging in the micro-USB cables to the N900.
Software
The UI on the N900 screams wow. The Compiz-like 3D views and effects win everyone who sees the device in action. A phone should not be able to look and act so sexy. The UI is intuitive and very finger friendly. Web browsing is where the N900 excels. The swirl zoom in and zoom out, smooth scrolling and fast rendering makes web browsing fun. The browser fully supports Javascript and Flash, so the experience is comparable to using a full desktop browser like Mozilla Firefox. The N900 also has a great PIM/contact management. Combine it with the Hermes app from Maemo extras, and you have an awesome contact management that integrates your contacts on various messaging, microblogging and social network services. Amazing. There are a few nice apps available through the repos and the Ovi store. Including the fun games of Bounce Evolution and Angry Birds.
It is not all roses in the software realm. The N900 while a mobile computer and all that jazz is still a mobile device. Space and energy constraints plague every mobile device out there. So there is a limit to how much multi-tasking one can do. Fair enough. But sometimes the device grinds to a slow halt with just a few apps on. Why? I get it why it happened when I copied my 6GB music collection off my MicroSD onto main memory. Maybe I need to restart the device once in a while? But why two browser windows, two instant messaging apps and a music player can stall the device… Also the Maemo5 platform used on the N900 is new, so there will not be the number of apps that Symbian S60, Apple’s iPhone and the Android app stores enjoy. Nokia has Ovi working for the N900, except payments are still missing. Hence my hesitation to say the N900 will work well for non-enthusiasts. It looks like Nokia also has similar feelings. Then again Nokia has said that Maemo6 will be the mainstream platform, with multi-touch support, app stores and all that jazz.
Thoughts, Ideas and Dreams
This review is reaching epic proportions now. In short, I love my little N900 mobile computer/Internet tablet/cellphone. It is definitely something I looked forward too. And I’ve owned a number of mobile computing devices already: Palm Tungsten E, Nokia N810 & Nokia 5800 XM. A great thing is that the device and platform has the potential of getting way better with time.
Related Links
- Aaron Seigo’s (Plasma KDE lead developer) thoughts on the N900.
- Yes, the N900 CAN control pole dancing exotic robots.
News Flash – Matthias Ettrich Gets a Medal, the N900 Gets Reviewed
Dorian continues his quest in pursuit of sanity, salvation and free time under the combined mountains of e-mail and code. He sents his regards and asks yet again for patience. As a token, he gives you his take on the latest cool developments in the consumer Linux space.
Matthias Ettrich Awarded the German Medal of Merit
Matthias Ettrich, founder of the KDE project, received the German Medal of Merit for his contributions for the common welfare. Specifically for his founding of the KDE project.
Dorian’s thoughts: As a rabid KDE user, thank you for starting this awesome desktop project. Thank you for kickstarting the project that is pushing the Linux desktop computing experience forward in ever increasing terms of usability, aesthetics, flexibility and freedom. Thank you, and thanks to all the contributers of KDE and the wider libre software community.
An In-Depth Review of the N900
Still wondering whether or not to get the Nokia N900? Well take a look at this in-depth review of the pre-production N900 from The Nokia Blog.
Dorian’s thoughts: I’m still thinking of getting it. I wonder how it compares to my current 5800 XM in terms of hardware, but I think it is much, much better… Still waiting for availability of the unit in Canada, and for a review of a production variant too.
News Flash – Linux Desktop Suck, Android is Not Linux and the Nokia N900s Dropping Out of Orbit
These past few days have seen Dorian scrambling to catchup and not blogging. Dorian still feels the need to fight his e-mails, update his “other” sites and organize his cluttered life, rather than update his readers on exciting developments he has worked on. Instead Dorian will continue writing in the third person, and highlight the latest and niftiest in Linux tech news… and hopefully he will get his act together soon. So lets look at whats buzzing in the blogsphere.
The Linux Desktop Sucks
First the Linux hater, and now some developers and power users state what they REALLY feel about Linux on the desktop. vanRijn experienced the beauty of sweet candy land that is the Mac OSX world and laments why we can’t see the same in Linux-o-landia. dkite proofs more an optimist, saying yes its broken and but will get better… someday. Also some finger-pointing to the manufacturers for not getting their act together, and states some heroic community coding is needed. Funny how Dell engineers are helping to make Dell machines running Linux able to recover themselves, just like under the most common desktop OS.
Dorian’s thoughts: The Linux desktop worked for me, on a laptop in 2002, so stop your bitching guys. I’ll agree the legendary saga that is fixing X and sound, etc. is reaching epic proportions. And yes devs from vendors are leading the way in many cases. But in some cases it seems easier to start from scratch as with Wayfarer or Moblin or PulseAudio. Still building a solid and expandable underlying architecture is hard, so everyone does so in a piecemeal fashion. And in traditional UNIX fashion, we argue and argue over what we want to build and how to do it. Instead of wringing hands, help fix the problem.
Android is Not Linux
Sounds like another bad recursive hacker pun, no? Looks like the guys at Google, took a Linux, through out the parts that worked-yes, shocking some parts of Linux actually work quite well thank you very much-and replaced them with their own jerry-rigged replacements.
Dorian’s thoughts: Why guys, why? Just learn to use the tools, and I’m sure the standard Linux stuff works pretty darn well on a mobile device. At least one real handset maker seems able to use the existing Linux stack, and run with it. Sure the UI needed a replacement and some optimizations are required, but rip and replace with crappier renditions? Not cool guys. Google needs to learn to work with the FOSS community, and not around it.
Nokia N900s Dropping Out of Orbit
So the N900 already launched… but Nokia started pumping out, shipping out their amazing N900s and stocking retailers with these pieces of mobile computing paradise. And unlike Google, Nokia knows how to build on top of existing Linux stacks and without stomping on existing FOSS communities. Not like a giant robot ravaging a city… Google.
Dorian’s thoughts: Remember about us Canadians! We’re that country above the US, and we’d like some N900s too, pretty please.
In Other News:
- A documentary on LugRadio? Kewl!
- The Khronos guys who brought you OpenGL, OpenCL and OpenSL E, want to bring you a standard windowing framework for Linux mobile devices: OpenWF.
- Big multinationals and big government want to fix copyright to work for YOU. YOU being a big multinational or a big government, of course. Cause another global over-arching treaties is a good idea. <smirk /> And this treaty will solve one of the world’s problems: the publishing industry’s losing their profit margin, which was the highest of any industry to being with. <smirk /> World hunger and peace can wait until next week’s meeting of “elites”.
OK, Dorian must end his newcast here and scurry back to his other work.
A Return to Mobility
As a happy owner of a Nokia 5800 smartphone, I quickly realized the potential of this gadget as a great pocket-sized mobile computer. Unfortunately, for the longest time I relied completely on wireless access points. With the lack of a physical slideout keyboard, this phone felt like a step down from the N810 Internet tablet. On top of that, while the Symbian platform is well supported. I really enjoyed both the UI and multitasking abilities of the N810. While the 5800 XM does allow for multitasking, it feels a bit uncomfortable to use. Now I won’t complain about Symbian because I understand that it is limited by its age and its original intended useage. I’m sure that Nokia and all the other Symbian players are working hard to keep the old workhorse going. But there really is a limit to what you can do with it. Hence my anticipation for the N900. Lets hope it’ll be available for Canadians soon.
Sticking to only wireless LANs has the downside of being offline most of the time. Plus it means using the office WLAN when at work. And I’d prefer not to for the obvious reason of wanting to maintain the separation of work and my personal life. So eventually, I bit the bullet and added a data plan from Fido. Everything seemed perfect, until I checked my phone bill. Apparently the data plan didn’t appear, and the bill was a lot larger than expected. Dismayed I contacted Fido, and stopped using data to avoid an even larger bill. You can imagine my elation, when a rep from Fido called me today, withdrew the charges and reinstated my data plan. Yes! So I’m back online in the mobile space, enjoying the Internet everywhere.
The Madness Subsides
I apologize for the silence of in the last few days. Things really picked up at work, to the point of insanity. Fortunately yesterday I managed to get the component I was working on out the door. Still a good amount of overtime was required by the entire team to get our part done. Hopefully the client will be pleased with my initial contribution. I’m sure they’ll be satisfied with my latest work as I’m adding the final touches to that component. Another reason for my silence, is that I’m transitioning to using my cellphone as my main computing platform. It can feel cramped at times, but the portability is amazing. I’m sure it will be even better if I get a nicer device like the N900.
Ok, well all I have time for today is a quick update. I still have a good amount of work ahead of me, and very little time to do it in.
By the way, the new beta release of Kubuntu is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Definitely worth the upgrade.
