N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

It seems I'll need to buy a new phone is some more or less distant future, so I'd like to gather the opinions.

Suppose your old N900 is bricked. Which one would you choose and WHY? Don't forget the price differences :)

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

If I could afford it I would buy Neo900. It seems to be very interesting. For my taste N900 is too old, Jolla is too big and too problematic and Neo900 could be really nice.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

too problematic = ?

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Definately neo900 as you like the n900 as it can work the way you want on the other hand jolla can be your daily driver from day 1 without much fuss .
i rather suggest neo900 a cheap smartish phone as a daily driver as its what i see most people do

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

I'd replace it for another N900 for the time being.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Why? (10 ch)

Neo can't be considered cheap...

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

There should be some decent Sailfish ports to Android phones, soon ... I'd go that route personally. I own a Jolla, and even assuming that Sailfish was perfect, the device itself is far from.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Why? (1= ch)

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

I mean, so what else would you buy?

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Get a cheap used N900!
First: you have to flash it and it feels superfast (when compared to your current ;)).
Second: it is cheap
Third: you seem to not know what you want yet
Fourth: you will get some time to decide going the Neo or Jolla way
...
Last: you stay with us! :)

Need more?

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

I would buy a N900, because its cheap and imho neo900 is waaay pricey and all you get is your n900 with some new life. Dont get me wrong its a fine project but imo its just not worth the money if youre no enthuasist. Jolla has taken a direction i dont like (mer/libhybris instead of debian/ native X11 or Wayland, still the main reason is definetly mer). So yeah in this condition i would actually have no choice but buying another N900. Btw why no ones talking about Pyra ?

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

from perspective of someone who still using N900 but display (touch) again acting weird and also thinking about new one.........
Why another N900? Well, it's good and it's cheap. Why not? Well, it 's most likely fcuked up one way or another.
Why Neo900? For me, there's no reason. I'm not following it closely, but if 3.5" screen is the only option than that's enough. Since you like to tinker with them much more than I do, maybe you can find yourself in one of them. But when is it coming?
Why Jolla? Well, it is kind of like logical step and if I did have 400€ a year ago I would probably buy one. And because it isn't tied to gazillion online services that I don't use. Why not? Well, because of everything that can be found about it here and on the net about it. OK, still the most wanted one on the market but I still can't justify 350€ for it. Why? Because, while updates are coming and Jolla is trying I'm not sure that their strategy will turn out in the way I was/am hoping. Simply put, they talk to much about android support in sailfish and porting sailfish on android devices.
Since at the moment I need phone only as a phone, I have 24/7 acces to laptop and internet and for killing time when I go somewhere I have tablet with The Pinball Arcade on it and it is 3G so I can use it for browsing I would buy something cheap, like Moto G or something like that.
But If I would have 350€ to spend, then Jolla despite of everything.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Ad 3: I love my moribund N900 for:
0. true multitasking, it's me who decides
1. good hw kb (can't imagine my life w/ virtual kb only)
2. installing &updating apps with apt-get; terminal (it's Linux!), decent shell where you can run your own script.
3. the possibility to tinker with it, experiment, simply have fun ;)
3.5. Fully manual internet connection!
4. awesome photos
5. resistive screen ;)
6. fm transmitter, IR (yay!) - not that useful in everyday life but sometimes.;
7. software: OMP :) I know no better MP with lyrics on any other system ;) generally averagely better quality apps than in Harmattan.

In decreasing importance.

Because of 0 and 1, Android, iOS, WP are no way

What I miss on N900: lack of some apps, that the system core is outdated, bugs in apps such as camera-ui2, performance (but performance is not that bad0 ;) - you can cope with it)

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Well that's why we need to find a way to at least run android apps on the N900. By Dalvik or Chrome or Chroot, there at least one solution i think!!! :o

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Well I am a guy that had a nokia n900 for 1 and a half year and after the usb breaking down, I moved to galaxy S3...

Personally I think that n900 is only good(right now) more for using it as a tablet!
It is not that fast as many, many other phones out there and it can be a little annoying using it as a primary phone. I don't have a jolla, so I don't know how it feels like in real hands but I think that it is a good alternative for moving on if you don't like the android/iOS phones.

For the Sailfish OS (from a small port on galaxy s3 that I had installed) I can say that it is a great operating system and it should be keep updating! It should be a pity to see it going down just like what happened with harmattan(another beautiful OS!)

The only "bad" thing about jolla is that there are some complaints about the support, and the hardware that is used is a little more outdated considering the phones right now, but yet it is not bad! Plus you will have the other halfs, something that is unavailable to other phones!

As bluefoot stated, I would prefer to have an android phone with a port of a fully working sailfish OS(with the ability to install android apps on it as well), this could be the best choice I think...

P.S.: I hope to get a n900 in the near future as well! I really like that phone and I think that it is a legendary phone! After all, I like all the twerking that I was doing to it! Maybe a n9 would be cool too for me(it was always my "dream phone", I don't know why :D)

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Exactly. Jolla is too closed/limited, Ne0900 is vaporware that, in my Humble opinion, will never get released, and if it does, it will be 2/3 broken and soon abandoned due to some rage quit/internal conflicts in management team. I don't see future for that device.

N900 in used condition is so cheap, powerful and moddable, that you can use it well for many, many years to come, until some *real* geek alternative appears. Or since you take part in creating such alternative ;)

/Estel

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

I would say that I agree with you except of some things!
The camera and the resistive touch screen!
There are many phones with a better camera, n900's now for me seems average... And for the touch screen I hate that resistive screens lack the multitouch.

But ir/fm transmitter were some epic things to have in a phone :D
It's a pity that there aren't many phones with these features anymore(I was really happy to see that newer galaxies had ir thought :p)

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Me too, i dont know whats so good about resistive technology beside the advantage that we can use a stylus, i got no problem with a capcitive screen i would actually prefer a capacitive screen and i would love the double tap to unlock which is possible with capacitive screen.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

well, they are very unprecise. I hate them each time when I have to move text cursor on 7" device. It is faster to delete the word and start over.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

unfortunately the hardware is not moddable :( I was hesitating about Neo900, but after reading your thoughts...:D i prefer to stay with my N900. This is my second N900 since 2010 after testing a galaxy Nexus. Except the great apps, android does not have this "feeling" i have with the N900. Unfortunately again new devices are faster and on this point, the N900 will still lack something.

Anyway i'm still in love with the little "click" when I open or close the Keyboard and i'm using it daily, trying to find alternative apps like modrana, Yappari fettuccine, linguine and so on!!!

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

why on earth are jolla not supporting android hardware and selling the OS is beyond me

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Which one? I lost context, it seems.

Add to this that Neo900, even if it ever gets released (which I doubt, again), expects to have own infra, own communication channel, own organization... You know, to ensure that users get in touch only with "appropriate" content ;)

Considering, how "awesome" history of moderating IRC or even the own Neo900 section of TMO the Neo900 "leader" have, you may expect that it won't have anything to do with free speech or FOSS ideals. Just a sandbox/kindergarten of one frustrated guy.

Side effect of this separation - Free'ness/Openess aside, it means that it will have MUCH less in common with Maemo or Maemo community, than previously promised. Also, considering how much "love" is in the air between Maemo's leadership and Neo900's dictatorship, you may skip any hopes for official cooperation, too (and rightly so - anyone wanting to do anything official with joerg would need to be not entirely OK in his head).

/Estel

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

If you are after true multitasking, you may want to read this thread before deciding whether the Jolla device meets your requirements.

Not all resistive touch screens lack multi-touch. In fact the Neo900 will have two-point multi-touch using the the same screen as the N900.

You're entitled to your opinion so I'm not going to accuse you of trolling but my opinion is that you are just spreading FUD. It's quite clear that you don't get on well with Jörg and it looks like this has affected your judgement.

As far as I can tell, the project is healthier than ever. GDC are still on board and have a history of releasing devices, the board design is largely based on a working product and the project is steadily making progress.

Perhaps I'm too dumb but I don't understand what you are getting at. Users are free to use whatever communication channel they desire.

Again, I don't understand what you are getting at. The intention is that you will be free to install or port whatever OS you like. I don't see how any leader, whomever that may be, would be able to affect free software ideals in that scenario.

It's not clear what promise you are referring to.

Some projects run by a dictator work very well. The Linux kernel for example.

I don't have any hopes in this regard. The Maemo leadership seems to be in a bit of a mess right now and it's not very clear what they would be able to offer the Neo900. I see it as a good thing that they can run independently.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

To Wicket, it seems that your are supporting the Neo900 project. I'm not GOOD at computer/linux things, but i like the tweaking side of the N900 (you know, trying to boot android, ubuntu, ED). Well, the idea is very cool. Regarding the specs, what kind of Os can we install on the device?
And what about telephony capability? I mean, can we boot for example a linux distro (ubuntu and all its derivatives) and install a kind of software to have telephony capability (calls, sms, 3G) ? Or how will this work ?

Edit. I'm reading this thread http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91308 :D

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Quick reply...

Sometimes I wish to put chemist, Estel, freemangordon, joerg_rw, Win7Mac, woody14619 into one closed room, so that they would not be able to exit it until they finished figuring out who said what, why, and what is true and what is false, and justifications for saying this and that.

Sadly, it would probably negatively impact the maemo.org business. Chemist maintains CSSU-Stable. Estel is researching hardware's mods, and prepares aluminum backcover-body. Freemangordon (Nothing is impossible) is Community SSU and kernel-power developer. Joerg is MCe.V. foundation member, hostmode fanatic and Neo900 developer. Win7Mac is a member of HiFo board and wiki maintainer. woody14619 is a member of HiFo board, quite active on TMO and IRC. Taking all of them offline into a face-to-face discussion would probably have too negative impact on maemo.org.

Still, when you need to have a holiday from work, consider possibility of meeting face-to-face and arguing for a long time :)

Best wishes.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Wicket voiced the same reason I'm going for the neo900.
I love my n900 to death.
But yeah...stretching it's abilities out as we have for some time now...running with our quasi-open/ closed hardware/software can take us only so far ...so long.

Sure the neo isn't cheap.
It's being designed to be as open as humanly possible.
That is a huge advantage...considering currently community fights through closed bits...or tries to come up with compatible .open alternatives.
The neo will allow me to install whatever distro...properly.
If I wish shr.
If I wish Replicant
If I wish a linux distro.
If I wish fremantle.
If I wish freemantle.
That is a great allowance of personal freedom.
More so than any other device I am aware of.(shy of the gta04 or the pyra...both of which are cousins to the neo900)

Figure the Jolla is the way to go? ....ok. ...
but for myself I am not interested in being tied to a specific o.s. vision that someone else has...not to mention the issues Jolla owners have been having have most definitely made me gun shy.

As far as disputes which seem to be having a bleed-off effect into other threads.
This being due to ...as has been mentioned by Wikiwide...the fact that some of the most critically needed people in our community seem bent and determined to burn the place to the ground.
I only differ with you on 1 thing here Wikiwide...I however ...think putting everyone in the same room for a day or a week or a month to work things out won't cripple or kill the community.
Letting them continue as they are.... hasn't resolved any issues....has simply increased tensions... is most certainly not instilling confidence...and is increasingly disenfranchising ....
I have painstakingly read...reread...rerereread everyone's stances and positions and summing it all up...
No one has been completely...totally and absolutely from beginning to now... in the right and no one has been completely totally and absolutely in the wrong....


I am beginning to believe that the moderators across the forum may need to aggressively and impartially police and eliminate threads/ posts which assault/ goad/ taunt/ enrage/ disparage another fellow member in full or part for whatever valid or invalid reasoning regardless of the partial or full importance of said post for the sake of the community as a whole.....temporarily (preferably) that is...until everyone's chillax and cool.....

.All I have to say for the moment...

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Well, I had always dreamed of a MeeGo phone until I got one. You can't compare N950 with N900. Worse hw kbd support. Capacitive screen. Worse quality apps (mstardict vs dictionarystar & qstardict; katana vs minibible) or no apps (tuner); problems with landscape; Aegis. Less disk space. Problems with styling of plain Qt/Gtk apps. No Autodisconnect...

Still its camera's better than on N950. And N950's capacitive touchscreen is much less precise than N900's resistive. N900's resistive is perfectly precise! You can use it in gloves, with a real stylus. A small drop of a water doesn't make the touch recognition go mad. And N900 has a plastic screen, so it won't break into pieces if it falls on the ground with a relatively high final velocity.

Who needs multitouch ;) We can map the keyboard, use the volume keys.

This is one of cons. The other is that you can't use WiFi fully manually. An overall conclusion - the OS seems a little immature.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Get a Nexus 5 and put Sailfish on it.. You won't regret it

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

It has no hw kb (and will never be) and is just as expensive as the Jolla phone (which might someday have an OH)

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

[QUOTE=Wikiwide;1441514]Quick reply...
Sometimes I wish to put chemist, Estel, freemangordon, joerg_rw, Win7Mac, woody14619 into one closed room, so that they would not be able to exit it until they finished figuring out who said what, why, and what is true and what is false, and justifications for saying this and that....
Sadly, ha ha ha i earlier said a similar thing and really if they dont do something similar to settle matter at least this site will be fully poisoned.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Somehow, I was 100% sure, that you will answer to my post ;) I'm deeply touched by the fact that you won't accuse me of trolling for having my own opinion on the matter.

On a more serious note, though - I respect your opinion, of course. But I think that what most Maemo people expects from Neo900 is to run mature mobile computer/phone hybrid stack on it (aka, fremantle, with or without additional 'e'), not openmoko, or any other OS (be it Debian) that doesn't have very good mobile capabilities.

In my opinion, the only one OS and UI that offer true *NIX possibilities, being very mobile friendly at the same time, is fremantle. Other things are either shifted too much into mobile, or are desktop things, not suitable for usage as a phone.

Thus, I guess that good cooperation between Maemo and any_project_aiming_to_replace_n900 require good cooperation with Maemo officials. (hint - take note where Neo900 name comes from). I don't expect that to happen, for reasons mentioned in last post.

Also, about FUD - Maemo's leadership is in very good shape, and have mature roadmap of what to do next. The only "messed" part of Maemo's leadership was, not incidentally, Neo900's project leader's dictatorship attempts (to seize control over Maemo), but that was fixed already. I would say that Maemo leadership is *much* more stable than Neo900's leadership... YMMV.

/Estel

// Edit

Guy, you must really like a bloody mess to happen ;)

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

I don't know about n950(it was made only for developers, so it is a little easy to understand why it might have some issues) but I won't really agree with you...

N9's camera (I think) is better than n900's...

I also don't really care about the hardware keyboard(maybe because I don't use terminal on android anymore :(, who knows), but opening the hardware keyboard for doing something small that you can fast do with multitouch is a little stupid :rolleyes:

The only good thing is the ability to use almost anything as a stylus.(I don't know how good is the multitouch of a resistive screen that someone stated before, so I can't say)

About the plastic screen, you are right.. My galaxy s3's glass of the screen is still broken, and it broke in less that 2 months of having it, so you are right!

After all of these conversations about screens, I can say that if multitouch on neo900 works well, then maybe I will be a big fun of resistive touch screens :D(as you can understand I was missing so much the multitouch on my n900)

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Well, who knows - I know about a few cases where heated online conflicts were resolved quite nicely when the people met face to face on a conference. But sure, that might not always be the case.

Still, I do sometimes wonder why people in our community get so outright hostile to each other, considering that we need the exact opposite (cooperation), as there is no long a big silent corporation covering our backs and has not been for some time already.

TOtally agree with MartinK.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Planned OS's for the Neo900 include Fremantle (as you've already discovered), Debian, SHR and Replicant (free version of Android). Regarding the specs, it will have 1GB RAM (the same amount as the N9 and Jolla) and a SoC that's slightly more capable than the N9's. That should give you some idea.

All of these OS's should have full telephony capabilities (calls, SMS and data including 4G!). For regular, Linux the most common telephony software stacks are FSO and oFono, both of which are available in the software repositories of most distros.

A much better constructed post this time ;). It's a shame you had to spoil it at the end with another unnecessary dig at Jörg.

I agree that the Neo900 needs to have Fremantle. I'm still using Fremantle on my N900 for a reason (although I don't think it's a great long term solution). I've nothing against good cooperation between Maemo officials and the Fremantle Porting Task Force however I just don't see what it is that they can offer each other at this moment in time. Should the moment arise, I guess they will cross that bridge when they come to it. In the meantime freemangordon, jonwil, et al. are plugging away at the job.

No FUD intended by my comment about Maemo's leadership. I think they do a great job considering all that's been going on, it's a voluntary position after all! I personally believe that in recent discussions (or should I say flame wars), everyone that has spoken out has done so with the best intentions towards the community. When I say it's "in a bit of a mess" (and I think I was being kind by saying "a bit") it's because there are real problems such as stubbornness, lack of tolerance of others, hatred and insults, all of which are hindering progress. It's not just one or two but about half a dozen people have contributed to this situation. Difference of opinions is healthy but until all of this sh¡t around it stops, the leadership will continue to be a mess.

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

@Estel: Do you still have a ban on freenode? If not, please join #neo900 to get a real view on the progress (fptf stuff that is).

P.S. In case you are able to and decide to join, please refrain from bringing your personal war with joerg there, ok? :)


EDIT: or you can just keep an eye on the logs http://infobot.rikers.org/%23neo900/

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

[OT]Ban on freenode? :eek: If I ever had one, I was not informed about it, and never felt consequences. Unless you mean maemo-channels only (not whole freenode), where answer is "I have no idea". joerg was spilling bans left and right, and in the light of recent developments, he might have issued one in absentia even though I haven't been on Maemo channels for more than a year (or so) ;)[/OT]

[half-OT]Thank you for inviting, although I'll respectfully decline. I tied to talk about Neo900 once, and got month ban on TMO just for doubting some aspects of Neo900's openness, with reason "hurting the project" (just like ban on TMO would be appropriate for hurting 3rd party project, even if I would DO so. I still wonder what idiot decided to grant moderator rights to clearly unstable person... Board fixing it up very soon, hopefully.).[half-ot]

Strictly ON-topic:

Not my version of FOSS-spirited project, not my kind of "openness" and "class" of leadership. As long as the person in question device about Neo900, I will believe that it gets released when I see it. I'm pretty sure that the conflict with GDC and half-arse "rage quit" - even if revoked later - was just a preamble to more deep problems, that *must* arise. With this person as "leader", it's just a rule of nature.

I must have been really, really insane to put my money/time/interest in project with such leadership. As well, I could book another Vivaldi tablet, wait for new p2p software from Kazaa developer, or trust windoze bitlocker encryption with that NSA leaked documents, if I ever get any ;)

Add doubts from my previous posts, and it sums up to why i NEVER recommend Neo900 to anyone I'm wishing well. Hardware can be outdated and overpriced, but I need to at least marginally trust the issuing party.

/Estel

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Quick reply...

I am a dreamer, and a pragmatic at the same time. As a dreamer, I would rather sponsor a prototype I enjoy, than settle for the mediocre devices being currently on sale by large manufacturers. As a pragmatic, I would support tested-and-proven usability of N900, in reborn Neo900. Jolla sounds good, but it focuses on software, and does not advertise it hardware much, except for Other-Half - and it creates the question of achieving the same functionality with modded battery cover and hacker bus of Neo900.

About leadership and attitudes: I have seen people compared to whom Joerg looks like an angel.

Compare Holmes and Moriarty: Holmes can be insufferable, acerbic, and so on (take into account that sympathetic writer, such as Watson, omits the most negative parts of his character), yet Holmes gets work done, and helps people in the meantime. Moriarty is unpleasant, reticent, threatening, and often achieves his own ends by attacking others.

It can be argued that most people are not geniuses (unlike book characters); yet the meaning is still the same. Some people could argue that Holmes usurps power inside Scotland Yard, breaks rules, disrespects police officers... Yet, Holmes is here to help. And Joerg is here to help, too.

Most truly destructive people are not members of FOSS-oriented-community, I would guess. At least, it's my personal experience that the 'unpleasant person compared to whom Joerg seems an angel' is a Microsoft-supporter-to-bone, be it desktop or laptop or phone.

At the very least, on #neo900 there were pleasant in-depth discussions of why cellular modem and GPS chip have to be on the same chip (space, power; cellular location is way more accurate than GPS location), and no, there is no GPS-only chip which could be used instead of the cellular-and-GPS chip (this manufacturer makes no GPS-only chips; chips of other manufacturers would be too different and require too much R&D; there is already plenty of ways to disable cellular transmitter). I suppose I was one of the several people who bugged him extensively with patience-trying questions.

Best wishes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Per aspera ad astra...

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

I deleted my post as wikiwides is better explained @estel

Re: N900 vs Neo900 vs Jolla
 

Maybe Jolla can tick off one of the reasons people are against it with this interesting TOH project. On top of this, the most recent opt-in update has made a lot of owners fall back in love with their handset.

As for advice to OP, I'd go for the horse that no-one's backing - BlackBerry. It's closed, but it's really very good. I had a Z10 for a few months at the start of this year as my daily driver, and the card-based multitasking worked very well. The app situation is a lot better than Jolla, and it also has the ability to run Android apps. The OS feels finished, rather than a work in progress - and with a Q5, Q10 or Passport you can have far better specs than other devices mentioned (plus a very good hardware keyboard).

Look into it at least.