The Nokia N900 is now $199 at nokiausa.com (32gb,flash,gps,5MP etc)

A few notes from a former owner.

-Screen is plastic and scratches too easily.
-Too small to be a good tablet
-Too big to be a good phone
-Skype integration is awesome
-Jerky Flash playback renders the Flash support useless
-Media management is shockingly bad
-Media support is amazingly good though

If you want an internet tablet that also does sms and voice, I'd suggest the Streak.

chagla said:

phone screens are nearly all plastic. have you seen otherwise?

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I can think of at least one that uses glass.

iEdd said:

I can think of at least one that uses glass.

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I can think of one that is glass as well....and scatters when you drop it from any height lol

C-c-c-c-combo Breaker!

Good deal. You can ditch the crudy Symbian OS and put a fully working install of android on it.

Just because it commands 44% of the market doesn't mean it's a good OS...

chagla said:

phone screens are nearly all plastic. have you seen otherwise? scratches too easily? yes of course you can create some scratches if you use it with "keys'.

"too small to be a good tablet" - ? isn't the iphone too small to be a good ebook reader? isn't the ipad too big to be a good phone?

what is too big? the Nokia N900 is shorter in both height and width compared to iphone 3gs. N900 is only about 7MM more in depth. that's a quarter of an INCH. size comparison.

jerky flashback? there are tons of demo/test/user videos on youtube that show N900 handling flash quite well. so its not useless as you put it.

regarding media management, okay you may not like the way it organizes. but in what ways or compared to what its bad?

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I'm just putting in my observations from several months using it. The iPhone screen, and any which uses glass does feel much more resilient. I used it with the Nokia leather holster and still managed to get a few hairline scratches. In the two years I had my iPhone 2G, the only scratches it had accrued were on the back.

It feels too thick. yes, on paper it may only be 7mm thicker, but it feels too chunky without feeling reassuringly heavy. It is also difficult (not impossible) to type one handed on it. Physical keyboards can be nice, but my thumbs do feel much less cramped on the iPhone.

The iPad is too big to be a phone, yes. However, it is just right as a tablet.

Maybe they have released another update to maemo, but at 1.2, the performance wasn't too awesome. Even overclocking the CPU to 1GHz and the DSP to 500MHz didn't do too much to help the playback.

I'm not saying it's a bad deal per se, in fact, it's a really good price, but if I were to get a Nokia, I would go for the N900's successor to ensure I get true support from Nokia with MeeGo when it comes into general release.

and Symbian was best when it wasn't called Symbian...

My views on Media management.

I shall compare with the iPod app on iOS.

1) spotty album art recognition
2) shuffle isn't particularly clever
3) playback can be jerky
4) for a long time, the media player widget didn't work
5) doesn't handle podcasts nicely (sees them the same as songs)
6) ugly controls
7) no eq presets
8) no genius shuffle (which is nice)

DLNA support, whilst not always functional and only works on the same subnet, is a nice idea though.

Another thing. The headphone port is poorly placed, as it is in a weird position when typing with the phone. nokia should've put the port in the top right corner rather than bottom right corner, that was as poor design as the iPhone antenna thing

ravenvii said:

Just because it commands 44% of the market doesn't mean it's a good OS...

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My thoughts exactly. Windows has 91% of the market share… that doesn't mean it's good.

A friend of mine refused to get an iPhone cause he 'hated' Apples prices. His g/f knew this and got him an N900 for his bday. When asked how much it cost, he said ".. the same as an iphone" When asked what he thinks of it, he picks up the phone, turns it on, tinkered with it for a few seconds, puts it down and goes ".. its ****.. the iphone is better... but no i refuse to buy the iphone."

chagla, do you work for Nokia?

There is a reason this phone is so cheap.

this post reeks of spam...

Thanks OP

I'm really considering this phone. Paying a $100 plus monthly for the iP4 to drop calls daily isn't right (maybe its AT&T). All I know is Tmo served me better at half the cost with unlocked iP3G, and it turns out this phone is completely compatible with Tmo's 3G (too bad the iphones aren't, still my first choice).

chagla said:

Symbian, the Biggest Mobile OS No One Talks About

The Current State of Symbian Development



- The N900 does not run Symbian. There are some tutorials I have seen for Android installation on N900.

Anyways, "symbian" is not a widely known word in the USA. but it remains the biggest mobile OS in the world.

symbian (Nokia) 44%
RIM (blackberry) 19%
Apple 15%
Android 10%
Windows mobile 7%
Linux 4%
other 1%
link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

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Cool, but the N900 runs a GNU/Linux distribution called Maemo 5, which was now merged with Intel's GNU/Linux distribution, Moblin, to what is called MeeGo.

The N900 has the same hardware that the iPhone 3G has. I'm waiting for the N9, the successor. I hope it'll give me a nice time until the iPhone 4GS/5 hits the scene in June.

You seem surprised at the bias towards iPhone and the dislike towards the phone you present.

On a forum titled MACRumors.

Where most people are admitted MAC junkies.

... I believe a simple /facepalm would cover it.

EDIT:
Also, word on the street is that the UI is EXTREMELY unintuitive and anything but user friendly.

I hate that phone. It is terrible.

if i would buy a so called SMART phone , just in case my old nokia 6300 and my business e90 are dying and i cant get a normal phone any more where you can make calls with and eventually write a text on ,as on a PHONE i find all the other features are for children who like to play , i would choose the nokia over the iphone as it still has some sort of keyboard on it , small but a keyboard and separate screen