Just got my N800 a couple of weeks ago, and am quite happy with it. However -- and there's always a however -- I'm surprised that there's no built-in capability to switch from landscape (i.e., horizontal) to portrait (i.e., vertical) mode. Given that this was something I could do with my Newton back in the stone age, I know that it's not a real challenge.

Is this a hardware limitation, or a software flaw?

It's a software limitation - rotation support is currently a low priority enhancement. Also, the current screen aspect ratio is hard coded in some places (particularly applications) which makes rotation harder to implement, and menus don't work so well when the display is rotated.

Some applications (eg. fbreader) support an application-specific vertical mode.

From what I've read at the dev posts it seems like maemo is moving a bit to a more resolution independent direction. This is good in so many ways, with rotation being one of them. Although I wouldn't hold my breath to seeing maemo support portrait mode in the next release, the one after that could very well do. I does make sens to support both, as different use cases definitely benefit from portrait and others from landscape mode.

Thanks -- there are definitely situations where portrait mode would be more usable, so if this ends up in a future update, I'll be happy.

VNC Viewer also allows you to view in verticle mode, I sometimes find this usefull when viewing long documents although the button position on the N800 is in an awkward position so it may feel weird having to figure out which button does what.

Just got got my N810 yesterday.

First thing I did was hold it in portrait mode and think wow this thing feels really good in the hand.

Then reminded myself that it only works landscape...

Point being, having used a range of portable gadgets of this type I think portrait would enhance the experiance greatly.

The other concern is Checken and Egg. Once the OS supports it, programmers will start making the software work both ways. Otherwise they will "think" landscape.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing Maemo and the apps develop over the coming months.

Zuber

Also, should this not really be in the OS2008 forum ?


Zuber