My experience with N900.
 

OK, creating this thread to moan about N900.

Firstly, I'm a Linux fan, a long term user, and a techie so I usually know what I'm doing when it comes to phones and I bought N900 with high hopes and I was very excited about getting a near computer like experience on a phone with a lot of Linux goodies (shell, deb, codecs, ssh, and the lot) but sadly I am hugely disappointed in the product so far.

My main problem isn't lack of features (device is full of features) or small number of applications (although being unable to find very obvious applications is sometimes frustrating), or other short comings (EG., crippled phone application). My problem is complete lack of stability and a bad overall user experience of the device. Nokia missed the point here completely. A major principle of software engineering (and indeed any engineering) is to make sure whatever you create works and that it's stable enough before putting a lot of stuff in it. N900 is nowhere near!

- I still have to restart the thing every now and them because application short cuts and widgets on screen don't work.

- Still the turn control is clunky.

- Still the web browser has bugs. Opening more than two sites simultaneously is a pain.

- Why does it take several seconds to resolve dns and then open a simple website on N900 using my home wireless when it opens instantly on my laptop using same connection?

- Whole thing jams every now and then and is non responsive for several seconds.

- Email client is to be honest useless!

I don't know if there is any solution to that and I am sure I will get some flaming for this but this is my honest opinion on the experience with the phone.

As said earlier, first thing that every product needs is that everything that exists in it must work! After 3 (??) platforms upgrades this is still not that case and as much it pains me to say it, I am probably not going to buy another one of Maemos any more. Even though I absolutely prefer Linux on my desktop over anything else.

For the record, I had to restart it twice today because the desktop was frozen and I didn't get any notification of any new sms or calls on it. Ah well!

Re: My experience with N900.
 

Hello!
I can agree with you about all things you mentioned about browser delay and email client.
Maybe you should reinstall all your N900 - I mean OS and eMMC.
I do not have any problems with stability, widgets, shortcuts.

Regards.:)

Re: My experience with N900.
 

Turning control and email client could be better yes, but those other issues? I've never experienced such jamming, and phone has had to be booted only twice because of crashing or something other problem. Even those two times were caused by overlocking/undervolting experiments!:rolleyes:

I always recommend reflash, and now again:D

http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/...ata/m-p/591877

Re: My experience with N900.
 

OP you should be able to fix the problems you listed provided the Linux experience you claim to have.

Re: My experience with N900.
 

Suggestions or pointers?

Re: My experience with N900.
 

Well I have been avoiding reflashing because I thought I shouldn't have to. End of the day it's a phone and it really should come as a finished product.

Ok. Lets see how it improves the experience then.

Re: My experience with N900.
 

Look like you're already heading to the right direction. ^^

Re: My experience with N900.
 

That is very true, the phone should work right from the box without any need to mess up with it. Tell us if reflashing helped.

Re: My experience with N900.
 

Mine was pretty flaky prior to PR1.2 but it's been very stable. But if you have been loading any of the extras-dev and extras-testing they can cause ton's of issues, some very unpredictable.

Try getting into the xterm and ding dmesg and look for any errors.

But if you re-flash, don't re-enable the dev/testing catalogs

Re: My experience with N900.
 

The FM radio app is the only thing that crashes my N900. Usually happens when alerts come in while using it. The email app is very basic, but I don't know about 'useless'. Otherwise I don't agree with your assessment at all.