Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I'm confident this website needs another negative review like I need a hole in my head, but my vent is intended to seek help not besmirch the device.

I've had my phone since the December, the original launch I guess. Since then its been riddled with issues that made me realize why I never wanted to own a touch screen phone, however these issues are probably not common in any other touch screen phone. It seems as though the issues get worse and worse.

This recent issue is rather unexplainable. I use my N900 to listen to music while I drive or walk around, I hit pause when I'm done or pull out the headphones. During my finals I received a call from a friend right after I hit reject the song I was listening to started playing (this is not the first time this has happened but the most embarrassing).

The touchscreen stops working/responding. This is particularly annoying when waking the phone from sleep. But also when doing random things with the phone such as reading RSS feeds. I feel that this is part of a broader issue that I will be touching upon in a bit.

The issue is the lack of multitasking ability for a phone that can supposedly handle multitasking. I have loadapplet installed and it always shows the three full bars (left and right) with a flashing red one on the left doing fairly simple tasks. This leads to several problems.

One problem is answering phone calls. Just today I missed a call from a potential employer because my phone displayed an illuminated black screen while I frantically tried to hit where the answer button should be. After flipping the hold switch several times I finally got the screen to work but despite my efforts to repeatedly hit answer the call went to voicemail. This is not the first time this has happened but certainly the most infuriating. During this scenario I had a music player open without playing music, gPodder, RSS, two text message windows and an email notification, the phone had been sitting idle so there's no reason why it should have issues.

I'm not sure if this is part of the multitask issues but occasionally the touchscreen stops working and i have to put it on hold and take it off before it will respond to my touches.

An issue with MicroB is I continuously get those script errors which also slow down my phone and I always get those errors saying the website stopped responding would you like to close it? which gets annoying having to deal with.

I guess I'm a fairly fast typer but hate dealing with a lagging phone having to catch up with my keystrokes or miss some of them. But this is an issue I can deal with I guess.

Sorry for the long read/rant but I really want to like this phone but there are so many things that prevent me from doing so. Thanks for any help/advice.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

i have had all the issues you have had at some point or another, but i have learned to live with them because they dont happen too often. but everything you have mentioned have had bug reports made and will be delt with in the next PR 1.2 release. the only question is, is when the hell will that be!?

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

and here we go again......troll-feeding and flame war in 3....2....1

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

A+++ thread, will read again.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

If you'd want to throw it out of a windows why don't you mail it to me? I'd repay you with something else.

But if you still have hope on it, here's a list of solutions to your problem that I hope would help:

Sorry my English is bad so I don't really understand the exact problem you've encountered. However, if you find it annoying having to hitting pause to stop the music, you may want to Install headphone daemon such that the phone is muted when our headphone is unplugged.

For your information, I'm using PR1.2 (Hong Kong) but the touching touchscreen will not activate the phone when it's screen-locked. I'll have to press the power button to activate. This might not be the defect of your concern.

I've not use the loadapplet but the OS is real multitasking, because I'm actually running my own stuffs I developed for my own use in the background and it runs fine. So I guess it might be the loadapplet misled you?

I'm sorry to hear that you missed an important business call because of the unresponsive of the phone function. However, have you considered reflash your phone to PR1.2? PR1.2 has more responsive phone function as far as I've been told.

Again the phone has never responded to screen-touching when it's screen-locked. I'd like to know why it works for you before, though.

If you've problem with MicroB you might want to try out chromium and firefox, though I still think MicroB is the best for N900.

Hope this help.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Your being the troll right now. The issues he meantion is genuine, and has been meantioned several times elsewhere on the forum. How about sharing your experience with the same issues he meantion, wich i know pretty much everyone must have experienced at some point..

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

what do you mean *want*? I did it once, well I have it in a leather case anyway so it doesnt count much.
I had once the music start playing, i found that somehow switching off the fm transmitter didnt put the speakers back on and the phone call enabled it.
touchscreen and battery life was a big issue, I have found this to be some app I installed, i have reflashed and only installed what i need and now its back to normal.

My advice is reflash and install apps one by one after testing the phone after each install...

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I think the OP about sums up most problems of the N900 at 1.1.1. I've suffered from all of these as well!

However, the "headphone daemon" is really worth the download as already suggested, and I would look into overclocking your device to 900MHz. Now please be aware of the things that could go wrong with overclocking (end of warranty, overheating, bricking, loopcycles), but stuff like calls coming through perform a lot better now with a little extra under the hood I've noticed.

It does seem, that sometimes core functions of the N900 seem more burdensome for the phone than having for example 60 webpages open in the background. For eg. if you have Modest, Calendar, a notification of an SMS, your phone might as well be bricked. At least this is my experience.

Apparently people are rather satisfied with their leaked PR 1.2's, so you could also just wait for that to come out.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Yes I have encountered similar performance and responsive issues. I have come to see my n900 as an expensive toy running really cool experimental software. There are so many benefits to the way maemo works and such a great community here. I am confident we will see a much more polished product in time to come. Hopefully with Android like flash 10.1 performance, I am disappointed we cant really view the whole web smoothly yet like some advertisements suggest.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

sorry mate but...I'm having the same issues..and several more...don't know why you need to pull out words like 'troll' and 'flame war'...this is not apple discussions. ;)

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

one more problem whenever my phone is charging i cant recieve calls it rings for few seconds and hangs suddenly...........

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I've had my N900 for about 3 weeks now.
I've dowloaded a number of apps, themes and widgets from both main and testing/devel.
Some I've kept and some I've uninstalled after trying and not being happy with the impact they've had on the OS or performance (just like my linux PC and Laptop)
The only real grief I've had is the screen lock issue making for some fiddling to end calls occasionally.
Is it possible that we (as in consumers) are expecting too much from "bleeding edge" devices when it comes to stability and function?
My list below, of previous phones:
SE P800/P910 - both with their inherent "idiosynchrosies"
SE W950 slow and laggy, but improved after 2 x fw updates
Palm treo 650 crashed frequently and killed the battery until a fw update
HTC Touch Diamond - Microsloth Mobile - say no more
SE W960i - slow and buggy until reflashed with WWE FW and then still slow.....
Nokia 5800 - all sorts of problems which took 4 x FW updates to get sorted
SE Satio - Just like the 5800 but with a 12mp camera. only one update so far but still not great....
N900......

I've got used to new devices with issues. and my expectations of the N900 are no different.
Hit some other brand forums and you'll see everyone else is complaining about bugs and issues in their respective devices/platforms as well.
the need for manufacturers to be 1st with the latest gear on the market is the driver behind the delivery of "unfinished" products.
you only need to see all the whinging about PR 1.2 on this forum to see the sort of pressure manufacturers are under to deliver. It's the " I want it now" generation at it's finest.
for me. I'll put up with the bugs and wait patiently for the next FW release.....

then again when it comes to updates, there's nothing like owning a SE smartphone to teach one patience.

just my 2 bob's worth :)

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Oh really? First of all when someone starts a thread with such a emotional thread its already obvious to me what type of problems we encountered. It seems you have some serious problems with your touchscreen not software itself....most problems that you described are related to touchscreen....I hope you know that N900 has a resistive and not a capacitive screen

I never had issues with touchscreen , only problem I had is that screen sometimes fails to turn on i need to hit unlock key twice but that's it

If you install apps developed by other people be prepared to have any sort of issues ( I'm not saying that people who develop make crappy apps but that can also be the case) its just the code is not very well optimized :)


So the OP has load-applet to monitor your CPU, RAM , etc etc... dont you think it uses your CPU and takes some amount of memory all the time?

I'm myself a heavy multitasker but I never had such problems
When I go out I'm listening to music + texting and playing some games, RSS in the background and believe me or not I never had any issues related to unresponsiveness

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

i have to agree wit u m8 i dont fink u bein troll if we look around the forum there are so many probs but most of urs appear to be wit the touchscreen personnally i would get in touch wit nokia and get them to ave a look at it wont cost cause it should still b under warranty

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Outside of the thread title I don't see how anything I have posted is "emotional" even the first few sentences of the thread talk about hoping to find a solution not ***** and moan...

I have headphone daemon installed and it works wonderfully well.

This happens to me more often than not.

I'm glad that I'm not the only person having to deal with these issues and appreciate those who have provided helpful responses.

And Hellflyer, I've probably had my device for as long or longer than you, I know its a resistive touchscreen. But my point is that the touchscreen issues are driven by software issues. I do similar activities with my phone and shouldn't be experiencing slowdowns doing such tasks, they can run smoothly but tend to be prone to slowdowns.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Try overclocking your phone. I had performance issues until I did a full reflash, only loaded the applications that I actually used and overclocked. Now I am very happy with the N900 and patiently waiting for the Pr 1.2 for my email search capability.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I experience all of the issues you have stated in the first post.
Missing calls because the screen does not respond and need to call back - almost everyday
unresponsive browser - everyday
music stars playing after a phone-call ends or is missed - very frequently

I just hope that PR1.2 will solve most of those problems soon

(I have overclocked to 900mhz btw)

Ps
Right now I cannot unlock my n900 -.- (it also happens)

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Don't forget the memory layout of the N900: 256MByte of RAM and ~740MByte as swap.

With my phone started and all daemons running, I'm left with ~10MByte of RAM and an unused swap. As soon as something memory hungry is started, 10MByte is easily gone pushing some other application out to swap. With a CPU@600MHz and not the fastest buses around, fetching from swap is costly and will take lots of CPU.

If you add things like PulseAudio to this, which easily will gobble down 15% CPU while playing music, you get a pretty sad picture with a great device that's crippled by having to try to handle the same load as a desktop system.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Make sure that you download the N900FLY app before you throw it out the window.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I'm afraid that overclocking would brick or void the warranty. What does N900FLY do?

Does overclocking really have as positive of a benefit as everybody claims?

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I hate to snip and cut out just this part... but just because you're not having problems, it doesn't mean it does not exist.

If each and every grievance was hit with "Well, I'm not having any problems..." then nothing would ever get fixed for those with problems.

Proper grievances are met with utter disregard as of late here in these forums and it's downright disappointing.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

It gives your N900 wings :D http://maemo.org/packages/view/n900fly/



Overclocking will make your device faster however given the fact that even with standard kernel you have issues I would strongly recommend you to avoid it :)

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I have literally never had any of the issues you're talking about and I have also had my phone since Dec 4, 2009. If a reflash doesn't fix it, then I think you need to get your phone repaired.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I get this problem when turning off the alarm sometimes

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I have seen every single one of his problems. He is by no means unique.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I have had similar issues with my n900.... but i also had these issues with my earlier symbian handsets and also had some random unresponsiveness with the iphone and ipod touch...

Bottomline.... it happens with all gadgets and the timing is what makes the big difference

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I've had the issue where after pausing music, and then receiving a call and not answering or rejecting, the music player will play again by itself. Very bizarre.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

That's my number one problem lately. It's not consistent, but seems to happen at the worst times. Makes me wonder if the phone can detect people I actually need to talk to and have fun preventing it. :D

Seriously, I have found it happens most often if I have an active Flash game on my desktop or had been playing one for a while. Regardless, I'm suspecting a memory leak somewhere, because rebooting usually solves the problem.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

I have also experienced most of the issues mentioned at one point or another, but generally I find it works very well. I have noticed that the built-in rss app+widget cause trouble sometimes. However I have also had ~10 web pages open as well as message notifications while still keeping the phone relatively responsive.

I bought a BB Bold 9000 when it first came out and it was a full year before the issues with it were ironed out. I've had the N900 for about 3 months and I think it's going from strength to strength.

It can be argued, however, that one of the phone's greatest strengths is also its greatest weakness. The open nature of the phone does mean that the quality of software will vary. It's the price we pay for the freedom we have and we just have to be selective about the apps we use. Not all developers are equal and neither are the apps they produce.

For example, I installed 'Brain Party' from the Extras repository and I found that unless I closed all other apps and desktop widgets (!) it would stutter and run very badly. A couple of days later I got SPBrain Training from the ovi store and it will quite happily run with other programs (and my widgets) in the background and minimize gracefully when I get a call.

Maybe someone should put together a tool which creates a report of all installed apps and memory+storage usage which people can attach when they are seeking help on the forums.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Everyones quick to defend, but this phone is dead. look at android. Dumping on Nokia....no navigation, slow updates, constant freezes....while android gets 450 percent faster and the devices are better now. They came out around the same time, but look at whats happened since then. Jump ship people...its dead. Before anyone makes negative comments on my post check some of my earlier post dating back to last year this time supporting the phone.

Since I purchased the phone I haven't seen the effort, only excuses and ignored progress. Hell I saw some roller coaster game months ago.... and haven't heard anything since. I have never made a video call on this phone yet. That is another problem, but even worse the front camera has never even looked complete. Calls are tough to answer because the phone freezes with it weak rotation. In the end here is the real truth if you read nothing else I say:

Nokia makes phones....yeah great....but now we are dealing with smart phones....just ask yourself...in the computing world? Do you think Nokia will ever get ahead of Apple and Google. Thinks like programming, creating applications, programs, optimizations, etc.....The truth is....Never...They will never be able to beat Google especially. Simply never. They move to fast and they are much better at creating these type of things.

Currently my phone is headed to the Nokia repair center in Huntsville, AL to have the USB port fixed that I questioned since I got the phone, it finally gave out.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

@xxMurdakillxx

Is getting ahead of Apple and Google the only alternative?

If I had to throw away a piece of technology if the producer isn't the biggest in the world, I'd live a very poor life indeed. I'd say it'd be enough if devices like the N900 took 2-4% percent of the total market for smart phones (since it's an internet tablet/mobile computer more than a smart phone).

World domination can't be the goal and I don't think the N900 will ever compete with iPhones and HTCs but it has enough potential to at least get established and get a stable user base.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

Isn't a lot of the PR1.2 delay caused by fixing memory leaks?

I know on desktop Linux, Firefox seems to have some pretty major memory leaks. I have 8GB of RAM and leave the machine running 24/7 so often leave the browser open for days. Its getting less and less reliable as new versions come out. If these problems are with Gecko then presumably MicroB has them too. I wouldn't trust FLASH to not have memory leaks either and with only 256MB RAM, you are going to notice pretty quickly compared to 8GB on my desktop. ;)

I thought from the start its a shame the N900 only had 256MB as I suspect with 512MB it would be a LOT more responsive. That always seemed to be the magic number for desktop Linux to work well.

Re: Sometimes I want to throw my N900 out a window
 

if you have freeze issues check if you have installed anything from devel or testing if yes flash vanilla and emmc.....please :)