What are the N900 essentials?
 

What are considered the N900 essentials? How have you customised your N900 for maximum battery life, performance, usability and/or personalisation? What (packages) do you consider N900 essentials that Nokia should not have shipped N900 without? I'm not afraid to hack a bit to make things to work my way, but most of the time I prefer to be nice and do things cleanly and neatly. I believe many of my questions have been answered in old threads, but a quick scan of the first ten pages of old topics didn't reveal much. I apologise for overlapping topics in advance.

As for the background, I've been using basic mobile phones (namely Nokias 2000- and 6000-series phones, S40 where applicable) for almost as long as GSM has existed. I've used my phone mainly as a device to receive and make calls and as a calendar with alarms. In fact, only my second most recent phone has been capable of running an HTML-capable browser.

I've recently acquired a second-hand N900 because I've always wanted one, but could not justify its cost until now. As it is my first phone that could be considered a smart phone, I wasn't sure what exactly to expect. Because I had worked with its software before I knew what it could do, but everything else was new to me. I have had an N810 since its launch, but the two are quite different from my point of view.

Most importantly, the first thing I noticed was the battery life. While my N810 could hold charge for two to three days of (my) normal use, it seems that I currently need to recharge my new toy (at least) once a day. Note that I've tried both the battery the device came with and a new Japod battery for DX. My old 6600 slide holds charge for roughly three days. I'm currently wasting some capacity for running BatteryGraph to better understand how the battery is drained empty. I'm sure that running a SIP, a GTalk and a Skype client also drains some juice. What sort of battery life does your N900 have?

So far I've only tried a few applications on N900. For example, I've replaced stock notes application with Conboy as my notepad of choise (I've tried a few others, but those didn't do the job as conveniently). I've also tried Opera and Firefox, but for now the built-in Gecko-based browser seems to be very good. Opera is optimised well for slow connections (as I found out on N810), but somehow it doesn't feel as solid.

As for phone functionality, is there a way or workaround to set default call method for a given contact? I mean, on my old phone I could assign a shortcut key to dial default number of a friend for example. On N900 I have to select the contact and then pick the number (or address) I want to dial. For example, the first number on the list for my father is his prepaid number in Tunisia, not his mobile phone here in Finland.

I've used Tweakr to create one additional use profile called "discreet". Switching between that and generic/silent isn't as convenient as it was with my old phone but it's easy enough. I see there are some packages that provide support for timed profiles, but I think this functionality should be merged into Tweakr. Hopefully I find the time to do that at some point. I /suppose/ I could also hack the other profiles to appear in power button menu.

On N810, I used to use gpe-calendar that I occasionally synchronised with Google calendar using Erminig. My phone calendar at the time was only used for reminders that I had to remember. For now I'm using N900's built in calendar. More most purposes it's good enough, but unlike gpe-calendar, it doesn't allow deleting a single occurence of a repeating calendar entry. Also, I've only been able to sync a single calendar with Google calendar. I'm not sure why, but Erminig seems to work even worse on N900 as it did on N810 and gpe-calendar. Which calendar software are you using and how do you synchronise it?

In a quest to optimise power usage, my phone is using GSM network by default. GPRS connection is not automatically initialised, and a live but idle connection is terminated by AutoDisconnect. WLAN/WiFi connections are not affected as I want to stay online (namely for SSH connections) whenever possible. Display brightness is set low (which I prefer) and haptic touch screen is disabled. Also, I've disabled vibration alarm for IM/e-mail messages. So far I haven't used the integrated GPSr at all as I'm still using N810 with an external GPSr for geocaching. I have mixed feelings about the the built in maps application. In a way I like it better than the one on N810, in a way I don't. Is there a way to prefetch maps for offline use?

Finally, I've installed power kernel to enable IPv6 and to allow undervolting the device. I haven't spent much time on this field, but I've found that my device can't handle voltages lower than 38 units (can't remember the conversion algorith) for 250 MHz or WLAN connection will become dysfunctional over time until reconnected. On the other hand, SmartReflex doesn't seem to cause any ill effects. Below is my configuration. Don't ask why it is the way it is -- I don't know. :-) By the way, is it possible and is it worth the trouble to lower DSP frequency?

That being the initial set of questions, is there anything you'd like to add? Any other advice for a new N900 owner?

Re: What are the N900 essentials?
 

IMO the N900 front camera should have worked out-of-the-box, as should the IR port. Also they should have added something like the headphone-deamon to stop the mediaplayer upon disconnecting the headphones.

Re: What are the N900 essentials?
 

I usually get 3 full days (72 hours) before I recharge (normally with 10-15% or so left), though I'm a "light" user (only GSM, EDGE connected about 10 hours a day, WLAN 2-3 hours, mostly e-mail, NewsFlow and a bit of xterm).

I don't use Tweakr (didn't work the way I expected). ProfilesX is way better (IMHO), combined with Alarmed I can (and do :) set a "Night" profile every night and go back to "General" every morning. Works like a charm.

I use erminig-ng to sync with google calendar. Two local calendars <-> two google calendars. Works perfectly, although I try to avoid all-day events (different phones, different servers, different protocols -- they all manage to f**k up such entries) as well as repeating events (hey, life is less boring that way :).

I still have not tried syncevolution for calendar sync'ing (but I do use it for sync'ing with google contacts - works well except for a few quirks).

Pretty much like me, although I don't use AutoDisconnect. I connect when I want, and I disconnect when I don't want. It feels good to be in control (like with Symbian).

If you have Windows you can use OVI Suite to load as many countries as you like. Works well, but no voice navigation (but see the thread about it).

I also use Marble and highly recommend it.

I wouldn't try to push it. Too low voltages, smartreflex and all those crazy speed/battery patches are just time bombs.

I use KP47, MIN 250 MAX 805, voltage as in "LV" profile. No VDD1/VDD2.
Never had a spontaneous reboot (but once had to turn off the N900 when testing an alpha version of Firefox, probably should have waited a minute or so).

I also have the SWAP on the SD card. Not really a noticeable difference, but it sort feels like "the right thing".

Good luck and enjoy the N900!

Re: What are the N900 essentials?
 

a good free gps is modrana with voice via espeak.. works well and does pre-caching.

the 'default call method for a given contact' issue, install this:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=69809
or you can create your own shortcut (not hard.. more harder to find the instructions on how to do it.. ps: google search is better then the search here!) using the dbus command.

I get a day from the battery too on normal use calls, gprs data etc.

Re: What are the N900 essentials?
 

I suppose I could disable WLAN for a few days and see if it changes anything. I don't consider myself a heavy user; I mainly use the "smart phone" features to get notification about email, IM messages and to establish an SSH connection to my home computer when needed. I hardly use the device to read or write emails or to chat over IM. Likewise, I don't really spend time on phone either.

ProfilesX definitely looks better from outside using libprofiled and all. I'll have to take a closer look. Thanks.

I tried to use erminig(-ng?) 0.2.12, but I kept having tons of duplicate calendar entry in both local and remote (google) calendar. Sync evolution worked far better, but could only synchronise a single calendar. I trust there's a way to hack around that, though.

I'm not interested in voice navigation as I don't have a car, but having offline maps (with street names and search capability) of places I plan to go would be great. Thanks for the hint, I'll have a look at Marble.

I tried using OVI suite to transfer data from my old phone to N900, but Windows running in VirtualBox could not install required drivers for it. It would see the device but that's about it. By the way, Windows 7 image Microsoft kindly provided to people to play with before its official release now says it's an illegal copy. I know Microsoft said that version would start shutting down after a few hours of use after certain point in time, but they never said the version would suddenly become "unauthentic copy". ;-)

Originally, I took a copy of LV profile and started lowering 250 MHz voltage. After a few days I noticed a pattern with broken WLAN connection and brought the voltage back up. I figured that if SmartFlex doesn't cause any trouble, it also won't make the battery life any worse. Then again, I'll just have to try and see.

Thanks. :-)

Re: What are the N900 essentials?
 

Will take a look. Thanks.

Speaking of a hack... ;-) Thanks, I'll have to consider that if that's the only option I have.

All right then, perhaps my battery life is at least in right ball park.

Re: What are the N900 essentials?
 

It also took me some time to get calendar sync working OK. I think the safest is to wipe out one of the calendars (I wiped the N900 because the initial "source" was google calendar), and then it works OK.

I actually only used my (legal) copy of Vista so that I could easily install the maps I wanted. There is a (nokia owned) server (gate5.de or something) containing all the maps, but it's not so convenient.

BTW. Regarding the battery. You could use "htop" to see which processes have taken a lot of CPU time since the last reboot. It's not the most elegant way, but it sure helps.

You can also try "powertop", but I still have to learn how to really interpret the results.

Cheers.