Thread: Is it worth buying a Nokia N900 right now?
View Single Post
Tschaka is offline Tschaka
2012-11-18 , 15:39
Posts: 59 | Thanked: 47 times | Joined on Aug 2012
#10
Originally Posted by dragonalas View Post
Hi there, I'm Dragonalas, and I'm new to this forum. I registered purely to ask something about the Nokia N900, which I'm very interested in.

The thing is, I don't need a dedicated phone or a tablet or whatever. I need something to mess around with, but it has to be something worth buying. I've been discussing this with myself for a while now, and I'm trying to figure out whether I should or shouldn't buy this phone/internet tablet thingy even in 2012.

I know it's way out of date and barely (if at all) supported by Nokia, but that's not a problem at all for me. I like spending time customizing my technical stuff so this device seemed perfect for me. I can live with a resistive touch screen (used to capacitive), no mms capabilities (never in my life used mms) and a fragile body (after having my HTC Legend for 2.5 years, there's not 1 visible scratch on it).

To sum it all up, I want a neat little device to spend a lot of my time customizing because that's just what I like to do, and there's nothing about the N900 that seems like so much of a turnoff that I wouldn't consider buying it. So my question to you is, is it still worth it in 2012? I know there are a lot better alternatives, but I don't want those, I am merely interested in this particular one (community also seems great).
Hey,

I have bought the N900 2,5 years ago and still love it. Important to say is that I never owned a phone for longer than 2 years before that and always wanted something new - not this one. I have been looking at the N9 but as long as the N900 does it's job I won't replace it.

If you love tweaking your phone, the N900 will give you loads of fun and hours of configuring. I have just recently installed CSSU (thumb), which gave the device a fresh breeze (portrait mode, which I love, runs quite a bit snappier, too).

Regarding battery life I don't have IM accounts running but I am using Yappari, a Whatsapp client for the N900, almost 24/7 and it needs to ping the servers every 5 seconds. I just a couple of days ago got a new original battery for 5 € and since around 9 pm last night (it is around 4.30 pm here right now) it went down from ~85% to 57% while running Yappari, being on Wifi, 2G, light usage of web browser, auto querrying 4 mail accounts every 2 hours and alarm this morning. I can't complain about that actually, after all it is a smart phone.

It definitely doesn't come with a lot of apps, but I don't really need that. My use cases are as follows:

* chatting via yappari
* receiving and writing emails
* routing through navit (offline maps) and sometimes ovi maps frequently
* reading news on the web and looking up public transport connections on the web also
* listening to music or internet radio while in the bathroom
* calendar (gotten to sync that with Google Calendar with a bit fiddling around)
* sometimes using skype for chatting or phone calls
* using it as bluetooth modem for the notebook when on the go
* phone calls obviously
* texting and calling of course

I don't need the latest apps for instagram or twitter or whatnot proprietary services although I believe there are be clients for those also. It is a bit slow opening apps sometimes but that's totally ok for me, no bummer at all.

Also it takes ok pictures, sound quality when listening to music is pretty good and also plays your videos if you like watching movies while on the go. What else do you need?

Since I knew from the start that the USB is probably the most fragile part of it I have always been careful with that. For quite a while I have been using the port a couple of times a day and I charge it every night and after 2,5 years it still doesn't seem to cause me problems.
 

The Following User Says Thank You to Tschaka For This Useful Post: