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Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
This is an expansion of my post in the battery life thread.
Background This month marks ten years of using a PDA in my daily life. I started with a Handspring Visor Deluxe, upgraded to a Handera 330, downgraded to a Palm T3 when the Handera was stolen, and then sold the T3 and bought a used Zaurus SL-C860. The Z served as music player, calculator, spreadsheet, PIM (mostly as a calendar journal), reference book, novel, and notepad, as well as an all-around geek toy. The previous devices had pretty much the same roles as the capability showed up. An LG 8300vx phone took over as my music player and calculator 3 years ago, and also added a handy (but awful) camera. I have been seeking a convergence device that could consolidate these roles and add a much-needed GPS (i am a car-free cyclist these day) and replace my beloved-but-cumbersome-and-aging (dinosaurial) Z and phone combo, but not seen anything with a VGA+ display, keyboard, and reasonably open OS. Truly, the Z was ahead of its time. It's with that background that i excitedly (re)discovered Maemo (the step 1-3 NITs were inferior to the Z by most of my criteria) just as my brief infatuation with Android was soured by the realization that it is anything but "open" in actual practice. I jumped eagerly into the Fremantle world and began learning the ins and outs and dusting off my CS skills. I hacked and packaged a new (easy) port to Maemo 5 (The Ur-Quan Masters) and looked forward to getting an N900. Day 1 Here's my experience with the battery life of my N900 (which arrived today). I partially charged it before turning it on. The charge level increased to about 99% until i unplugged it. By then i had set up wifi, but i do not yet have a sim card. The wifi remained connected as i proceeded to install and test and play a few games, the included map and IM and video camera and media player, and the browser. I had the gtalk IM client logged in the entire time, and sent as well as received a few dozen messages. Total game time was probably about 1.5 hours. The screen brightness was on 1 or 2 the entire time, and only blanked for maybe 15 minutes during the entire test. I kept open at least 6 apps all the time. In short, i really gave it a break-in. Battery Level @ Time 98% @ 18:30 91% @ 19:00 28% @ 23:15 21% @ 23:45 17% @ 00:01 6% @ 00:41 Comments: 6 hours of continuous moderate usage is probably a pretty typical battery life for a smartphone; i don't think the N900 is unusually inefficient. Do i wish it would last longer? Yes, but i recognize (and am willing to accept) that would require a larger battery. Really, i wish both the screen and battery were about 15% bigger. The device is so much smaller than any PDA i have owned that it would be no problem IMO. But that's just me. Bounce is incredible as a showpiece for what the hardware is capable of, and it was silky smooth, even with a half-dozen apps open. The screen isn't as much of an improvement over the 8-year-old Zaurus C860's as i expected, and the keyboard a bit more cramped than expected. I think both are adequete. The hardware buttons are bizarrely shaped, sized and located, and thwre really should be one or two more. The USB connector is both too hard to disconnect and too delicate--clearly a weak point. The camera is pretty nice but the software needs beefing up. I'll probably look into the possibilities tomorrow. No reboots. Mic works fine (knock on wood). Some weird UI glitches, especially in the initital set-up dialogues, but i generally am impressed with it. The battery cover is a bit scary to remove the first time. I feared i was going to break my new toy before i even turned it on. Packaging and all included accessories are quality: built in cable holder for both charger and sync cables. Well that's my first day with the N900. After typimg this on it i am still not sure i'll ever get proficient with the tiny, aligned keyboard. It should slide out about another centimeter and have a bit more space at top and between keys. The three rows isn't so far as much of a handicap as the size and un-staggered layout. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Day Two
Same setup but more time locked 98% @ 12:20 (freshly unplugged) 57% @ 16:24 50% @ 17:20 30% @ 00:13 17% @ 01:10 9% @ 01:37 Day Three Experimenting with disabling wifi 98% @ 10:21 86% @ 14:02 (wifi off, little usage) 75% @ 15:05 (wifi on and browsing) 49% @ 23:59 (wifi off, some videos and photos) 18% @ 02:12 (wifi on, flash-based game) Day Four 91% @ 07:15 85% @ 11:00 84% @ 12:00 The best-case battery usage scenario (wifi off-no radios on at all, mostly idle) shows about 3% battery/hour drain. That translates to 30+ hrs uptime, which is within the expected range. The worst case scenario here for battery usage seems to be the wifi+browser+flash game combination, which eats through about 14% battery/hour. It will be interesting to see how much that can be upped by putting in the sim card and using the GPS. The latter is not possible right now due to a bug. It appears that the LED indicator can be green when the battery is only at 91%. The music playback on the N900 is in a class of its own in my experience (fwiw). I'm sure the in-ear phones included are part of it but it sounds so muc better than my Zaurus SL-C860 and vx8300. It also handles MP3 files much better than the dumbphone, which would simply error out on about half the random mix i have on my microSD card, and not play OGGs at all. The N900 plays the whole MP3 mix. The speaker seems better, too. The camera to be honest is disappointing It may have a Zeiss lens, but the sensor and/or DSP must be fairly rubbish. And the process taks a long time: i see a niche for a better camera app. The ability of device to take and playback high-resolution video is incredible, and the vid isn't too bad, but stills in any lghting have pretty pronounced registration artifacts and an almost "oil-paint filter" appearance. In poor light, the color and shutter time (as seen in blur) is bad. That's not to say that it's not the best camera my phone has ever had, hands down: The convenience of grabbing a high-res vido or snapshot wherever i am is priceless, i just found expectations unmet after reading about the Zeiss Tessar lens and 5MP resolution camera on Nokia's promo page. Now for my main gripe, and i hate to have to say this, but the pimples anblemsihes on linux's face are showing throgh in Maemo. Video playba started getting laggy requiring a rstart (with nothing in top that appeared to be causing it) and audio in skype is just not ht. Although it was workinfine te othe day, this very webpage is causing the typos you are ing due to periodfreezes (i have been fixing them up until the last few lines). These are media/UI issues i just don't see in windows, but they pop up with alarming frcy in my linux box. Yes there is ussome but e fac it has toe fixehe usn' to (usually some fix but the fact it has to be fixed by the user isn't going to--back to fixed text after this) go over well on a convenience device like a phone. The keyboard still isn't working for me as i'd like. The alignment of the keys makes touch typing still imposible for me (i had no trouble on my Zaurus). This is mitigated by the proximity of the keyboard to the screen, but it still slows me down. It may yet come. The tilde in the symbol keyboard doesn't work [Edit: someone, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the 3rd row Fn+Ctrl symbols should require you to press "Space" to complete the insertion]. No idea why. Having a Fn mapping for the spacebar (@) drives me bonkers, as does having one for the period ("full stop") because i often lock the Fn to type in numbers, and wouldn't you know it but "." shows up all the time within numbers! The GPS needs work. Period. Come on, Nokia, this isn't news to you. This is outright failure on your part. That's itfor no. Stay tuned. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
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Thanks for the very detailed review. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
thanks. i suppose every one will have their positives and negs. as i read your comments, they seem pretty balanced. the software/os stuff i dont really worry about as presumably the 'community' has the power of change. hardware stuff (like keyboard, buttons) will require some smarts and work arounds. cheers.
p.s the virtual keyboard is actually pretty good for some situations...like the typing i' doing now :-) pps how do you see battery life as a 'percentage? |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
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Code:
$ lshal | grep percentAll of this IMO of course. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Balanced and informative review. I find the N900 lacking in many places my N95 8GB excelled at, GPS apps and Camera being one of them.
Everyone has their own gripes, the keyboard is cramped, I type at the same speed I type on my N95! But give me a month I'll be fine - and so will you! Keep in mind that this is step 4 of 5 to maemo 6, its far from perfect, but its not even out in shops here in the UK. The random reboots are whats really annoying me! I hope they are not H/W faults. Look forware to your next day! |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
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I have a Zaurus SL-6000L Truly an amazing device, many years ahead of it's time. The screen is *still* amazing. But it's still essentially stuck on a 2.4 kernel due to using a usb prism2 based wifi chip. Very similar thing prevented my SL-5500 from using modern software as well (proprietary SD reader driver) |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Sidebar: Development and Community
I'm typing this on my linux box for a change. It's appropriate because most of my Maemo experience to date has been through the browser and IRC client pointed to online maemo community chat channels and resources. This is a summary of my experience and impressions of the part of this particular PDA (yes i know that's a largely obsolete term...) that is unique so far: a vibrant online community of developers and users. Take most of the complaints of this post with a grain of salt, as things are really in a state of flux due to consolidation of diverse Maemo web resources into a single destination (maemo.org). For example, the annoyance and confusion of having to register three times to access all the components of m.o will be resolved. Similarly, the unholy mess for developers and would-be "demoers" that is the scratchbox SDK is being slowly mitigated by other options (e.g. http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38075). Community The N900 is an elite device, Nokia's "flagship" and the community surrounding it is fairly elitist as well. This makes for a lot of friction at the interface as ADD-affected kids and iJoes begin to trickle in to the fold. I experienced more than a little outright snobbery on IRC while beginning to grope my way up the developer learning curve. The good news is that amongst the socially inept and posers there are truly brilliant and helpful people who can save you hours of wandering in wiki hell. Wear your thickest skin and don't forget to google. Which brings us to the wiki and the rest of m.o. The wiki is a mess, through no particular fault of anyone. If there was a single fault, it could and would have been fixed. As it is there's a combination of fast evolution (old, inaccurate information for previous Maemo versions is almost inextricably mingled with relevant Fremantle nuggets), fragmentation (beyond the fast pace of OS evolution, there are articles targeting all levels of expertise and intent), and above all poor visiblity and wretched search functionality that is still mostly broken from the aforementioned merging of Web resources. So i've covered IRC and m.o and touched on the SDK. IRC is and always will be the niche of the nerds and we all want it to stay that way. The SDK experience and m.o are evolving quickly and, optimistically, upwardly. What's left is the actual experience of developing. Development I haven't done much software development and my CS classes were a long time ago, but a few things have already stood out to me as being fantastic about Maemo.
My own experience to date consists of the porting of uqm (The Ur-Quan Masters) to Fremantle, adding rudimentary accelerometer control through a joystick wrapper (which incidentally can be used for any other joystick-aware port--this is one of those cheerful little side effects of the three points above), writing an improved package description "nicify" function for the app manager (submitted as an attachment to a bug tracker enhancement request), and making an initial port of modern SDLMAME. The repository and hierarchy of extras, extras-testing, and extras-devel make it easy to provide a finished product to end-users while continuing work on a project and keeping it available for community testers and developers to play with. That makes it easy to work on a project when there is time, with the possibility of contributions from others who happen to have a speciality in some aspect of the development or have an itch to scratch. The setup and organization of maemo.org is really a big asset for Nokia, as long as both they and the community can keep making the planned improvements. So, in summary, the N900 brings with it a huge community of developers and power users not seen for the Palm or Zaurus devices i've owned precisely because the platform development is actually driven by a community. While the members of the community and the tools have some thorns, they are overall becoming fewer. The nature of the OS and the sophistication of the device make developing for it a rewarding experience that can be as epic or minute as you wish. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
I really agree with point 1 and point 4, point 4 in particular, sure there are thousands of apps for iPhone and Android, but its quality and not quantity that counts.
rdesktop, koffice, vnc, ssh, torrent downloading etc etc. are apps that enhance productivity - the iPhone nor Android has anything that comes close, and it never will. Comparing the iPhone to the N900 is an insult to the N900, iPhone is nothing more than a gimmick for the clueless masses. N900 is in a league of its own, its in the same league as the N95, which even today has more features than the iPhone. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Ironically, Nokia's intent is to make Maemo into an iPhone/Android/WebOS me-too by making javascript apps an integral part of the experience by step 5. Well, i guess there's always Mer. Or maybe some cheap Chinese Maemo device
Here's the most recent thread about the apocalyptic abomination that is iMaemoWebOSdroid: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38214 |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
The problem is that there simply aren't enough of a market for geek-centric devices like the N900.
In order for Nokia to compete, it has no choice BUT to make a mass market device, thats from the UI layer looks 'dumb', but has enough oomph and open source so that the geeks can also use it as a powerhouse. An extremely delicate balance. As much as people on this forum complain about it and ask for features built in, Nokia will probably ignore them - they want the people that would not consider joining this forum, nor have much interest in geekish device to buy the N900. Money makes the world go round so nokia have no choice but to comply and compete with the iPhone/Android. But I do think that if the Nokia N97 was a bit more powerful AND had a web browser better than the iPhone then even with symbian they could be onto a winner. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
That's neither here nor there on this issue.
I really don't understand Nokia's interest in pursuing a scripting layer like this when they already have a stable full of developers and budding developers willing to make apps (which will be more efficient) with the system languages. A javascript app layer doesn't appeal to iJoes, so this move is puzzling. It's not going to get them greater market penetration, and will also turn off some of the more staunch supporters that aren't the kind that want to play with Barbie's Espoo Adventure. Those developers are already off playing with the borg queen and the Apple. Anyway, this is no longer anything to do with the N900 except that it may end up being my first and last Nokia device given present trends. If so, it's at least a nice detour. Back on topic for my next post. I've still got to find a suitable spreadsheet to replace Hancom Sheet on the Z, so that may be the subject. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
It is important to remember that Maemo/open source and internet tablets has been an experiment from Nokias point of view. The move from the N800 to the N810 was probably the largest HW vise (keyboar and gps), even though the units are more or less identical in most respects. The N900 is a much more powerfull device with phone functionality, but is still very much an experiment. So even if the N900 will become a practical and usefull device with software updates, it is just an intermediate step towards a "fully functional" mobile computer as far as Nokia is concerned. But, where the N8XX were targeted as a tablet for geeks, the N900 is targeted at technology enthusiasts with emphasis on high end smartphones.
Personally I am not sure where Nokia draws the line between a smartphone and a mobile computer, or if this is only the marketing language for Maemo and Symbian. I guess the concept of pure internet tablets was a dead end, but the concept of a Linux smartphone was not. Maybe Symbian is too complex for low series production high end devices, and Linux is too inefficient for high volume lower priced devices and phones. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
flandry.
where have you beedn all my life. :P i think you have echoed the thoughts of all of us. good to see your posts. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
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Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
You can download sc for amel from debian.org - it's a command line spreadsheet that works perfectly.
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Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Hm, I guess the original Visicalc spreadsheet should run fine in dosbox. Visicalc was made available for free use and download by the original author. And it's a nice spreadsheet too! :) It's the 1981 version for the PC. (Strictly speaking the very original VC was the 1979 version that ran on Apple II. This was the killer application that started the whole computers-in-every-office explosion.)
http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
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I doubt Nokia is going to go down the path of Google in that "you MUST use Java", which seems to be what you fear. |
Re: Spreadsheet Suggestions
Ha that would be something, wouldn't it? Go back to an office app from 30 years ago!
Thanks for the suggestions. The main problem is that i got used to a fairly good spreadsheet on my Z. The Hancom program wasn't finger-friendly, but it was very capable and could handle XLS format. This (spreadsheet, esp. for lab work) will probably be the last of my previous use cases i tackle on the N900 because i don't really want to put my shiny new phone in the way of solvents, anyway, and my Z still works ok in that niche. I read people's reports about the need to select a cell and then click in the function window before it can be edited for gnumeric and it doesn't encourage me, either. N900 Problems I've not stopped using my N900, i've just not been keeping the same detailed usage records as before. Having established that the battery life is within a reasonable range and the relative impact of different uses, i have left that alone for now and am focusing on other aspects: i'm going to take this chance to report on the problems i've encountered so far. This may prove useful to those who are still uncertain about the N900 and want to know just what kinds of issues they might encounter. The following, then, is a list of outright "bugs" in the N900 experience. Not missing or poor features, but failure of existing systems to operate in a normal fashion. A discussion of lacking features and suboptimal results will be found in other posts. This is the "fail". Issues experienced to date
I will add to this list as i experience new issues or recurrence of old ones. If a problem happens enough to make a coherent bug report out of, i will do so. I suspect there are already reports about some of these. My overall experience is still positive. I'm noting down things to discuss in this thread as they occur and will try to add another general installment on Sunday. Digression: the WRT issue TheLongshot, i went into great detail on the nature of my objection to Nokia's web runtime plan in the thread i linked up above, so you will find my response to your comment already there. In short, though, it comes down to this: resources are limited, and my opinion is that adding WRT at this point is not the best use of those resources for advancing the Maemo user experience (i.e. Nokia customer satisfaction) or market share (i.e. Nokia's Nxx0 sales). One might argue these are not the best metrics for us (the current users) and might find agreement from me, but it's not us driving the WRT policy decision, which is, to be precise, that WRT will be both included and integral in Harmattan. I don't really want to discuss the issue more. The decision is made, like it or not. I don't like it, and am annoyed at Nokia jumping on the bandwagon. However, we can only buy or not buy when step 5 comes along. I would like to be able to replace my N900 with a better device when it is EOL, but it is appearing that there won't be such a thing coming out of Nokia, I'm especially referring to battery life and some hardware features when i say that. It's still possible that things could end up ok, but the laws of physics aren't going away, and improving efficiency is obviously not top priority. I went 6 years from buying the Z to finding a step up, i can do so again, but that isn't really good for anyone (would-be sellers or me). Here are my comments from that thread: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=15 http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=28 http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=33 http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=41 |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Old people want things to stay like they were when they learned stuff: "Why use a gui media player when i can do all that from the command-line?" That might sound like an extreme example but people actually do this. Does that mean a gui is 'reinventing the wheel'? Or is it adding tires to the wheel?
Android effectively ditches linux for something new, Maemo bends as far back as it reasonably can to support the old linux 'ecosystem' along with innovating the new. A good framework for mini-apps fills a role in that ecosystem. It does not make economic sense to go through the linux/autotools/debian/autobuilder/extras-devel/-testing/extras process for a mini-app that takes 30 minutes to write. Sure you can walk to Washington DC. But it would be wasteful to file your federal income tax that way. Perhaps a better analogy is found in the growth of industrial technology. Early tools were primitive, and the production process was labor intensive. The results were characterised by craftsmanship and indivuality. As time went on, more and more tools became standardised and 'high level'. This lead to more efficient production, but less 'craft'. You can still buy hand-made furniture if you want. But not many people are going to do it for free. A hearty thanks for the UQM port, and best wishes for 2010. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Enjoying this review and the thread. Your list doesn't look too bad considering what other users have been up against with continuous spontaneous reboots and whatnot.
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Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
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One thread that was real popular here for a while were people asking if Java would be coming to the N900. People wouldn't be asking that if there wasn't some perceived need for it. As for your battery concerns, it is slightly overblown from the standpoint that if you really don't want to use such applications, you don't have to. In my eyes, it doesn't seem to be any different to Java/.NET verses native code applications. Both can coexist in the same operating system. You seem to have some fear that this is going to become a similar situation as Android. I don't see that at all, particularly when Nokia has a few generations of this operating system and it wouldn't make sense to completely ditch those who have been supporting it. No, what I see is a company who wants to make this platform more attractive to developers beyond the geek community. |
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Too bad gDesklets require GTK+. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
More digressions
Guys, you're taking my comments out of context again . Please don't. I'm not a luddite nor do i begrudge a web designer the chance to make applets using the tools he has to work with, because development is fun. Progress is great, isn't it? These days anyone can paste together scripts and a UI and be a developer. Make apps, not love! It's a mini cultural revolution. Great. Now, let's just ignore the fact that there's already a far more elegant and less syntactically neurotic option available in python. No matter: My chief concern was and remains the efficiency of the maemo software. I want a bigger screen and better battery life in a similar package; a whole lot of people who are not currently in the potential market for a Maemo device want a smaller device that will last through the day. These two evolved products are not achievable without increasing the efficiency of maemo (as i laid out in excruciating detail in the other thread). Adding a built-in javacript layer can either be neutral to that end or detrimental, and in either case absorbs resources that could be spent directly on improving the existing system. I'm repeating myself again. Anyway, i think this comes down to a difference of opinion on which is better for the success of maemo: better (ie sleeker) devices, or app proliferation. I can agree to disagree on this because the jury is still out. The Z in the room This was my second Sunday using my Z and N900 both at church, and the experience has been intersting. I will wait a couple more weeks until i have had a chance to pit Rapier or the new Qt scripture reader app against my current Z reader before i write up this use case experience. Upgraded servers and user This weekend i have been busy finishing the prboom port to fremantle in my Maemo time. I also grabbed the old gweled source from garage and fixed it up for uploading to the fremantle autobuilder. I was pleased by both my own increased understanding of the debian package system, maemozation, SDL, etc., and the new autobuilder server. The whole process with gweled took less than an hour. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Flandry,
Hitting the "thanks" button isn't enough. I really appreciate your perspective, tone, and content. Wish there were more of your type on this forum! It's amazing to me that there isn't an obvious--even Noika-sponsored--spreadsheet solution. GoogleDocs works reasonably well, but requires an active internet connection. I fly often, and would like something I could use during those long flights! If you're most always online, I recommend giving GoogleDocs a try. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
I got hit with a big bag of reallife. That, combined with my desire to maintain some reasonable standard of quality in the posts i make in this thread, has kept me from reporting my ongoing experiences. I've been using the N900 for almost exactly two months now, and it has become an integral part of my daily routine.
I could just continue to enjoy (or sometimes not: let's be honest here) my N900 without piping the output to anywhere but /dev/null, but the whole Meego thing i'm just picking up on now (did i mention i've been busy?) has jarred me from the pleasant little perch i had found in maemoland. So, before the disenchantment sweeps away any objectivity i might have mustered at some point, let me make a braindump of my N900 life to date. Meanwhile, back at the lab... I ordered a form-fitting, two piece rigid case and a pack of three screen proctectors from Ebay. The total charge was around $10, delivered. A few weeks prior i had spent about the same on a Blackberry leather holster clip someone recommended. While it worked more or less as claimed, it has been cast off ever since the case and screen protector arrived: it's impossible to beat front pants pocket for convenience. The extra device protection was really essential for the N900 to become a part of my life: not until i could throw it in my pocket without a second thought, or hold it without a nagging subconscious fear i was going to drop it, could i treat it as more than a shiny toy. Surprisingly (again, enabled by the peace of mind due to case and protector), i have almost immediately started using it in lab in much the way i used my Zaurus. Well, almost... (to be continued) Responsiveness The responsiveness has been a mixed experience. There are times when it brings visceral pleasure to flick around the desktop and browser windows. Then, there are times when the UI becomes a serious pain in the posterior. I have especially had trouble with the app switcher being unresponsive. On multiple occasions everything has just gotten slow, with no clear hints in top as to what is going on. (Edit: Probably a memory leak in a widget.)A restart generally fixes the problem; at least, i think it would. I guess at some level of decision making to which my own consciousness is not privy, i defy the possibility that my phone could possibly be like an old broken box of Windows 98. Requiem for Zaurus I was shocked to open up my Zaurus at the lab to look up some data and find the battery almost dead. Then i realized it had been a couple weeks since i had last used it. The displacement took about a month, but it was clear after the first couple weeks that the process was inevitable. When i opened up the Z, it felt incredibly spacious, incredibly easy to hold, and... dead. There's no better way to describe it. The N900 is like a living entity--almost a pet--compared to the bland business end of the Z. Staring into that screen, i realized that it had never felt like a trusted sidekick. Trusted Swiss Army knife, yes, but not sidekick. It was amazing how fast the kinetic scrolling became the habit. Going back to the Z was a shocking reminder of how a good UI is intuitive and more or less instantaneously assimilated. Missing in action There are still some reasons to get out the Z. I still haven't even cracked the seal on the Spreadsheet Issue. I have been involved in maemo.org enough to know that there are a few things one can expect, and not having a good spreadsheet app seems like one of those. Sometimes it's better off not knowing... It's bad enough that on the occasion when my laptop is indisposed, i've entered data into the note app of choice, only to transfer it to PC spreadsheet later. I guess that's called playing with one's mental blocks. Besides the spreadsheet, the other frequent role my Z still played was on weekends. It had a permanent position in my Sunday Best pocket: it was my pocket scripture. For a month, the Z came along with the N900 as a wingman. The ridiculousness of having two portable computers on the table in sunday school must have gotten to me, because the Z gets left behind now. Leaving a gap still unfilled. Rapier is utilitarian, but it gets the job done. The sunday school manual is in an FBReader compatible format. The problem is the other books. Well, tithing my time for gospel-related development on Sabbath seems reasonable. I put together a python parser that screen scrapes the entire web edition of the books and makes a coherently-linked local mirror that i can copy to my N900. With a proper CSS, it makes MicroB a fairly decent reader... All that's left now is the hymnal, which is available in PDF. I had intended to use epdfviewer as the basis of a hymnbook app, but after an incident this last Sunday that left me lamely trying to page to the right hymn in the PDF reader, i discovered that someone got around to porting Qt4-libpoppler. I've not looked at Qt before but have been wanting to. With an example at hand and an evening when i wasn't good for anything else, i got a basic Qt app built and packaged that will take a hymn number it a prompt widget and open it in a kinetically-scrolled window. Needless to say, i am rather impressed with Qt and look forward to having time to play with it more. Maps and camera and dialog spam, oh, my! The time has come for the ugly. There's no delicate way to put this: Ovi Maps for Maemo is a smelly turd of half-digested, half-chewed corporate failage. I was, of course, not completely unaware of this, but when my quest for a Z/phone replacement that could also get me unlost on my bike took me away from Android's obsession with clouds and webapps, landing on the N900 product page was like a sunburst. Alas. Now that i've indulged myself with a rant about the one real beef i have with Nokia over the N900, let's get back to the actual experience... As i said, i wasn't unaware of the reputation of "Ovi Maps" on Maemo by the time i actually had a sim card and started toting my N900 about. I finally had the courage to pull it out and try to make it do its thing while riding in my roommate's car. First of all, the search is useless. Maybe there's some arcane art to it working (like paying for a data plan when i have no need for one with a pocket computer, perhaps?), but it had no success finding the street, or city, or anything. I finally gave up and scrolled the map to where i knew we were going, and tried to set that as the destination. I already had the location test gui installed and knew enough about the problems of Ovi Maps to open that up and use it to keep the GPS live long enough to get a lock. Then, there was a red dot. And it was on my location. And it followed me. Reveling in the godlike power i held, i tried (unsuccessfully) to get the app to show a route. The euphoria abated fairly quickly, and was replaced within minutes by an almost overwhelming urge to throw the thing out the window. It popped up, in close succession, three prompts to connect to the network. And then, it did it again. The map disappeared behind the infuriating prompts just in time to miss turns. It was relentless. It is awful. There is a bug report for this. Quim stated there just before i found the report that a fix is coming. We'll see. A similar problem affects the camera. This can be resolved by turning off network positioning and geotagging, but that's really not the answer to UI behavior that gets in the way of using a camera for taking photos when desired. Both photo ops and turns have been missed due to this ridiculous UI design. This is really too bad, because i've finally gotten myself back in the habit of responding to the mental cue "That would be a nice thing to photograph" with "and hey, look what i happen to have right here..." The best camera truly is the one you have with you. In spite of fighting with the UI, i have taken a lot of nice photos and some very timely video clips with the N900. The built-in sharing feature has seen some use, too. This is definitely where things are going with the mass market for point-and-shoot cameras: integrated into a phone. Not great, but good enough. Some iPhone-toting friends have been impressed by the photos i've shared. Alright, the worst is over. Flandry, App Maintainer Some of the other bad decisions Nokia made with the N900 don't affect me...or wouldn't if i wasn't trying to be a masochist by supporting a handful of FOSS game ports to Maemo. As it turns out, large sections of Europe don't have up and down arrow keys on their phone because of their keyboard localization. Yeah, i know... One of the ways i've been squeaking as a wheel is in the bug report i created to fold all those raised against my apps into: one asking for an "official" supported solution to the Nokia keyboard localization bug. Well, not too surprisingly that got nowhere. With some help from a script the Duke Nukem maintainer uses, i added a dirty hack to PrBoom and UQM that switches the keyboard localization to "us" when the apps are active. I also modify the screenblank time in UQM to avoid blanking during dialog and flight. I got lazy and only made that option disable itself when exiting, rather than just switching away. Of course, i managed to crash my N900 while in UQM a few weeks later and now the screen blank time is stuck at something rather long. Poetic, isn't it. It wouldn't be hard to change it back if it was a real issue for me. Interestingly, the integration of the N900 into my routine has shifted my development priorities. I had UQM ported and primped for Maemo before i even bought the N900, and Gweled and PrBoom followed closely after the New Year before the SIM card was in the device. Now, i am finding ways that it could be better, or problems to resolve. Real life killed the video game, hmm? The silver lining for those patiently waiting for me to finally get SDLMAME into -testing is that i'm finally getting my feet under me and wrapping my head around the various protuberances that are Maemo. Meego? I came to maemo.org in October with no knowledge of the Debian package system and a very long hiatus from typing "make" or coding in any language that doesn't use whitespace or angle brackets for structure. I hadn't used IRC more than a few times, or run a profiler. The ride up the learning curve and around the bends of the maemo.org community has been exhilarating and exhausting. Somewhere along the way i became a moderator of Games and dabbled moderating Brainstorm before it became apparent there are deeper issues there than a basic moderator can resolve. I've had arguments and shared laughs, and come to know some really interesting people. And i'm not sure i have the energy or the will to do it all over again under as asinine a banner as MeeGo. Obviously this is a wait-and-see situation, but i am suddenly sympathetic with the embittered veterans of multiple Maemo steps who prognosticate dire events and see hobgoblins in every new initiative from Nokia. I have no desire to learn the (afaik) inferior RPM after putting this much time into learning the nuances of Debian: i have used a Debian-based linux distro since leaving the gentoo camp years ago due to it being too hands-on for my tastes. At least knowledge of Debian packaging has some use to me outside of Maemo maintaining. Well, that was a lot of diarrhea of the keyboard. It is a relief to document this here for my own benefit, if no one else's. Cheers to any readers. It's been nice to be a part of your community. It's provided a needed outlet for me to restart aspects of my own skillset and mental processes gone stagnant. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Flandry,
Great detail on your user and development experience. I have dabled in writing scripts but nothing more. Can you offer your opinion on purchasing the N900? I already own one N700 and two N800s. Regards |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Why to buy (or not)
I got the N900 because my phone had had it and my Z was getting really old and worn. I had to get a new phone and the N900 was the best option at the time. My advice is as follows: if you are up for a new phone now and don't see anything else you like better, and have acquainted yourself with the feature set of the N900, get one. If you don't need a new phone now and multitouch and/or portrait mode is very important to you, wait. I can tell you i'm happy i have the N900 and there are a few aspects of it that may not be carried over to the next generation that i would miss:
Here are some things the N900 doesn't have that i would like to have and could possibly be in the next step device:
If you already have an N800 and don't want/need a new smartphone, i don't really see the draw of the N900. If i didn't want a convergence device, i'd still prefer the Z over the N900. Breaking News: Ovi Maps less broken after latest update Unless i ended up in some mode i've not been in before, the latest update fixed the network prompt spamming problem that Ovi Maps had. It was very refreshing to be using the app today and have an unobtrusive banner pop up that said "One or more networks may not be available."--and that was all. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
I'd like some details on what you did for the Hymnal. Also some suggestions for the Scriptures. I downloaded a big archive with all the Standard Works in html, and it works, but it's not nearly as slick as what I had on the iTouch. It sounds like you've made some progress with the Hymns, though.
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Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Sunday edition:
I used the hymn app today at church but it won't go through autobuilder without fixing some libraries in the repos, and that i don't have time to untangle at the moment. You can expect it to be in the repo by the end of June to use as a reference if you like. I have a thesis to write or i'd be on it today now that PR1.2 is on its way. The plan was to eventually put a package in the repo that could create sword modules in automated fashion from the online edition of the standard works, and thereby shoehorn it into Katana without violating any copyrights. However, that's going to take some modification of the sword engine, and that might entail a local fork because i don't see the changes going in upstream (just a little whiff of bigotry from the general direction of the sword maintainers lol), so i might just as well make a separate reader if it turns out to be more trouble than it's worth to hack sword and get the functionality i want. When it comes right down to it, Sword doesn't seem to offer much of what I see a good scripture app having. Too bad. Or i might go try to find a job and spend my Sunday free time doing something besides sitting in front of a computer and the rest of my time earning a living. Who knows? Happy Sabbath. |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
"Happy Sabbath." Same to you :)
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Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Quote:
for me it was kind of weird, and distracting when i suddenly worry if the old lady next to me will start thinking i am reading SMS or browsing the web... :) |
Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
Quote:
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Re: Flandry's ongoing N900 review: perspective of a PDA poweruser
The bike tourer's delight
Since my last post, i have taken several multi-day bike tours with my N900 as Swiss Army gadget. I used it:
The unconsidered life Nokia doesn't consider it typical to use an N900 without a data plan. This has led to several problems with my N900 that have been an annoyance. The difference between a data plan and no data plan for me is at least $40 a month, which is money i definitely have better uses for. Furthermore, when on tour, i actually find it helpful to put the phone in Offline Mode during the day to reduce power consumption. This exposes some really annoying bugs in the closed-source apps which have been discounted by Nokia due to their vision of Maemo as an "always on" OS. The most obnoxious of these is that there is no way to get the camera app to tag photos with their latitude and longitude, even though that information is known, simply because the phone is unable to download the name of the location. I couldn't care less if the name of the location is tagged; i want to tag the actual coordinates on the photos you Neanderthals. More power to you As you might expect, battery life becomes pretty dear when using the N900 for so many tasks. I got in the habit of taking the charger in to every convenience store, restaurant, and library i patronized to top off the battery, and also made use of a BSA-branded "Be Prepared" 2xAA/USB solar charger that fits perfectly on the back rack during the last trip. The charger is pretty neat, but can't keep up with such intense usage on its own with only off-the-road charging, and is a bit cumbersome to use. The AAs are charged by the solar panel, and then can be used (e.g. at night) to charge the phone. If i wasn't afraid of my USB port coming out, i could keep it plugged in while traveling and the solar charger would probably suffice for power needs. Love-hate I read a post today that sums up my feelings about the N900 and Maemo at this point. Quote:
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