Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

I've been using this device for about 10 weeks now. I see it as a portable computing device with voice and data, GSM and 3G and 3.5G connectivity, and therefore expect a whole lot of flexiblity when it comes to tweaking, tuning, but also well thought out and polished. A bit disappointed in some areas:
1. App manager isn't exactly the most ideal/suitable app management solution on a portable device. It takes too long to load up completely, requires a lot of power and cpu cycles. Sure, you can argue that one shouldn't install apps while on the go.
2. The e-mail app sucks. Sure, there are other apps to replace the e-mail app, but I have the expectation that Nokia shouldn't create a half-*** app and think the community will deal with it.
3. The web browser's "expand to full screen" and "escape fullscreen" icons just don't match the icons used in Maps (the direction of the arrows). It's just another example where the product is not well polished.
4. With soooo many different kinds of transitions being used on the N900 (some are even inappropriately used/picked), can't Nokia use one for entering and escaping fullscreen, rather than full screen flicker?
5. No multi-select in e-mail...what are you? Apple Mail on the iPhone? Even e-mail apps from 10 years ago has multi-select...bloody hell...and you (nokia) are trying to sell this platform as a powerful portable computing device? Get the software right, the user experience right, the user interface right...damn it.

While the hardware is definitely what I love, this product's truly limiting factor is that it is (feels like it, at the very least) a half-*** job, prototype, a product that they just push out the doors to get money from customers to fund other projects. Nokia isn't focused and committed to the N900 (nor did they for the N95 and N97....this been going on for a loooong time). For the past few years, Nokia has really been behind in getting things right. The lack of commitment to come up with a thoroughly thought out, well planned, well executed product (and platform) is really tiring from a customer's view point.

....alright, I'm done whining, ranting...and yes, I've probably wasted some of the readers' time here (no need to point this out as it will further waste your time).

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Don't hold your breath for official support on those things that you ranted on.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

yes, sorry, I failed to mention that the iphone example I pointed out was really saying that even Apple has fixed this issue a while back, compare to when it was first released. So, doesn't Nokia learn from its competitors or their mistakes (this is the actual point that I want to make, sorry that I didn't elaborate...ranting is quite tiring). :(

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Write your own software if you want to...

In the end, Its an extremely difficult task to have such a small computer with the amount of capabilities this thing does have, and to make it as configurable as it is.

If you bought a netbook, they would only give you the hardware pre-installed with windows, and you would have to get everything else installed and working yourself, including email, internet, wifi etc etc...

Most phones come as a "polished" product as the only things you can configure on them is your background, ringtone and email address... This phone you can change your entire email program, your whole internet browser, your entire desktop etc etc.

And i also hate anything made by apple, as they are so closed minded towards other manufacturers... I took a photo on my girlfriends iphone the other day, and i still can't get the damn thing off her phone without paying someone (either the phone company for an mms or apple for some software). It refuses to connect to her email account, doesn't care about infra red, won't send it by bluetooth, and for some reason won't even transfer it by wifi. Lets not go anywhere near the iPod which forces you to use iTunes...

Good riddance to apple and their half baked products

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

My N95 8GB I used prior to the N900 was far more polished, and a "better phone". Just couldn't browse the web as nicely or watch videos as nicely. I miss my N95 8GB from time to time. Ah well, I still love my N900. Even if it's an ugly duckling that may never become a swan. At least it's different from the rest. :p

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

1. use fast app manager (fapman)
2. email is perfect for me. coming from an S60 N85, i can check all my emails automatically using wifi. (can't do that on my N85)
3. i use Opera, fast and furious web browser. there's also the new firefox 1.1 if you need flash.
4. for transitions use TRANSITION CONTROL.
5. What exactly is multi-select? when is it needed and what is/are the adavantage(s)?

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Are you trying to tell me a N95 had the same capabilities as a n900?

I've never owned an N95... my last phone was an N97 and i couldn't customise that anywhere near as much as this phone.

Phones and laptops are slowly becoming the same thing. A laptop is expected to be "vanilla" and you set it up yourself (ie: not polished), while a phone you expect to be completely setup already (ie: polished). Is the n900 a phone or a laptop? - its becoming hard to tell imho.

In the end, the more customisable something is, the less "polished" it will feel.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

The iPhone is a finished product. The product is the user experience. It doesn't matter what hardware it used or how you can access it. People buy it for the user experience and nothing more.

I would hazard a guess and propose that the majority of the target audience that the iPhone was designed for and subsequently most of the people who bought the iPhone would give a fig for the how and why it does what it does.

The NiT's and the N900 on the other hand are mostly used by people who are familiar with their capabilities and already know what the limitations of Maemo are from it's previous releases.

Maemo will never be polished.., because it is now evolving into MeeGo. What you see is what you get.

I don't use mine as a phone. I never have because I already have a company phone on a company network that isn't GSM so any thoughts I have about the phone side of it are based on reports from people who do use it as a phone.

What I have seen so far seems to be that if I did need the N900 to be my primary phone, I would be very disappointed.

Personally I had expected the phone functions to be at least on par with other Nokia phone offerings. Even if that meant a separate Symbian based phone side that communicated with Maemo through API's.
I would not care if these API's were closed or proprietary only that community developed Maemo apps had access to the Simbian API's as well.

Theoretically that can still happen from within the community but technically I don't know enough about the feasibility, or if Symbian Open Source even means what I think it means. :)

...but I'm drifting.

The answer to the OP's question is:

No, the N900 is never going to be a polished product.

I'm sorry some were mistaken in that regard.

For most legacy Maemo users this may have never been a reasonable expectancy for the NiT side of the N900. In my case the hardware, software, and connectivity improvements over the N800/810 means I use it much more than any previous NiT. (More hours per day, more bits downloaded, and more information processed.)

However, IMHO if the thing is sold as a phone, by the leading company that manufactures phones, it should function well as a phone and have the same polished features an average phone user expects.


:)

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Nokia tells that it's a mobile computer, at least in my country. And I think it's good enough as this. Every OS has a limited applications out of the box, and just polishing takes a lot of time. I did know that N900 will never become finished product when I've bought it. But it's open enough to live without it. Don't compare this to iPhones, because they are closed and must be polished out of the box.

I use N900 also as my primary phone and it suits my needs. I'd like to improve some things, but I can say it about everything.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

It's the ability to select more than one email at time. In order to delete or mark as read for instance. Necessary for people who get a lot of emails on a daily bases.

Is there a good replacement email client now? for the stock one? What is it called?

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Wax On, Wax Off.. or is it Whacks On, Whacks Off

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Having read some of the responses here, it seems like I'm being misunderstood a little.

1. It's not my intention to compare the N900 to the iPhone. The iPhone Mail app got compared here because I was trying to make a point that "A simple feature was missed by Apple in version 1, which then later got implemented into newer version of the iPhone OS. How could Nokia not see this? Nokia is making the same mistake in its mail app on the N900. Doesn't Nokia learn from other competitions' mistakes"

2. I don't have any issue with the built-in web browser. I stated the web browser's full-screen / escape from full-screen icon as "an indication" that the user experience does not match the Maps application. The lack of icon standardization is also an indication that the N900 is not a well polished production.

3. I am not asking for a "finished" product as I understand in computing, industry standards (QT, for example) gets newer versions and are always on a path of constant changes and improvements. What I need is a well "polished", well "thought out", well "executed" product from Nokia, and stop selling some garage hack jobs, prototypes, in-house mix-n-match products out the door.

4. I UNDERSTAND that it's a mobile computing device, and use it as such. It's a mobile computing device with GSM, 3/3.5G "communication" (voice, text, MMS, e-mails, Facebook, MSN...etc) capabilities.

5. I don't really care about which / what transitions are used, but the point is WHY on earth when we have the technologies and the means to avoid screen flicker when switching between full-screens, the N900 still does so? I'll answer this, it's because Nokia treats the N900 NOT seriously, uncommitted. My point is NOT to do with "How to I get ride of the flicker", but to do with "WHY is it happening, from a product design view point (not technical (i.e. frame buffer crap) view point)".

6. The points made here (including app manager) really comes down to the N900 "Can" be "better". Why is it not? I know there's a point in time when a product becomes "good enough". But if Nokia thinks the current state of the N900 is "good enough" for them to market this as their top of the line "mobile computer" (quoted from Nokia's site)...then I seriously question Nokia's commitment to the N900, question Nokia's understanding of the mobile computing market, question Nokia's background in understanding user experience, and what a polished product should be like.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

So are you saying that you're OK with "It's fine to have Nokia's end-users to fix, address the issues because Maemo is an open platform" (Not exactly certain what you mean by "open", open source? Open apps eco-system? Open APIs? All of the above?)

Companies these days are selling crappy products to customers very early in a product's life cycle, and in turn, saves a little on in-house testing, plus they start to see a return sooner the sooner they start selling. This, to me, up to an extent is unacceptable.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

That wouldn't make sense on Maemo, either. Try finding the source for things like the USB status menu applet, Phone, Conversations. Oh, wait, you can't!

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Do you mean polished like iphone and HTC desire with things opening and running smoothly? Then of course not. Is the current Nokia even capabe of making such a product? I do not see much evidence of that. On top of that Nokia has from the very early life of the N900 shown it does not have much interest in supporting the N900.

If you are looking for a polished product with Nokia involvement then your best best is to pray meego is so amazing that HTC release a meego mobile device.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Yeah, I've been trying to find those....it's just not open enough.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

And now we can probably conclude "Nokia sucks" in regards to N900.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

What OP has stated are some of genuine concerns. Theres nothing trolling in his post. As far as I can see, he isn't a secret iphone fan lol

Why do some of us treat every such posts as this or criticism of nokia towards N900 as troll? I am a great fan of this device and I have it since March.

However, it doesn't mean we cant expect more or better service from Nokia after all they have charged so much for this device.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

As far as I know, Nokia never marketed this as a smartphone anywhere, but I just realised yesterday that some of the retailers do, sadly.

Amazon.com at least calls it a "Nokia N900 Unlocked Phone/Mobile Computer", but Amazon.de claims it is a "Nokia N900 Smartphone". BAD marketing strategy (which clearly shows in the rapidly sinking price :D), but this time it's not even Nokia's fault.

Mark this day in your calendars, Gentleman... ;)

(Disclaimer: Don't take this the wrong way - I know this may sound harsh at times, but it's not meant to be.)

What I'm about to say applies to most of your issues, but this is the one that was most prominent.

You've been repeatedly told that this is not a smartphone, but rather a mobile computer, and you claimed to already have realised that. But you still seem to lack the deeper meaning of this fact.

Boot a Windows PC. Open ANY application. Open any OTHER application. Compare their icons.

Computer programs simply are not uniform, sometimes not even when they're from the same company. They don't have to be, as long as their controls don't stray too far from what the average user is used to. And neither do the programs in your mobile computer have to be uniform in order to be useful.

Though, unlike with most PC icons, with Maemo at least you have a good chance of "fixing" this "problem" yourself. Many applications on the Maemo store icons as plain graphic files in /usr/share/icons, so if their non-uniformity peeves you that much, you have the choice of overwriting them with any icon set you choose.

(Doesn't work with all applications, as some use library files, but I think the vanilla Nokia ones work that way.)

So, really - you'll come to enjoy your N900 much more if you don't compare it to the smartphones (who force you to use THEIR standard phone/mail/calendar applications, so they HAVE to be more polished), but rather compare it to your PC (where you have free choice to simply sack that sub-par Win7 eMail application in favour of installing any of the hundreds of alternatives out there).

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Not sure, but it seems like the N900 is one of those few products that manage to make you literally fall in love with them. And humans tend to feel attacked by anyone who dares to criticise their loved ones.

Add the fact that 90% of the anti-N900 faction here on maemo.org ARE trolls and one easily starts to believe that all of them are, even though (at least to me) there's nothing troll-ish about this one topic at hand.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Yep, App manager is laughably slow compaired to the iPhone's, got a little jealous of the iPhone. (Only for a second though)

I think it is the Maps app fullscreen icon that doesn't play ball, as Xterminal shares the same icon as the browser. Bugged me a little, lack of consistancy.

Multi select in emails works fine, and always has.
http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/2224...ba4763b40f.jpg
In the Inbox click on the title bar and select the action you need.
Select the emails you want.
EDIT 1: Ctrl+A will select all emails. (Thanks to atilla below)
Press on the action button in the title bar (Delete as in the example above)

My only gripe with the email app is that since PR1.2 emails no longer download automatically and if you delete from the phone they also delete from server even though 'Leave on server' is checked.
EDIT 2: A fix is now avalible http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=722013&postcount=1 (Thanks to Crashdamage)

Browser full screen flicker, I agree it's there, but I also think 'So what!' but if you want smooth flicker free graphics buy a iPhone, it's what they do best.

Don't forget bugs are still been worked on, just look at the bug tracker to see the work been done. PR1.3 will come with hopfully more improvements.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

and to select all just type strg+a.that selects everything.

google is your firend.if you dont know something try to google it....

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

one answer is: Never!!!

Unless you bought Nokia and then firing all of their cheif executives. Otherwise a Polished N900 is only happened in a fantasy world of fairy tale book.

Even I wish It was real. :(

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

You could try claws mail. However it doesn't work very well for me - crashes more often than Windows. I didn't even manage to get it to send out a test mail before it crashes and exits (and yes I tried 5-6 times). In the end I installed Easy Debian + Thunderbird and copied my settings folder from my desktop and hey presto all my mail in my pocket.

Tip: Thunderbird (aka icedove in Debian) stores its stuff in /home/user/.icedove, if you have loads of mail you may run out of space because that partition is only 2GB and your optified apps live in there too. To get around this you can have the .icedove folder in /home/user/MyDocs then create a symlink to it in /home/user.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

n900 wasnt meant to be polished in the first place. it isn't quite ready for average consumers, the successor should be.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

If you mean Ctrl+A once you are in 'Multi select' mode... I didn't know that thanks.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

The select action THEN select e-mail(s), IMO, is an incomplete or afterthought crappy solution. The actions (flow) between single and multi-select should be the almost the same, except during the item selection phase. i.e. During single select, you single select an item by long pressing an item and waiting for the popup menu to select the action to be carried out. The popup menu on e-mails have "mark as read" and "delete". From a UI experience point of view, multi-select should be very similar, providing those two actions after a set of selection has been made.

If I'm not mistaken, I can't mark multiple e-mails as read.

Ctrl+A doesn't seem to select multiple "e-mails".

Icons...again, I'm not looking for a solution, just using it as an example that there's a certain level of inconsistency even both programs are from Nokia. As simple as a matter of the direction of the arrows. Even on desktops, minimize and maximize icons have always been signified by a small low bar, and a square (respectively) throughout the majority of programs from a variety of vendors. The style of the small low bar and square, and the style of the icon may differ, but never far away from the small low bar and square.

I do have a question: Is there an official Maemo UI design guideline out there? Sometimes, I wonder if Maemo is just a transitional platform from one thing (no idea what) to another (no idea what)...which Nokia uses to squeeze money from us and then dump us. Sometimes, the lack of commercial software for a particular platform is an indication that others don't see it as a viable long term investment. Is there any true hard facts that Maemo is here to stay? This is a genuine question...I honestly don't know.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

haha...I've been hearing that from the N800 days...the next one will be polished...then the next one... Every single one has been a, IMO, subpar, non competitive product...and with their users saying something like "This is a very unique product, if it doesn't suit you, then go away". Since when do we demand human beings to be suitable for a product? There are some exceptional cases...true. But a mobile computing platform and hardware that Nokia is pretty much saying...take it or leave it, it is what it is....just doesn't seem right. But somewhere along the way, the users, the community have come to accept this, IMO, a weird "fact" that you can't demand more from Nokia.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

FWIW iPhone does the same solution in its Mail: go into a separate selection mode, select emails, then press "Delete".

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Yes, which is why I didn't particular pick a product to base my point. Maemo should have it's own unique solution, with high consistency across programs, an implemented as a platform-wide solution, and not a single program's solution.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Sorry it's the only solution I can give.

No you can't, but as you read emails they are marked, a long pause then select from the popup menu 'Mark as read' takes a long as moving into the email and back out.

I does if you are either Moving or Deleting emails.
Click on the title bar select 'Move messages' then press Ctrl+A together not seperatly.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

I've elaborated a little more about the multi-select point that I was trying to make.

Mind you, this "multi-select" point that I've been making, I'm not exactly after a solution...and trying to point out that this N900 device, while the hardware is pretty good, the platform and Nokia included software seems like temporary solutions, uni student projects, fragmented, incomplete, inconsistent.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

I just wanted to say that from the direction it seems Meego is going it looks like that WILL be polished and I am quite worried about that. As said previously, the more polished a device is the less configurable it tends to be and from what I have seen of the Handset UI I don't like the look of it.

One example of why flexibility requires compromise resulting in a "less polished" feel:

So why is the N900 app manager slow?
Because its entirely Linux based and Linux package management is designed to be plug and play, allowing you to add whatever software sources you want.

In order to do that it has to refresh those sources every time you open the app manager because there is no way it can know what has changed.

It has to update each one separately and then collate the results of all the sources together so you can search them or view a list. Part of collating those results it also has to check versions (as the same application may be available from several sources with different versions such as extras ,extras-testing, extras-devel), they may require other packages as well to function (Linux is based on a very varied collection of shared libraries), so it has to check everything matches up alright before you can do anything.
Naturally, this takes a long time and uses a lot of disk IO and CPU power, not helped by the fact that the N900 doesn't exactly have the fastest eMMC in the world (seeing as a good SSD alone would cost half the price of the N900, not something Nokia could fix unless you wanted a $1000 device). Just try booting your desktop PC from a USB stick or SD card and see how slow it gets (that is installing your OS on there not a Live CD/USB as those cheat by putting everything in RAM).

Why is the Apple App Store so polished?
Apple only have a single software repository, so they don't even need to bother pushing that list to your device - you can just browse it on the web which I believe is all the App Store does. Then when you request a file, it just pushes you that file nicely wrapped in DRM.

When you write for iPhone you are writing for the existing libraries, so it doesn't have to check the right things are installed/available to install, like Linux does. However it also means if the OS doesn't support what you want to do, you are out of luck or have to bundle it into your application making it more complicated and bigger.

In fact, its pretty much how Ovi Store works too (minus the DRM of course) so if you removed the ability to install community software the N900 would be faster too. Of course the problem with Ovi is that once it comes to installing the package you just downloaded, it still has the do all the normal Linux stuff BEFORE it can install - to make sure everything is configured right and available. If we ONLY had Ovi Store, the N900 app manager would be as fast as the App Store, but we wouldn't have the community driven software development that we have. You only have to look at a jailbroken iPhone to see that, it has a community software development and guess what - it has the same "unpolished" problem with its application manager too, for the same reasons. At least we didn't have to hack our phones and risk breaking compatibility with the stock OS in order to get there.

This is just one example of how the flexibility of the OS causes it to feel less polished.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

I think the reason as to why the polish isn't all that high is because Nokia didn't intend for this phone to be a mass market product.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

I understand the technical aspects of it. But where the problem really is, I think, is that Nokia didn't "bother enough" to "come up" with an "elegant" "mobile solution" for application management. Taking DEB solution path is just the easy way out as Maemo is Linux based (as you've stated), and Nokia has ignored the mobile aspects when they put together a product and its solutions.

Nokia is certainly behind in the innovation sense lately.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Yes, that's probably true. Which means, it's doomed right the the very start. Which also means that Maemo, being open source, is just a cover up / illusion for the N900...to make us think the N900 "IS" a great product. N900, in its current state, is NOT a great product...but it can be.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

there is an option to move or delete more than 1 email at a time by clicking the top portion of the screen. then mark individually the mails to delete or move. no ability to mark all as read though. but if you have no intention of reading them, might as well delete them..:D

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

Oh come on, let's not be one dimensional with this.

While the N900 might not be a commercially successful product, it's a pretty damn great product within its own niche. The problem is that Nokia doesn't seem to know what this was.. or Nokia tried to oversell the N900 as what it really isn't.

Re: Is the N900 ever going to be a polished product?
 

In which case, Nokia has even more problem than the technical side of things. i.e. Not knowing who to sell to, what they're selling... Where's the marketing department? Where's the company direction? With a direction, a company should be able to come up with what it should provide, what to sell, what to have.