Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Its N9500 has Symbian S80 and those menus are what I miss with N900. But I would be happy if Maemo, even only X-term, would run in N9500.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

2. One for everyday use and one waiting for Neo900 Bareboard. And I think I am only guy how had N950 before even seen N900.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

TFT-display is much better that those new OLED.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Whoa, what??? QML is fairly heavily oriented towards mobile use; it is still far easier to write serious desktop applications with Qt Widgets than with QML. And while the mobile computing world may be where all the action is today, I think a whole lot of us still spend a whole lot of our time at a desktop machine. :) The Qt Widgets system is not going anywhere; in fact, Qt is still actively supporting and upgrading it.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

You are right in the fact that it is still supported (I thought it was kind of frozen), but desktop frameworks like KDE are moving more and more to QML.That makes it also easier to port it to phones and tables.

I don't see why Qt Widgets would be easier for desktop apps than QML.There is not that much difference in devices apart from screen size and interaction. But I have not used QML in desktop apps, so and can't say for sure.

I don't know if you used QML already? Anyway, you will have that opportunity once your tablet arrives :)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Well, for me, the biggie is that for mobile devices, most of the time people use them in short bursts, or in situations where it is inconvenient to sit down in front of a keyboard. As such, most mobile apps concentrate on having very simple interfaces (mostly touch related) for rather limited tasks. On a desktop machine however, you can take lots of time and use a variety of extravagant input devices.

QML is _great_ for creating a beautiful touch-based interface to an app. However, if you're trying to write a large application that involves complex interaction with the user, particularly if you want to use lots of different windows and lots of menus, buttons, and fields for interaction, the Widgets system still has the advantage in being able to quickly and easily setup and manage large, complex user interfaces. (And the widgets integrate much better with native Windows, OSX or Linux UIs than QML does.)

Well, I did start to work on transitioning some of my existing code to QML, to make it ready for Sailfish for when I received my tablet. Which was scheduled to happen back in July... ;) But for now, I've been working on other stuff. I'll come back to Sailfish when (if?) I can ever acquire a piece of hardware that actually runs the OS...

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Back to topic. I have one occasionally misbehaving N900. No USB-fixes (original USB-port is still working). Backplate and "pen" have been replaced with genuine spares. Running CSSU. Most likely to be replaced with Jolla + TOHKBD2 when the time comes.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

That is exactly the problem!

On the N900, it Just Works™. It may not work optimally and may look ugly without some Hildonization, but it works, so you know right away that any effort you are going to make porting it is not going to be completely wasted.

On the Jolla, it Does Not Wok At All™. Not, "does not work well". Not, "looks ugly". No. Does. Not. Work. At All. So you may spend days or weeks trying to port it and all this time you have no idea if you are just wasting your time.

This is not just for porting old code. I am currently writing a new app for the N900 and thought I could build it for Jolla as well. No dice. It builds without problems and even runs, but is completely unusable. The screen rendering is completely off. I have very little time to spend on it, in the order of 1-2 hours per month. I could deal with some #ifs for Maemo and Sailfish but maintaining two completely different code bases with completely different paradigms - forget it.

Besides, I beg to differ on the whole QML business. QML is the spawn of the devil. Just like Glade was. Yes, it makes Sailfish patches easy but as a developer, letting my users fiddle with my application like that is the last thing I want to do. Out of the window goes any idea of security. Jolla must be slapping themselves for making it so easy.

Lastly, QML is a resource hog. No wonder that a mobile phone can hardly breathe with a whole 1GB RAM. One whole gigabyte! I have heard people ask, "how did the N900 manage with that little?" I ask, "what does Jolla do with that much?" QML? Thanks, but no thanks.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Seriously ?

Well, can kinda agree about Glade there. ;-)

So your app is not open source or what ? You don't want others to contribute to your project to make it better ?

Actually any piece of software where you can't independently review the source code (and also make sure the binary you have corresponds to the source code) should be considered insecure by default. Or do you mean something else ?

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

I noticed heavy js stuff is also responsible of massive slowdowns.. (dialogs saying script not responding, etc..)
Now I'm playing this way and it seems old good microb will survive still for a while :)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

[Sorry about dragging this further and further into the OT territory. I will shut up right away, I promise.]

@MartinK, I just see a difference between saying, "here is the source, build it yourself, improve it and submit amendments if you wish" and, "here is the source, run it". You may not see the difference because your code is the source. Mine isn't. I have successfully avoided scripting languages for 25 years. I appreciate there is a place for them but they are just not for me.

If you want to write your code as a script, write it as a script. QML is IMO a horrible mishmash and is neither here nor there.

Our views on security may differ too. Sorry if I got this wrong but I understand that your background is in the academia. That is very different from mine, which is computer security. In your background, the default is sharing. In mine, it is assuming that everyone is an attacker and giving away as little as possible.

One example: you know how, when you mistype your credentials at a login prompt, the usual response is, "the username or password is wrong". And you go all berserk, "why don't you tell me which one it is, you ***** ****?" The answer is that telling you could give the attacker too much information. I once closed my account for that very reason. It was with my mobile operator. To manage your account online, you could create an account and choose your username and password. Later on they changed it and made my phone number my username and I said no way. My phone number is public and this change made the link between my account and me immediately obvious.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

My background (at least for the last few years) has been working on the Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux installer. While that that's not directly security related I'd like to note that RHEL (which is used in some very important and sensitive environments, such as banks or stock exchanges) is fully open source, which is very important for security. (and sorry if this sounds like an add - that's definitely not the intention!)

Internal configuration details, signing & private keys should of course stay (very!) private. But as for security sensitive code - that should be open source a widely reviewed before use. Also one should preferably not write such code from scratch but use a widely reviewed established open implementation if possible.

Sure, that's basic security - it makes bruteforce password cracking harder as you can't use failed login attempts for login validity checking. Related security measures for authentication you should also only store salted password hashes, introduce delays to prevent brute forcing, block login or show captcha after a given number of failed attempts, refuse weak passwords during registration, allow very long passwords (so people can use secure password managers) and ideally support two factor authentication.

But that still does not contradict the implementation being open source in any way.

I'm sure they also stored your password in plaintext and sent it unencrypted through email if requested over the "lost password link". :)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

http://marxoft.co.uk/static/images/misc/mj_fud.jpg

P.S. I own one N900. :)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

On the subject of QML, all of these running applications are using QML with no performance issues:

http://marxoft.co.uk/static/images/m...qml-apps-1.png
http://marxoft.co.uk/static/images/m...qml-apps-2.png
http://marxoft.co.uk/static/images/m...qml-apps-3.png

If Maemo5 can do it on the N900 with only 256MB RAM, there is no excuse for a more modern device with 1GB. :p

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Talking about FUD: thanks for actually supporting statements with test cases. It adds so more value than a simple "QML is a resource hog" claim :)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

I stand corrected.

So if not QML, what else is Jolla's excuse?

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

AFAIK the biggest issue is due to the V8 Javascript engine (of the Google Chrome fame) being replaced by the custom V4 engine written by the Qt developers themselves. From the Qt 5.2 release notes:

Not that they say faster (there were also other benefits, like skipping some type conversions and not having to carry a heavily patched V8 fork) but there is no word about memory consumption. From what I've heard the V4 (at least in its Qt 5.2 incarnation) has significantly worse memory handling than V8 had and might very well be the main cause of the out-of-memory issues we are seeing since the upgrade to Qt 5.2.

It could very well be that the situation has improved since Qt 5.2, but I
m afraid Jolla might have got a bit too scared by that major Qt version update or might just not see it as a priority for now, thus keeping the current unfortunate status quo.

Oh and I have 2 N900s - I bought the first one and won the second on in one of the Coding Competitions with modRana. :)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Ha! So it is QML after all! Not QML as such but its Qt 5.2 implementation. And marxian's examples do not suffer the issue because they are older :)

Back to the topic, I have three N900s:

1. In a white replacement housing. I carry it with me all the time, even though I now use Jolla as my main phone (for no other reason than the new SIM card comes with a better call plan but I cannot swap it back because of the incompatible sizes).
2. In pristine condition in its box.
3. With some hardware problem, can't remember what it was.

I had one more that I sold to a fellow TMOer a while ago. All 4 have a reinforced USB port and a replaced bupbat.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

I'm in a similar position. I've ordered a refurbished N9 from China (having accepted that my finances were not going to stretch to a Jolla and TOHKBD any time soon). Once it arrives, I'll have a second attempt at resoldering the N900's USB post: it's been over three years since I charged a battery *inside* the device!

I've been reluctant to go poking around with my soldering iron again as if anything went wrong I'd be rolling back to an E71 as a day-to-day phone. The Symbian stock browser makes microb look like the best thing since sliced bread!

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

@pichlo: you can put micro and nano sim in the n900, if you want cheap adapter just buy some prepaid card with the cutouts and use them (here one can be had for ~2usd)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Did you see my link? Tried it, didn't work :( I will try peterleinchen's solution when I find the time.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

@pichlo: yeah, making it more rigid might help (but not too thick). afaik all those sim iterations differ only in physical cutout (otoh, maybe that sim is paired to imei by the provider? try any other phone?)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Not only is the SIM not locked, it originally came with the N900 ;)
I had to cut it out to fit the Jolla and now it does not fit back ;)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Had three, two had USB problems, one was the most difficult return back of any electronic device I've ever encountered.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Had 1 -> got brocken -> got 2 defective in order to reassemble 2 working but 1 one was too damaged. Left one working which got defective too.
So i have 2 with loose gsm chip and 1 ripped apart currently.
Sadly the prices for n900 seem to rise again. So i decided to get some n900 related tools too fix the n900 forever :rolleyes: and have some fun.
The tools:
http://www.pic-upload.de/view-290104...25053.jpg.html

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

wow! you mean business :)

What's the beaglebone (afaict) doing there?

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

I do own 4 N900's. Two of the four are no good for daily use and the other two in used as my main and backup devices. It's pretty hard to find a N900 replacement now days. I like to have multitasking, command line interface and no kind of advertisement on my cellphone.

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

I have two units sloshing around in bodybags,
but the other is still my main number one telephone.
(I have a BQ E5 HD Ubuntu thang,
but it is little more than a Canonically-refscked paperweight)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

I've had 2 so far,my very first one was stolen then I bought another one, and at the time of posting I've ordered another one, the current one I own, I really wish I could get working again, the SD ribbon cable somehow ripped, and I dunno how to fix it, and I need a replacement screwset but the screws are hard and far in between to find, anyone with scavenged N900's willing to send or sell me a screwset or 2? I'd really love to have 2 working so I can communicate with the other and do some multiplayer gaming/sharing and because the USB port came off, I can't link up to my computer to save the data on it. Thanks in advance. :)

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

Two.

One mildly scratched one I got for cheap, which touchdisplay I changed, for everyday usage.

And another one in perfect condition, with all the accessories, which house I might use for a Neo900...I'm still undecided whether I need one or not...

Re: how many N900's do you own?
 

I'm down to two. I had four at my high water mark, but I've given two away. I've never had one develop a hardware problem.