Just wondering out loud... (Devices and Community)
 

I know people are going to flame me for this, but have to ask though.

I'm a gadget junky in general, so I'm very impressed and happy with the N900. But after a few weeks on this forum, I find more or less the same throw backs for most of the issues raised.

When somebody complains about the BT being all crap, folks jump on them saying N900 is not a phone, go get an iPhone.

When one complains about that the media player is so basic, again people say o! this is not a music player, go get an iPod

Then I see, somebody complain about all the Nintendo emulators being pulled out, again its, this is not for playing games, go get a PSP.

So I'm wondering, what N900 supposed to do? I know, I know... internet tablet. but it still doesn't run v10 and most of the heavy flash stuff is non-usable. I'm sure, for this people would say get a laptop.

When do I get the N900?

Again, I love my N900, just wondering out loud.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

who gives you/us the right to give the outcome of evolution a name?

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

I guess that's partly about how and where you look.

When people complain about the bluetooth being glitchy, I see a bug filed for that.

When people complain about the phone functionality being thin, I see a brainstorm on improving it.

When people complain about the music player, I see several alternate music players under development.

And when people complain about missing emulators I see requests for patience while the lawyers sort it out and files hosted somewhere other than maemo.org.

I could post links for all of these but I'm duvet surfing on n900 and it's too fiddly.

I think it comes down to whether your ear is tuned for noise or signal.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

I have an N800. I get free WiFi at work. At home I get free city-wide WiFi. With Pidgin installed I chat with all my friends and relatives. With Skype installed I can make phone calls to any cell phone or landline for a few cents per minute. When I travel, I always have WiFi where I spend the night. My screen is bigger than the N900. My bluetooth GPS works better than the N900 GPS.

Just wondering out loud.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

(When using "you", I'm being general, not specifically *you*, eyn)

You buy an N900 when you want to be challenged, when you don't complain about small missing features, when you want to help build, test and complete an amazing device.

People don't charge money for apps on the N900, which means they will never make a living out of it (for 98% of the developers out there). Yes, Nokia helps a lot by developing the base applications, but that's just what they are, base apps. There are a lot of things we can improve upon, and one of those things is motivating developers into making their applications 100% complete, 100% usable and 100% polished. I really do believe (and this dates back quite a bit) that a lot of developers use the excuse "It's Open Source, so as long as it works for me, sod it", but sadly it really hurts the platform.

At some point, I really liked Canola, because it was extremely polished, it showed a few very interesting concepts in terms of user experience, and it worked very nicely (although being slow, talking about early versions). I think this really sums up most of the issues people are having.

The iPhone set a standard where people just download something, pay a buck or two, and can use the applications fully. Even the free apps are pretty well finished, because if they're not, they don't get through the App Store. This doesn't happen in Maemo, people get access to applications which aren't finished. Yes, they work for people who share the same mindset as the developer, or who are happy to use just a couple of features that are already developed, but overall, someone who's just downloading it for fun will be lost.

What I'm trying to say, is that you get an N900 when you don't have the expectations of an iPhone user. You get an N900 when what you want is a device which will allow you to do a lot of stuff, absolutely amazing things, but you know how to be constructive in your reactions and your feedback -- in other words, you are helpful, and understanding that the people who write the stuff aren't at your service. This is a platform that allows sharing, I have more friends in this Community than anywhere else online (you guys are my only friends!), and given a bit of patience, we will have a feature set to be proud of and amazed by -- if you aren't already.

By the way, this post completely deserves to be in Community.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

Very true... but its besides my point. What I pointing out is the general tone in which people react to these in here...

I'm basically from WM platform, and use xda developers forum extensively. Even though everybody seams rude there, it's mainly because, with the sudden influx of smart phones to the general consumers, the silly/'not-searched' questions pop-up so very often.

here, even though I feel most of the complains are valid, people take offense and chew the guy out.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

The first thing I told my friends after I got the N900 is that, how hard and time consuming it was to setup Google with Nuevasync and get all my contacts, calendar and mails in. And loved it, its what makes having a smart phone so bloody unique.

Just a day before I got the myTouch 3G and a second after I put in my google id, everything was setup. What do I do after that? I've not touched that phone again.

So I'm not in a long shot looking for an iPhone experience. I hate that iPhone cannot differentiate me from somebody who doesn't even have an email id.

If you give me a page long instructions to set the phone to ring when connected to the bluetooth and I have to set a weekend aside to do it... I'm a happy camper... But you shoot me down saying... don't expect it... that's when I'm disappointed.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

I am definitely a Huge fan of the N900.
I agree with you regarding non base additional apps, and the fact that it takes time for them to become polished especially since the developers are not really profiting from it.

A disappointment I've had with the N900 is the fact that BASE apps and functionalities provided and advertised by nokia, often DO NOT work well. There are a number of issues with the device that have nothing to do with "other" developers, they are issues that Nokia hasn't been able to resolve in time for launch apparently.
for example, bluetooth, GPS functionality, video recording, wifi...
and battery issues for a lot of people apparently, including myself.(though I'm still waiting to see if battery life improves with more charge cycles.)

Don't get me wrong, I was in the "ship it now as is" crowd, however, after the delay I had hoped that such issues would have been taken care of.
As another poster mentioned, my N800 does some of these things better than the N900 at the moment.
I don't understand the reason for the regression in some of these aspects.

I'm still happy with it, just anxiously waiting for the bugs to be fixed. :)

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

The problem you're facing, eyn, is more lack of forum filtering than anything. I don't see every member responding the way you say they have, just some. You're liable to receive a diverse array of feedback here, and that can be highly affected by how the original questions/comments are phrased.

There's a simple filter too: post count and karma rankings (Thanks). They're not perfect indicators, but they can help you distinguish sometimes between signal and noise. ;)

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

I guess it's mostly about how the complaints are presented. If the post is civilized and constructive I've found you get pretty reasonable replies. But way too often people come here just to vent. They're pissed of because feature X that they had with their previous device Y doesn't exist or they don't like how something works and label the whole device crap in the process. That's when they get jumped on, because there are quite a lot of happy users to whom that feature X might be trivial and have the device for entirely different reasons.

Just an example: "This phone doesn't have X, this is complete bull****! Android has this, how dare Nokia release this kind of crap! It's unusable for me because of this!"

Now how do you answer this? You can say that maybe the feature wasn't a priority, after all it's just a matter of time and resources. But will they take it for an answer? No. The second option is to just say they might be better off with Android then? But in the end there just is no answer that will satisfy them. I usually just stay quiet.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

And you've a lot of time to drink coffee until N800 renders a webpage ;-)). I like my N800 but it's to slow for some sites, its
to big for my pocket and I have to carry an extra phone.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

I wish that were the case but all too often even the most reasonable non-complimentary posts are attacked by our fanboys.

I'd try and answer it honestly as best you know. This is especially true of apps which may or may not be under development. Unfortunately it is not true of the Maemo OS.

Part of the problem is that Nokia hides too many answers. You want to know the planned release date (2 Feb 2010) and content of Firefox 3.5.7 (which is two releases away)? Go to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases. You want to know about Firefox 4 which isn't scheduled until 2H2010? Go to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Roadmap. You want to know about any Maemo release date or content? Nokia isn't telling.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

Idiots .

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

You guys rock.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

you do have a point but hopefully the parts of the functionality that are still a little basic will be improved upon in time and if not i'm 90% sure there'll be 3rd party applications that will be more comprehensive in their abilites. for example a better media player. flash 10 support i suppose is down to nokia / maemo team unless its possible to make your own plugins for the browser (not sure cos havent played with the SDK much yet) in which case to open source community will surely deliver some flash 10 support. I think really its only a matter of time before the device has everything it needs

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

Actually, Eyn, I think you're missing my point.

As jsa has pointed out, there's an issue with how complaints are presented: it is hard to know what to say when someone posts a rant because it seems they just want to rant.

However, there is nonetheless a good response, not in words but in actions.

When an individual says one thing and does another, a good rule of thumb is that there is more 'truth' in their actions than their words. If you take The Community as a whole (not sure you can, but just for this point) the Community may be saying "Go buy an iphone, you whinger!" but what it is doing is filtering the rant to see if there is a valid complaint and acting on that complaint accordingly. If you only take the words at face value as the response, you will see only a tiny bit of how people are responding to complaints.

Which is, as Texrat pointed out, a filtering exercise. Filter the valid compaint out from the rant, then filter the useful response out from the unwelcoming unkindness.

Would it be ideal if every complaint (and especially the calm, rational ones) were met with an equally calm reply that there's already a bug filed/brainstorm posted/app under development? Sure it would. Sadly, internet fora don't work like that. Hopefully the people complaining also realise that.

Maybe you could be part of the solution by pointing people to where their complaints are being addressedand encouraging them to vote on bugs and brainstorms?

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

Yes, fanboyism stinks. But can you really avoid it anywhere? I'd urge everyone to really try and see the shades of grey.

I was mostly talking about the out of the box package. I honestly think that some people might be better off with something else for now. There are features missing, rough edges, annoyances and I don't think anyone here is denying it? But people seem to get offended if they are (often realistically) suggested that maybe this iteration isn't the best for their use case.

I'm not sure if I understood you correctly.. so do you really think that Nokia or the Maemo team isn't constrained by time and resources? Of course they are. I'm 100 % sure they didn't leave all this stuff out because they thought it wasn't needed. It's balancing between when to release and what to put in. Now what you _can_ argue is whether they should have released it later with more features implemented. This is a matter of opinion and there are good arguments on both sides.

This is another case where things just aren't black and white. Just food for thought.. What if Firefox missed the planned release date? Do you think there'd be something in the league of 10000 angry messages on their boards and people proposing class-action lawsuits like here? Do you think Nokia's and Mozilla's business models and competition are similar enough so that you can just compare the practices 1:1? I don't think Nokia is keeping information on themselves just to piss people off but I'm most certainly not saying there's no room for improvement.

You can find quite a bit of information about stuff brewing at Nokia that is publically available, so it also isn't quite right to say that Nokia isn't telling about their future plans.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

thank you for this useful post

...not

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

You should go back and look at some of your own posts ossipena...

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

I've noticed the same.

people write their firs post at really aggressive tone when their device is rebooting all the time. blaming that the device is ****, nokia will die because of that, community members are all gay etc...

a) there is thread here for that
b) there is a bugzilla entry for that
c) http://www.google.fi/search?rls=en&q=n900+random+reboot
(both of two previous can be found from first page)

or the n900 really sucks where OP starts by dissing the device and continues it until he admits at the end that he can't give his device away ;)

remember that forest will always answer at the same tone you shout at there.

first lot of people come here trollin all the way when there is a delay, then another mob comes here to troll about how n900 is a failure (and they have defective hw for example).
and at the same people blame the community because they're not spoonfeeding about how to install extras-dev or testing stuff and other .debs. then they will come and blame n900 because it was bricked in the process.

so in nutshell: there is no realistic way to please that group of people....

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

wasn't you the guy who was trolling at n900 deliveries delayed -threads?

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

That is the problem - Nokia have been advertising N900 as a phone (or "mobile computer"), not a geek challenge.

Re: Just wondering out loud
 

with penquins that have laser eyes?

Re: Just wondering out loud... (Devices and Community)
 

My sister has a N800. She swears by them; I guess her screen is larger than the N900! Her GPS system on it is unreal..works AWESOME!