How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

It all started around the end of january when i decided to take the leap and buy my first n series smartphone.Since the choices were not that many and after hearing how the n97 had bombed big time , i had decided that the n900 was the one for me. i was a complete and utter noob(still am in most respects!!) but i was determined to get this phone/computer.

Coming from the 5800xm, i didnt know what i was getting myself into, all i knew was that it had a 5mp cam, maemo OS(symbian was getting too boring for me and other OS's couldnt compare to what i saw in maemo) and a whopping 32 gb memory. I was a bit dissapointed with the speakers on this phone, but thought it was bearable.The screen made me drool, but the phone it self was massive compared to some of the other smartphones out there.And still i couldnt help but think that something was missing, i didnt care too much for mms but i missed the seperate ringtones, and stuff that i took for granted on my 5800xm,and was feeling a but cheated to be honest.But i was still determined to keep this phone and not give up on it...

Then the worse thing happened, call me stupid, call me whatever you like, but for me it was a nightmare and most days i still wish i had done things differently that particular sunday morning....About a month later i woke up on a sunday morning, like a little kid with a new toy, i couldnt wait to get to my n900...since it was charging i decided to make myself a coffee first then unplug my n900 from the charger, which i did! but thats when the crap hit the fan! i had my coffee on the table and i picked up my n900 and tried to disconnect it from the charger, gently ofcourse, ( and i gotta admit, it takes a bit of force to connect/disconnect the phone to the charger) and the phone slipped out of my hand and into my hot cup of coffee, three quarters of it was submerged in coffee!! i stood there for a couple of seconds dumbfounded!! then i picked it up from the coffee and imediatly took the battery out, a trick i learned from techseven video of the n900, just so the battery doesnt shortcircuit the phone... and i started f..ing and blinding!! once i had calmed down i took the phone to my desk and thought thats it! 600 euros down the drain... there was no way i was gonna get my money back even if i sold it for spares. Luckily the same techseven video on youtube that had said about the battery, also had a dissasebly video too. So i got to work at taking my brand new coffee soaked n900 apart(i have never taken a phone apart in my life!!) ,at which point my brother walks in, and asks me what the hell im doing to my new phone!? i explained. Luckily for me again my brother is a technichian of sorts and he has taken phones apart to fix them, so he had all the proper tools to dissassemble my n900.So we got to taking the phone apart, which was painful yet exciting and curiously fun in a weird kind of way.The phone was soaked . 'Everything was distroyed' i thought to myself and then said out loud.My bro thinking the same but not saying it!But we dried every part off and cleaned it as much as we could and set it to dry out some more. then we put it together again and hoped for the best but expected the worst!....We switched it on. and it worked! almost. the screen was full of coffee stains and the phone itself was buggy, twitching everytime i tried to use it. So i switched it off to put my microsd in and see if that was destroyed aswell, but when i switched it on it wouldnt work. nothing was showing, it was dead i thought. so i took the battery out and left face down for the day.I was misserable, my phone which i had just bought a month ago was gone, i had nothing left, was gonna have to go back to my old 3100 till i could afford to get something better. Later that evening i thought i could try it again, it switched on! but nothing on the screen, so i thought why not try the tv out, cos after all it might just be the srceen that was the problem, and it worked and , yes, it was the screen thats was the problem, everything else worked fine, including the touch part of the phone so i could get around it, blind, but looking at my tv and everything was working just fine, no glitches or bugs!!!!suffice to say i was extatic! only problem was the screen, so i left it a couple more days, switching it on every now and then to see if it still worked, and by the end of the week even the screen started working!

So now , 5 months later,i have my battle scarred nokia n900 with coffee stains on the lcd screen, and i love it to bits, literally, and i have learned how to use xterminal on it, sort of, and ive modded it with the help of this amazing community here at maemo.org.i have flashed it 5 times , even put the leaked pr1.2 on it! to think i didnt know a single thing about modding phones or flashing phones or even taking phones apart before i got my n900!
i have all my music on it, 48gb worth of storage, i watch my movies on it, i listen to my music in the car with it through the fm transmitter, i use it to make calls, i browse the net, apart from work, it is with me everywhere i go , wifi is amazing on it , so im connected whenever i can be and talking with skype so im saving money on phone calls too!!

Well there you go! this is my first time writing in this community, i hope you enjoyed my little story of how i learned to love my nokia n900.

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

So. Many. Words. So. Little. Space. My. Eyes. Hurt.

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

haha.. title looks interesting then after i saw it... nah.. nvm.. dont want to read it anymore.. haha

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

sorry guys i had get my story out there.
if you do take the time to read it, it is quite interesting.....

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

its indeed interesting.
thanks for sharing.

I also love my N900

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

What a waste of good coffee ! Seriously a very nice story, I still love mine too.

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

Maybe I should write a story on how I saved a N800 from life as a lowly PDA (and modded it to the furthest extent I could see), at the age of 11. :D

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

maybe you should! and if you can give/share some pointers this way too on further modding my n900 i would be eternaly grateful. because some stuff just dont make sense to me as i have never used linux pre n900.

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

I love my N900. And I love your story. It's like you are talking about a pet. I totally get that. My N900 does that to me too.

You've got to love this phone, even with all the shortcomings. This is different from other phones. This gives you a warm feeling when messing about with it, and exploring the possibilities, discovering new things, finding new ways to have to reflash it etc..

Today I dropped my N900 for the second time ever. I was showering and I put it on the towel while showering and forgot about it. Then I grabbed the towel and there I saw my N900 fly. Pity there wasn't the app n900Fly running. I would have got a highscore. I started cursing and grabbed it with the towel (my hands were wet). After drying my hands I started examining it. Not even a scratch!

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

I don't get the original post, something about a revelatory experience after spilling coffee on it, taking it apart and working out how to use xterminal... but you are happy thats the main thing.

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

Yeah very good story, Im glad it all worked out. I have modded many phones and repaired many. But xterm etc was new to me also, but since ive had this phone ive turned into more of a geek and love this beauty :)

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

regardless of its shortcomings (the only real one that gets to me is custom ringtones for individual contacts), the phone never ceases to impress both me and people who i show the phone to.

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

One thing i don't understand... what's "the bomb" in your story?

Apart from that (and apart from dropping it into coffee too), we have similar stories i suppose. Execute command lines on a phone? Never imagined that i would ever do that. But thanks to this somewhat open OS, and this amazing community, it seems like the most normal thing to do now.
Ok, so Maemo isn't perfect, especially not for a phone OS. But at least it's different, and i like that. And more importantly, it just does what i want to do with it. I really don't care about custom ringtones for example, but i love the built-in IM client, the browser,...

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

Sorry i forgot to mention that after the incident with the coffee i was in this ongoing love hate relationship with my n900 cos of screen and the fact that it wouldnt do certain stuff that other phones did, but ive made my peace with that.

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

Good story. Have you taken the LCD out and cleaned it? Try some >90% rubbing alcohol. Worked for me when I dropped my n900 washer

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

no i havent.. i actually bought a new screen to replace it , but i messed up the screws the first time round and im pretty much stuck with the screen as is , or unless i can find someone that has a busted n900 so i can buy it for the whole slider/screen.

Re: How i learned to hate the bomb and start loving the N900
 

Same story here, except in my case, the shortcoming is the lack of a keyboard that doesn't cover the whole screen (a la Pre-Fremantle stylus keyboard).

Being a teen in America... not many friends are impressed by Linux. :\

(Except one... who's heading a new Linux Distribution: http://lincomlinux.org/ )

Well... MeeGo musht be our shaviour!