What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

People are excited when they try to convince us that this phone has infinite possibilities.

One feature I like is the FM tuner. Quality sucks but it's better than nothing.


Useless features are: Linux OS, Using it as a controller, controlling a remote control car from it and being a big brick that can be thrown at people.


Can someone please give me some features that makes this phone better than others?



Edit: Overclocking? Why? Phones sold today have twice the processing power by default.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

You can't watch live TV with it or pass-able catch-up TV, can't edit office docs with it, cant' get decent affordable SAT NAV with it, can't play many games with it, hardly any apps worth while, can't even get a decent photo without the thing stammering and stalling.

It's a load of rubbish which will be forgetten about soon.

My advise mate, sell sell sell sell.

Get and iPhone or HTC Desire.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

deeply integrated IM

integrated sip support

integrated support for audio and video over xmpp(gtalk video)

integrated support for skype audio, video, im

rootsh

totally accessible user filesystem(think right click file in browser, save as) and all files accessible to all apps

availability of (well known to some) common linux command line tools

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

for one thing: sketching and drawing :)
mypaint looks amazing and with a pressure sensitive stylus driven screen it also allows things like HWR thats impractical on other devices.
(can you even enter chinese using finger painting?)

also, you underestimate linux and what it offers :)

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Damn you're right, an operating system is a really useless feature. I didn't realise we had rocket scientists on this forum..

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Seems to indite hatred towards it and the manufacturer who created it better than almost every other phone.

Web access and just being a general center of all things awesome in a mobile computer sell it for me. I dont care about apps or games.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

You have failed my friend :) Possibilities are not features. It could be quite true that this device has endless possibilities that depend on users capability to code. You should have asked what features out of box N900 offers that any other smart-phone do not offer.

And to that question I do not know answer. Every single person should compare different devices and look for what are must have and what are nice to have features and give them different weighting coefficient and make list and choose ->buy->test and if not happy return and buy second choice.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

The n900 gives us a complete linux experience, both good and bad things.

No other phone can.

For example, the idea of FUSE its fully applied on the phone

Im compiling the kernel module for apple keyboards, as another example

and so on

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

I don't hate it but foolishly shelled out £500 one. Biggest waste of money I've ever lost (next to the N97 purchase before the N900)

I'll be sticking to iPhones now.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Sounds like you just wanted a fone. Out of interest, why does an iPhone seem like a better proposition? Just the size/ weight?

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Possibility means that any electronic device that has enough memory has the possibility to run Linux. We need to back up those claims with features that actually exist. It's fun to promise a million things but only come up with more promises.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

I use all the apps out there, and now it's jailbroken I get a flawless palm pre type multi-tasking facility. Never crashed on me, can do anything I can think off, takes good daytime photos, and again you can't beat the apps. The handset is solid, no moving parts of course. No need for keyboard no more, can type just as fast on it as my old N900 (got a spell checker too!!!)

Can do everything and more than the N900 in my book.

Wasted a lot of money on Nokias over the past year or so, never again.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

I do not follow you. But please remember that features what users here told you are not features what Nokia has promised. IMO features what Nokia has provided with N900 some of them are really good and some just suck e.g. PIM, Phone app, Maps - but then again what they basically promised was shiny fun social device which you can use for web surfing, video watching and playing music. Thing what they didn't understand is that business people might also buy this device and that´s probably total catastrophe if you are not familiar with coding and linux system and do not want to with WORK this device.

And what the H is wrong with you. Why you keep making some many threads? Do you have any siblings or what is going on here?

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

I can use it as a hammer:D.

Sorry, I can't help it.... This phone is built on an open(relatively speaking) platform; so if you have the skill set(or you can find/hire someone who has the skill set); you can program it do any strange/wonderful things(limited by the hardware capability). My take is that it is a handheld computer with TVout, a FM radio/transmitter, camera, bluetooth/GPS/wifi/ubs/IR for connectivties and a phone module. How you would want to use this packages is entirely upto you and YMMV:).

If you feel iphone or other phone fits/meets your need better; more power to you.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

It's like a trampeze for spolied users; they jump on it, then bounce straight off.
Seriously, the amount of butthurt this phone creates is MASSIVE, I've never had so much fun reading baseless complaints in my entire life.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

You can also receive shared from Skype desktop...

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

the n900 can SSH and rDesctop better than any other phone.
it can download multiple audio / video files at the same time.
it can be used a table sketch pad better than any other phone (myPaint)
it skype / VOIP integration is not perfect but way better than any other phone.
it supports complicated mouse navigation in ajax and flash websites!

the PIM, tasks and calendar are as close to useless as you can get.
the battery drains faster than any other device of this nature i have ever used. *(thinking n810 and palm centro here)

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

My n900 made me coffee this morning

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

The n900 is so opensourced and so customizable that I coded an app which turns my n900 into a fully functional Ironman suit...

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

skype and gtalk VIDEO calling.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

my n900 made me nuggets and washed my clothes .. last night it had my back when i fought with this dude in the bar , besides the fact that it pays my bills so i don't have to work :cool:

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Is it in the repos? Can I make it War Machine because he has more guns

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

It can give you more headache

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

These are some things I have written in the past on this subject:

http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2...-just-an-itoy/

http://www.themaemo.com/and-now-for-...iller-feature/

http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2...p-on-the-n900/

Another good example of things you can find on the N900 but likely not on any other similar device is lfocus. Neat little script that has blossomed into a full blown application.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

In my opinion..
Nokia N900 with MyPaint beats any other current phone/tablet mobile sketching, drawing and painting solutions.

Because of N900 Pressure sensitivity resistive screen,
physical keyboard for shortcuts,
good display resolution,
and of course MyPaint which offer amazing brush engine,
which is just perfect for this type of touchscreen device.

Some self-centered stuff here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAUcr...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4z1s...eature=related
http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativetone/

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Let the troll feeding commence....
Some do. I don't -- I'm already convinced that the N900 is the best phone available for me, but I don't try to sell it to people who it's probably not best for.
This is because

• I don't get a commission
• I'm not big into the "let's recruit a million helpless lusers to whine incessantly about our free software until we dumb it down to be useless for us" philosophy
• Selling a phone to someone it's not right for is ultimately bad for the platform -- more butthurtery means more negative press from the blog crowd means less sales to people whose throats it's not crammed down by proselyters.

Perhaps the only benefit to pushing N900s on unsuspecting lusers is flooding the used-N900 market to lower prices. (Although, that does make me think...)

And the possibilities are not infinite. Given 32GB of eMMC, and a 32GB microSD, there's only about 2^64,000,000,000 possibilities. There's more state than that, of course (RAM, flash, etc.) but consider it an order-of-magnitude estimate of the order-of-magnitude of the possibilities...

Anyone who says rubbish like "infinite possibilities" shouldn't be listened to; if you did, then you deserved to waste your money on whatever they were pushing, be it an N900 or anything else.

An SI boatload of phones have FM tuners these days, they all suck, and while they might be better than nothing, internet radio is better by far. So put internet radio (while doing other things -- multitasking works) down.

Very few other phones have FM transmitters, though. If you don't drive a car much (like me), maybe it doesn't help you, but it's a quite distinctive feature.


Indeed, Linux is neither distinctive nor particularly helpful. I'd be just as happy were it BSD-based. And there's tons of phones out there running Linux, just like the iPhone runs a modified BSD.

The distinctive feature here is that the N900 runs a recognizable UNIX system, unlike any other smartphone on the market. If that's useless to you, tough. It's the #1 reason I and many others got an N900 (and for that matter, it's non-phone predecessors) in the first place.

Non-distinctive anyway -- practically any smartphone can do the former, and (while I'm unaware of specifics) the latter probably involves sufficient modification to the car that it could be made to work with any phone implementing HID.

But these are "useless" to you -- did it not occur to you when listening to someone talk about infinite possibilities, that there are an inifinity of things a phone could do which would be of absolutely no use to you, and only a few things you care about?! That's exactly what they were talking about, and you're a fool if you thought "infinite possibilities" could possibly translate as "infinitely useful" -- it could mean "infinitely interesting", but probably only to a hacker.

ROFL. You ain't seen nothing till you get the Mugen Power extended battery. Now that's a brick. (Remember, the stock N900 is smaller in width and height than the iPhone... just a bit thicker and heavier because it has more hardware in it.) Either way, won't catch me throwing it, and an 80s cellphone beats it that way anyhow.


Let's see, we've got:

• internet radio
• FM transmitter (with RDS, btw)

I'd then add:

• Decent back camera (worse than some, but better than most)
• Front camera (at least in the US, very few phones have this.)
• Complete VoIP capabilities over cellular data (EDGE/UMTS/HSPA, results naturally vary by bandwidth), not just WiFi.
• Skype video calling (again, even over 3G -- although we do lack plain GSM video calling.)
• No-compromises browser that renders pages like a desktop browser, and handles as well as the best mobile browsers.
• Flash (the real thing, not flash lite)

Many of these are not unique among smartphones, but they're each fairly distinguishing, and I'm quite certain that the whole combination is unique.

O RLY?

(Hint, 2x 600 MHz is 1.2GHz -- so I guess you can point to other phones with A8s clocked at 1.2 GHz from the factory, with equivalent DSP and graphics processors....)

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Err...I think it's because...iPhone is a better phone? Maybe that has something to do with it.

It trounces the N900 in almost every aspect.

And I despise Apple.


Nokia's last undoubtable great output was the N95 8GB, though I quite like the look of the E72/3, that is a great little phone and a really awesome sleeper that definitely hasn't got the base it deserves. This is the problem with Nokia, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, my contract is running out in October, though upgrade is available 50 days prior to that, and I'm moving sharpish. I'm sick to death of being used like a doormat by these bastards.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Are you sure about that?
http://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3...&idPhone2=2826

Didn't think so.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

^Another case of the Aspergers right here folks. And he can't even do the numbers game right. :rajni

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

i can hide my pr0n in a hidden directory. :D

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

There are several logistic arguments here against the N900, however yours is the only one that is completely out of line.
Hardware-wise, there is no way the iphone trounces the N900. They use the same processor, have the same storage & memory size. In every other aspect, except size/weight & inclusion of a digital compass, the N900 comes out on top.

Please, if you're going to go that far, saying the iphone trounces it in "almost every" aspect, qualify your statement. Give me a comparison of every aspect, and show me the iphone beating it at "almost every" aspect.

Now, since this isn't possible, I don't expect a reply with much content coming from you.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Thanks for confirming.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Ha. Got you piped up enough to feel the need to reply.

anyway, did you really expect anything different posting on maemo.org? doubt you did

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Why is the screen resolution so much better on the N900 but the apple screen looks so much more defined? Are the N900 apps not taking advantage of the higher resolution?

I wish the N900 had the digital compass, why did they leave that hardware out? That and the voice commands are the only features that iphone has that would be nice.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

Oh master of masters i am at your service now. why isn't everything you type inscribed into sheets of gold

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

You say it like it's a bad thing. For me that's another reason to like it.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

why the hell not...

go ahead, explain yourself

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

that all?

i had my popcorn ready. useless

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

there's a button to redact your replies.

quality vs time of your replies has been exponentially decreasing. here's to hoping you pull an apple.

Re: What can the N900 do more than any other smartphone?
 

and when i say apple, i'm not referring to the fruit