1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

I picked up the n900 just prior to leaving on a trip to china.

Previously I had the n800/n700 and am an avid Linux user.

Picked up a SIM card with CMCC on day 1 of the trip
Turned on GPRS (I guess ChinaTelecom has 3g?)

Day 2 sucked my prepaid card dry - so I bought another 100 RMB and was much more careful about data usage. It lasted 2 weeks.

The killer feature for me during this trip was the chat and skype integration. Particularly the chat as I could chat as I was traveling all over the country.

The camera was excellent - used it much more than I thought I would

Email was good - but not as good as my old blackberry (except that it supports html)

The offline maps were great - I would download all the maps from my hotel and then use them as needed. However where are the Chinese characters on the street names? Google Maps has them.

Added Skype for $3 a month to North America

Skype over GPRS was not great
Skype over wifi from Starbucks worked ok in the morning and then didn’t work at all later

Once I hit Hong Kong I picked up the SIM from 3
http://www.three.com.hk/
100 HK dollars including 150 HK of browsing – Great Deal!
3G Speeds
Skype over 3G worked pretty good

Overall on the trip I saw a few iphone users, a few windows mobile users, lots of android users (more than iphone) and tons of nokia e7x/n95 users...

2 tips:
You can download wikitravel articles or pdfs to save on bandwidth prior to travel
I geek fashion I used a huge 1 page list for a dictionary and then used grep from the command line to find the translations...
(you could use google translate or something)

Summary from my month of n900 features I would like/issues
Wish it had a bigger screen - found myself squinting
Battery could be a bit larger like the old days
Chinese text entry should be nokia supported
(Installed scim)


Pdf reader:
pdf reader interface should be like the browser
pdf reader not finger friendly (page turn) no twist to zoom
pdf reader plus button go to page

Email:
spell type ahead with apostrophes
cleaner mail client
Search?

Photos:
zoom on photos should be like the browser
photos should default to camera directory or allow default (it forgets your setting)

Contacts:
Most google accounts don’t have email - but have a google chat!? isn't it the same!?

Maps:
Improve maps zoom offline etc (should be the same as the browser)
Offline keeps prompting for access

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

I hope N900 will support Chinese---officially

There are quite a lot people using N900 in China, although it's not been sold there.

I saw tons of E71 when in China...

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

In pdf reader, "go to page" option is there.

Tap on the page number to see the options panel.

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

I personaly don't need the Chinese requirements, but agree to all the rest.

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

Did you stay in the same city where you bought your SIM? If not, I suspect you are paying roaming which is many times more expansive than local call (To be exact, approx 12X more expansive!). Dont feel bad, I made the same mistake too :)


Which sim you using in HK? You mind to post more info, please? I will be in China/HK in 2 months, only for 4 days of each, so everyday is very very precious. I was usng N800/770 2 years back and it worked beautifully,

Regarding Chinese input, you can use Googlepinyin. However, it kills your virtual keyboard and for the unknowly, a reflash maybe necessary to bring Virtualkeyboard back.

TIA,

bun

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

Heres what I find hard
1) open pdf and zoom appropriately
2) Click page number it prompts "Enter page number:"
3) Try to hit the plus button with a fat finger (it worked ok on the n700/n800)


bunanson
Which sim you using in HK?
I used 3
http://www.three.com.hk

For China I used CMCC but would check out China Unicom (which has 3G)

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

Ya... the plus/minus button is kinda small... You can use right and left arrow keys to increment and decrement page numbers too.

What I would like the most is to set the zoom level at any percentage.

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

I just left China yesterday. I had ChinaMobileCZ. It is $50 RMB (US$7) for the sim card. $45 RMB for talk and $5 RMB for going online. As long as you are NOT talking on the peak hour, 12noon to 9 pm, $45 RMB is plenty for 1 wk for me. Getting on line is NOT straight forward. ChinaMobile said they dont know how to get N900 to work because N900 is "difficult". I knew it was NOT going anywhere, I took it to wifi hotspot, and google instructions and did it! I got online and $5 RMB lasted for 24 hrs of surfing....not quite sure why and dont bother to find out. It is 2.5G, so, Skype is out.

I am now in HK. To get online, my hotel charged $30 per hour (US$4). I went fort the 3.com, I paid HK$90 for $150 talk/3G surfing. The card said 1.5HK$/Mb download, it finished HK$150 in 15 second just to download Google/News!!!! I bought another card, this time I used for ONLY Skype, as a phone, it lasted much longer and I would never surf with the 3.com, way too expansive! Skype quality is excellent.

I also have BoingoMobile (US$8 per month) which allows all PCCW and McDonalds hotspot and worked excellent....only on N8x0. I made video conference with another N8x0 over wifi and worked well.

N900 ovi map is off so much that it is not useful :(

bun

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

Well it's not written anywhere, but if you start typing in a mail folder it will do a header search for what you are typing.

Re: 1 Month with the n900 travelling in China
 

Any providers in china that allow 3g? Seems like the 2 mentioned (china mobile and china telecom only have 2.5G). I will be travelling in Shanghai, Xian and Beijing