maemo.org - Talk - What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

maemo.org - Talk (https://talk.maemo.org/index.php)

- Nokia N900 (https://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=44)

- - What woud you realistically like to see in the N900? (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=11032)

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

Some other things to consider.

1.
A better screen with 8 bits resolution and better color fidelity.

2.
LED technology possibly.

3.
Battery technology improvements. No matter what Nokia does with power management it would be nice to know that we have best in class battery performance. That seems to be very much a moving target at the moment.

4.
Solid provision for a lanyard / locking loop!

These are just a few more ideas. Not to confuse people but I would like a device that does multiple things well. A device that supports me at work, a device that allows remote internet access and a device that support hobbies such a photography. Maybe to much to ask of one device, at least with current technology.

Dave

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

Once you leave the world of cellphones there's a lot of compact flash being used? Uh where? Only older SLR cameras nowadays. Quite frankly its a pretty dead format other than that. My Wii has a memory slot... SD. My brother's laptop's memory slot? SD. Digital picture frames? TomTom Navigators? Sansa MP3 players? All SD.

You'd be hard pressed to find anything else recent that uses CompactFlash.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

I was thinking more along the lines of a keyboard that snaps onto the mother unit but is intended to be used detached. BLutooth of course. The idea being that you use the device in the normal way when you don't need the keyboard around. Other wise you bring the keyboard along. The goal being to minimize the mechanical issues associated with slide, pivot or swing keyboards.

Dave

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhoff80 (Post 88178)

You know, I was thinking. What about a device that incorporates a sliding and folding keyboard. I guess I'm picturing a thin keyboard like the stowaways with two hinges that fold in towards center, and then slides in underneath the screen. The d-pad would have to go back on the front, as well as some other buttons, but it would be great to have a full keyboard for when writing long emails and then use the onscreen keyboard for all the short material.

Just throwing the idea out there.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

CompactFlash is also used for connecting small devices to laptops and Windows Mobile computers. 2 that come to mind are RFID and barcode scanners. If I looked I'm sure I'd find a few more...

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

CFIO is slowly being replaced by SDIO, and I imagine both will go the way of dinosaurs once USB-OTG gets a little more popular.

RS232 + a bluetooth adapter, to me, covers the CFIO cases.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhoff80 (Post 88528)

CF is very popular in embedded devices. Like it or not it is used in higher quality Cameras. It can potentially be used in any device with an IDE port, so in reality many devices are CF capable even if not advertised that way.

Quote:

You'd be hard pressed to find anything else recent that uses CompactFlash.

Well I guess that the photography mag I was browsing at the store the other day got it all wrong. I could have sworn that Nikon latest best of the breed Digital SLRs are using CF. ;)

In any event I'd be happy to see a host USB port that would allow me to use the multitude of adapters available for compact flash and a lot of other technologies.

Dave

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wizard69 (Post 88533)

Popularity is irrelevant as size constraints are a much more pressing issue. :rolleyes:

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 88140)

New 4:3 sources may be dying out (not really, there's still a ton of it around), but old sources aren't suddenly going to change as HD becomes more popular, and I'd like to be able to watch those old things comfortably.

I realize the old stuff won't disappear soon. But I'd rather be backward compatible than have no forward capability at all.

Besides you loose absolutely nothing with a standard def signal being displayed in a wide screen monitor. Given that you fill the screen vertically, you will see all that can be seen of a standard def signal and the actual picture will not be any smaller.
[/quote]
Be that as it may, you're not being realistic. Look at the dimensions:

SD—32mm x 24mm x 2mm
CF-Type I—43mm x 36mm x 3.3mm
[/quote]
Yep a little fat.

Quote:

That's more than 30% larger overall. For a device which can barely take MiniSD, it's incredibly misguided to think that it would be able to handle a CF card without a major increase in overall size (bad). This, is a bad idea.

Well we are talking about a new device here not a N810. There is no reason for the N900 to have the little keyboard and all the compromises that caused.

Quote:

Yes and yes.

Man there is a lot of effort being put into hardware for these sorts of devices. TI. SAMSUNG, QUALCOM and whomever else. All this activity has to bear fruit someday soon.

Quote:

But it is huge, especially for a mobile device. MiniUSB is about a 70% space savings over full-A USB and MicroUSB another 50% off of that. Again, your understanding of size constraints in mobile devices seems to be flawed. Just get yourself some USB devices that support USB OTG and the right kind of cables. You'll be set.

No very likely I'd punt and go back to a laptop for everything.

Quote:

The number of games available for the platform would beg to differ. I don't want a PSP, it doesn't do the things I need it to do—it does one thing well, games, and I'm not interested in carrying around a single-function device like that. I don't see why we should have functionality crippled for the sake of a full-faced screen.

Honestly I don't game that much. It just seems to me the Game machines are better optimized for games than any internet type table device every will be. The other problem I would have is wearing out keys on the keypad to support games.

Quote:

Then keep the screen ratio the way it is and leave me with my d-pad.

Nope no can do. If Nokias IT's are to have a future they need to embrace what will be the common video formats real soon now.

Thin about it how many (informed) people are going out and buying a standard def television? Not many. The quality of the SD signals on these HD sets is not an issue, what is is the need to be prepared for the future. In this case the very near future.

Video though is only a small part of the equation. A large video area makes for a better device all around and allows better user interaction.

Quote:

Uh, you still need something to bring down that frequency. This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons, not only because nobody uses shortwave.

Just do a direct conversion to baseband. I do have to reject the idea that nobody uses shortwave though. In any event the actual amount of technology you would have to add to the IT is very small space wise.

Quote:

That's what the internet is for, and if those conditions are really that important to you, maybe you should just buy yourself a digital weather device of some kind, because I know highly-variable atmospheric reading from my IT are at about the bottom of my list of "needed features".

Well you seemed convinced that local conditions mean nothing to you. I can't do much about that.

Quote:

And a decent solar device should have some sort of standard plug you can hook into.

Often unregulated.

Quote:

Which would be where an E-series IT would come in, but I suspect that that's a ways off (if it ever comes).

Well it is obvious that there is a large amount of development going on with respect to these devices. One of these manufactures will hit all the right buttons and light a fire in the market place.

The Nokia N810 kinda shocked me in that I thought they had a good handle on what was wanted in the market place. Of course I could be wrong - time will tell there. If there is one thing that this thread has highlighted is that people want lots of memory in their tablets. From there onward the story gets more fragmented.

Dave

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

I haven't read through all 9 pages *blush* but my wish list includes.

* better battery life. If apple can squeeze 20 hours out of their iphone thing, then surely... surely!!
* oled display to help with battery
* motion sensor - for real kinetic scrolling. I think that motion sensing will become a very standard part of the UI of all small devices; shake and tilt to scroll through photos, contacts, text messages, web pages; avoid all the fiddly scrolling with a pad.
* what would be really nice is an option for a built in or attachable proper gamepad - so we can actually PLAY mame etc games on the thing
* of course would want it to play all video formats that I find on the web - really annoys me that I can't listen to blake's seven on scifi channel in bed on my n800
* come with a nice email client
* come with a podcatcher that just gets the podcasts when they're available and files them away and discards the oldest, nice thing like that (maybe I could write that)
* retain ability to have loads of storage; I love the n800 two sd cards thing, can just wait for the fatter and fatter SD cards to roll on out.

Re: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?

I'm quite surprised that the N-series internet tablets have limited video support upon purchase.

Based on the maturity and capabilities of current libraries (take ffmpeg and libavcodec for example), there is little reason why the majority of videos can't be played out-of-the-box.

}:^)~
YARR!!