So I went to the Nokia flagship store in Chicago after work yesterday to check out the N900 demo unit they had, and here are my impressions.

First off, I had to wait more than 15 minutes to see the phone, it was like asking to see the crown jewels of England. Apparently, only one of the workers there carry and use it, and he was busy "upstairs". I only had 40 minutes on my parking meter and was getting slightly upset. I don't know why they don't have the N900 displayed like the others with the security cables and whatnot.

The first thing that stood out to me was the screen. Very good quality and very responsive for only having a resistive touchscreen. All the scrolling around in webpages and on the main screen worked wonderfully. Web browsing seemed very fast and easy to navigate, pages loaded quickly and flash within youtube.com played just fine over wifi. The salesperson (i don't know why they have more than 4 of them for such a tiny store) specifically mentioned that it will only work on T-mobile's 3G but will work on AT&T's edge just fine. They have a pre-order special where they will give a free bluetooth headset with the N900 (nokia's cheapest, of course. In fact, if you want to buy the headset it's only $20), but they couldn't give me a release date or range of dates, only "soon".

The keyboard, although small was easy to type with, but I will miss the keyboard from my G1. I do wish the keys where spaced further apart, though. In regards to the size of the device, it is a bit bigger than my G1 in length width and thickness, with a bigger screen (3.5", I think). Overall, it seems to be a well built phone, and I would definitely recommend that a screen protector be purchased immediately as the screen is a fingerprint magnet, and also needs to be pressed on slightly harder due to it being resistive.

Oh, one more thing. It weighs more than my G1, but not too much. It's definitely not a brick.

I placed my pre-order last week on Amazon, BTW

Cheers!

Nice work.

It does seem that Nokia is intent on putting as many hurdles as they can between early adopters and the N900.

Tell me about it. The guy was so secretive about the phone, he wouldn't even leave my side when I was looking at it. One thing he kept saying was that the software on the phone wasn't final, and to expect things to work a bit better when it is released.

I think they take the demo phone home every night, It wasn't even in a box when he showed it to me. In fact, he whipped it out of his pocket!

Did you ask if his name was "Eldar"?

Ha, good one.

It was some young dude, I think his name was Jason or something. I think they only hire young, "hip" people. I didn't see any workers over the age of 27 or so.

So you think the keyboard is inferior to the G1? I ask because after the Cyan debacle I'm ready to jump ship, but not if the keyboard is less desirable than what I have now. I fat finger the G1 enough as it is.

It's not that the keyboard sucks, it's just that there is no spacing between any of the keys. They click just fine, but if you're coming from a G1 like I am, you'll be disappointed. The G1 keys are spaced so well that it just seems like a downgrade. Keep in mind that you have no "chin" that will get in the way of typing like on the G1, but I assume most G1 users have already gotten used to it.

I'm jumping ship to the N900 because of the cyan debacle as well, so I feel your pain.

Anyone in the vicinity of the Chi or NYC store care to run in and verify that you can indeed buy one as stated by Nokia PR?

No you can't. I just called them. They don't have any in stock and won't be getting any for a couple weeks, according to them.

What is the Cyan debacle?