Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

@fatalsaint
I use tmobile and their plans without contracts are a lot more expensive than the ones with contract. I'd rather buy an unlocked phone and do the month to month thing.
My e63 wasn't compatible with tmobile's 3g. Web browsing was slow and I couldn't talk and browse at the same time. Imagine paying $700 for an iPhone or $550 for the nexus one and still b going through my e63 ****ery.
The n900 was without a doubt the best option for me.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

i bought my n900 without knowing its full potential. although i have come to realise its power, it was only by mistake really.
infact, im pretty sure that the n900 was only advertised as a 'standard' smartphone here in england.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

I think we may be in the same boat, except I'm not on call. I just play around, knowing that there's always the reformat/reinstall/reflash/rewhatever if I totally screw it up. I backed up all my contacts and didn't pay for any apps, so I figure it'll be a learning experience if/when I crash and burn! Plus my oldest brother is a super-uber-nerd and has the same phone. I can always call him for help.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Interesting story man, did you told him about community ? :D tell him next time so he can join us :)

Regarding the N900. I'm very happy with my N900 , sure I was disappointed when I got it and noticed some firmware issues and lack of software but I've been using Nokia smartphone for maybe ten years? I'm not sure when 6600 was released..it was my first smartphone and then 6681 , N70 , N73 and N95 8Gb but N900 is not like them at all. Sure some people say that they miss rich functionality from N95 but guys honestly when I open MicroB and start to browse internet I'm forgetting almost all issues with N900 why almost ? because some heavy flash loaded pages are too slow but I guess we cant blame Nokia for it :(

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

@nosa:
You confuse me. Do you mean to say that the t-mobile non-contract plans are less expensive than the contract plans? Because the way you said that - you should want a contract plan.

Nobody I know paid $700 for an iPhone. They got subsidized by their carrier, pay between $60-$80/mo; and got the phones for less than $200.

That is why you take a look at the carrier you *want*, and see if they have a phone that fits you. OTOH: If the phone is more important to you, than you go with the carrier that supports that phone. Verizon is about to get the iPhone if it hasn't already, and all the major players have various Android phones to choose from. All them for cheap; much cheaper than $500+.

But for the N900 there's no option. If I want the N900 I need to use t-mobile (not a problem , I do already, but it is a factor of consideration) - because if I don't I won't get 3G. And if I need to use t-mobile, than t-mobile gets my service for the next 2-years anyway; why would someone that doesn't have a very, very specific reason to buying it (in my case: I can make it do what I want it to; not the other way around) - why would a normal user choose to spend $500 on a phone and $60-$80/mo on t-mobile instead of $99 on a phone and $60-$80 with t-mobile?

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Just curious - can you do it twice and still remain a virgin?
:D

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Of course! Just opening it is foreplay...

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Not yet I have encountered a fellow N900 user but I met hundreds of PC users that give me the same feeling. ;) :rolleyes:

Anyway your story tells that the N900 provides a solid out of the box experience. :)

Same in my case: I found myself browsing internet to much on my E71 so I decided to upgrade to the very best web browsing phone available, researched, bought N900, disabled and uninstalled all the crap to conserve battery power, installed addblock (unfortunately no NoSript) and went on browsing along the way discovering a beautiful and clean user interface and total integration of messaging. Oh delight. :p

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

yeah, that was a mistake. tmobile contract plans are more expensive than the flex pay plans. with flex pay, however, the phone isn't subsidized. i like my tmobile plan and i'm not about to change carriers because of a phone. if i have a problem with tmobile, i can just say "**** this! i'm outta here" and not bother paying anything for breaking the contract.

so when i got my n900 i looked at the best options on tmobile.

the n900 was $480, the nexus one was $550 and the iphone was $700 unlocked.
the iphone doesnt work on tmo's 3g and was the most expensive option. the nexus one had no physical keyboard. the n900 was just perfect

the "cheap" phones require you to have a contract. what happens when i move to another country? what if i want to switch networks? why should i have to wait for my contract to expire or wait for a phone upgrade? i tried the contract thing and i thought it was stupid. just because iwant a phone sooo bad i should sell my soul for it. if i want it that bad, i save up and then buy it unlocked

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

What was wrong with the G1, the Cliq, or the MyTouch?

Those are all just as functional as the Nexus One; and two of the three are slated for 2.0 I believe, 2 of the three have keyboards. All would have been cheaper.

How much do you save, per month, on your flex pay plan with t-mobile? (legitimately curious, I want to see the math).

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Tell him, "... and if you really want to mess up your N900, check out talk.maemo.org"

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

It's a bit different in the UK. I pad something like £450 for my phone. That's more than a week's wages to the average worker, but if you take call charges into account works out less over two years because I buy phone credit off-contract because I don't make that many outbound calls.

We have a high percentage of Pay As You Go customers; you buy a SIM of your network choice and buy phones to suit your needs/wants/budget. More and more people seem to be going this way either because of poor credit status or because they want freedom and choice.

For contract deals new phones tend to go with one carrier initially. I think iphone was only available on 02 when launched(?) and may customers were locked in to long contracts with little promise of an early upgrade when the next model came out.

Status and image are very important to many people. Showing off the latest phone is de rigeur and very fashion-driven. I don't personally know many people who bought a phone for its features - they just wanted it because they perceived it as 'cool'

Like it or not, Apple is 'cool' right now.

Going back to the OP, that may be where the guy in the canteen came in. He may well have bought the phone because he perceived it as being 'the best' or 'cool from his perspective.

That is his right and who are we to knock him? At least he's not one of the people who come on this forum to blame others for their decision and show no interest in looking for a solution or waiting for developments.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Welcome, users who aren't into xterm! I think it's refreshing seeing you speak out.

Did you notice what happened in this thread, though? Someone was talking about running into an N900 user who hadn't enabled the extras repository and then someone jumped in and said he never used xterm!

The two have nothing to do with each other, of course. You can enable repositories right and left without using xterm. And in my opinion you can be a pretty powerful user without using xterm. So talking about xterm is mostly what they used to call a red herring. In most ways, the same goes with people who say "oh, I can't use this thing, I know nothing about Linux."

Using this thing usually has nothing to do with using Linux. What it DOES have to do with is learning how to use the N900 by reading the documentation.

How many of you use Windows and are experts on editing the registry? I would bet very few of you understand how the registry works, but you may have had occasion to edit the registry anyway. How did you do that? You did know how to follow instructions very carefully. You didn't have to understand what you were doing, even.

The same goes with most of the pretty sophisticated ways of using the N900. You have to learn how to follow instructions if you want to do something really tricky.

One of the things that is exciting about the N900 is that it encourages you to learn more and more to get more out of it. You should take advantage of that, if you have the time. But you can do a lot and run zillions of very cool programs without doing anything harder than reading documentation and following instructions.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

the g1 is outdated and it is android at its worst.
the cliq and my touch are nothing compared to the n900. they are considered below standard EVEN for android.
i pay $91 and a similar contract plan would be about $110.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

N900 is a dissapointment in my opinion. All the hype for nothing that spectacular... i only use xterm to download and install apps because app manager is so slow.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

So you think overclocking is a bore?

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

None of the Android's are anything compared to the N900... that is why I'm getting one.

But, keeping in mind your general user all three are more than adequate for what they need. And the Cliq is really not bad compared to the N-One.

So using your numbers, over a span of 24 months you save approx $456.

The Cliq and MyTouch can be had for about $150 (at least, when I bought my wife the Cliq) + contract. With the N900 at, we'll say $500 - then I guess over 24 months you do save about $100 (if you were a first adopter at closer to $600 you about break even). However, for an unlocked iPhone at $800 you don't save anything.

If you decide you hate t-mobile and switch then you actually limit the usefulness of your phone and can either live on a new carrier on the sub-par EDGE equivalent network; or you get a new phone for that carrier that fully advantages 3G. In this scenario, whether you saved money or not is going to depend largely how long was left on your contract - as most carriers now reduce the buy-out charges for every month you are on the plan.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

overclocking the n900 for the purpose of doing what exactly...

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

For getting the fun out of it that you are lacking so totally, poor thing.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

I am in a way very similar to this "poor guy": I never opened the xterminal (and not planning to do so) and mainly do a bit of calling, mailing & surfing with my N900.

The N900 is my first smart phone so I am easily impressed by all the fancy features. Other more experienced people complain about the lack of different ringtones for different contacts but I am so naive to be excited about the fact that you can make a ringtone from any sound!!

The main reason I bought the N900 is that it has 32GB of memory + a microDC slot so I can put my 40 GB-collection of music on it and use it as a (very reasonable) MP3player+phone. Yes, you can do this as well with an X6 or N97, but those phones seem to be less of a generalist and anyway cost more or less the same amount of money (when purchased as unlocked).
Other reasons for my purchase are that it looks good (stupid reason, I agree), feels good & solid like a real quality-gadget should feel (even more stupid), is usable worldwide (because I travel very much) and because I was amazed by the creativity and expertise of the members of this forum. Whatever Nokia will do or not do with Meego, to follow this forum will be very exciting. I am just hoping that the OVI map 3.0 will become available, and that someone will work on a proper compass and an altimeter.

But in short: we all buy phones (+ gadgets in general) and spend our money for different reasons. It is a personal choice.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

exactly my sentiments... many of the 'results' people rave about in the overclocking threads are those that come standard in other OS (smooth transitions, etc).

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Interesting thread!! I bought the N900 after reading a load of reviews on latest smartphoes, the main things for me were the web browser (speed, flash player etc), onboard memory capacity, camera quality and qwerty keyboard. I decided to say no to apple due to still having to pay ridiculous price for phone even when paying over £35 a week for two years?! N900 was free! Also I hate how apple/I-tunes is so controling. U see the adverts, heres an app that you can use to work out who owes what on a resteraunt bill etc so what?! use a frigin calculator!!! and you have to pay for the app! I had no idea you could run console EMUs on N900 or anything like that, its all been a pleasant suprise. Only thing I am dissapointed with is the lacking of OVI store, may as well not have bothers, plus no decent nav system. Though I now have Sygic which is great. I had no idea what maemo really was b4 buying the phone, but I am pleasantly suprised by things daily and mainly found via this site!!!!

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Well I consider myself a fairly low end user myself having limited experience of linux/maego. Now before anyone suggests I should have gotten an iphone/android et al I did research this. An iphone would have worked for me but for several things, its too damn expensive, you can't change the battery and the memory is too small. Plus most of the apps are useless to me. The N900 was the right price as I sold my upgrade phone on ebay and bought it that way. I can change batteries if out and about and no charger available. The apps available in extra's fulfill my needs and I'm waiting for fmms to come out of devel before installing it. Similarly for several other apps.
Again people will say other phones would be better/cheaper but I disagree and its my money. On this I can open the several medical textbooks I have in ebook formats, open toxbase, open eBNF etc. watch movies listen to music/audiobooks and know that somewhere an enthusiast is developing even more interesting stuff that I can get for free.
Do I have a problem with no customisable ring tones etc? Not really because thats the sort of stuff I consider a bit juvenile. If your phone rings answer it or don't.
Incidently I mainly chose this internet tablet because I spend long periods of time at work by myself and getting the N900 ticked the boxes I consider important. Without wishing to sound too fanboyish I'd like to thank Nokia and the maemo community for this great device!

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

good to see some users standing by their reasons to buy N900.

Can we all encourage other users to post responsibly in the same manner?

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

my reason for the n900 purchase was being with nokia a while and a bit disappointed with the n97 wanted to try something new. i was told by iphone/other users saying no no no stay away "its for geeks" and "its not stable" and now im loving showing the same folk the beast and listening to em say "wow you can do that FOR FREE" since day one ive not looked back

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

My reason to buy the N900 is it can do allmost everything like my computer.

I can even remote controll my N900.
I can put the N900 everywhere in my house and if i get a sms, I VNC to it and reply.
I don't even have to be near to my phone to use it :P

I even can do port forwarding in SSH so i can control everything in my LAN @ home.

The only thing i would like to see is a solid PPTP or IPSEC connector to a windows machine... don't like openVPN , does not feel VPNish to me.. can't get used to it for some reason.

But just to say it in 2 words.

awesome phone.:)

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Should have put the guy in a headlock until he submitted to nerding out with the N900.

It's the only way to be sure.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

i'm a linux user on my desktop pc, I love all the geeky options of the N900, but in the end I use the N900 as a media device:

32Go + microSD + FM transmitter + native divx support + photo quality + stereo speaker + kickstand + lens cover + good battery autonomy

For me all these MEDIA features already justify the N900 to be the best entertainment device available (and I would need MORE than 48Go to put my music only), better than the coming HTCs or the just-annouced Dell phones. And people seem to forget that they won't find these options in other phones, for me they are a lot more useful than a 4.3 screen or a 1Gz snapdragon

And when you add the OS and the geeky side, I don't see any upcoming competition

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Ok, I haven't had another OS and you have zillions of phones so you can compare better than I. I'm just pointing out that someone complaining about lack of interest in their N900 hasn't tried one thing that might make them more interested. Of course, people who want to be bored should ignore the suggestion.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

Actually that's quite impressive he was perfectly happy only using it for basic things. It means the UI is simple, the phone reliable. The tweakability factor is a bonus (and yes, I'm a tinkerer!)

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

From experience it does have one major thing in common with the N900 - appalling battery life. That's why I got rid of my G1, and the N900 spends most of its time in a drawer as a curiosity gathering dust. Much as liked playing with the N900 I now use a Milestone (which is solid for a full day) as my all in one comms device. The N900 might be the best geek toy in the world, but the tiny battery just cripples it. A mobile device is no good to me if I can't trust it away from a power source for more than half a day.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

True, but with a spare battery in your bag that should not be a problem. I have 2 spare battery in my bag.

2 Spare original battery from Nuron :-)

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

2 batteries to carry, 3 batteries to charge, and a bag to carry them all in. Hardly convenient is it. Don't need any of that (or a man-bag) with the Milestone.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

My battery eye program shows me getting more than 12 hours and I've been using my N900 obsessively. I'm overclocking to up to 805mHz and using the ulv settings given over in the Overclocking wiki. If you didn't want to overclock, you could easily set the mHz lower.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

You forgot to count in the long extension cord that needs to reach to your home electrical system.

Oh, if you aren't going to count that, why count all three batteries and the bag? You only need to carry one extra battery in your pocket and leave the other batteries at home, hopefully charging one. You can put some batteries in a bag if you want, or perhaps a safe or armored car.

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

I don't use a spare battery. I just carry my usb charger with me. My phone does a good 9-5 and then i have to charge it for my late night campus binge

Re: Met a fellow N900 owner and wanted to cry.
 

>> Why did you choose it over the plethora of other devices on the market? What made it stand out for you?

Flash support and internet browsing tablet, as in the ability to access all content on the web as if you were on the desktop WITHOUT needing to use mobile versions of a website.