http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/12...00_smartphone/

they just posted the above review


"Overall, the Nokia N900 is a joy to use and full of good things that we liked very much, though it still feels like something of a work in progress. The Maemo 5 OS is very promising on this evidence – fast and useable, once we'd got our heads around the basic set-up, and bound to be much more versatile in a few months' time as more apps and features are added."

Like almost all other reviews, it would have gotten a better grade if:

1. Aproached the display choice with the advantages of having a stylus as an option for interaction- especially for Flash content on a 3.5" screen.
2. Adjusted the cache on browser to 40mb
3. Played the Flash video in full screen mode - makes a difference.

As long as reviews base their perspective on a smartphone and not the feature set, the N900 will always be second in reviewer's minds.

sounds fairly positive though they didn't work out how to switch by tapping top left of screen.

As far as I understand, capacitance-type screens only work with your fingers.

With resistance-type screens you can use stylus (more accuracy) too.

They BOTH are capable of multi-touch - capacitance screens seem like a step backward.

some guy worked out how to make gloves work with capacitive touchscreens - need to sew in some conductive thread.

I've an ipod touch, loaned to me at work, now discarded. the touch screen on the n900 was very good, I'd say most people won't notice or care it's an R not a C. All I noticed was its so much better than my n800 used only minutes before.

if you *only* want a finger-based touch interface (where you have big on-screen buttons), capacitive is good, but no good at all if you ever want the pixel accuracy of a stylus - e.g. for painting/drawing app. anyway, that's been done to death elsewhere.

You need special resistive screens for multi-touch - the N900 doesn't support it. Capacitative screens also allow the use of harder materials, as there's no requirement for flex in the screen. This makes them more scratch resistant, but also more prone to cracking. They're also more sensitive as there's no pressure required to activate the screen.

There's advantages to both - the general trend seems to be toward capacitative screens though.

Standard resistive-type screens are not multi-touch (although it's possible to fake it in a ingenious way but I've only seen that in liqbase). There is some work in progress by Stantum to create a true resistive multi-touch screen: http://www.touchuserinterface.com/20...lti-touch.html
I don't think this is in production yet.

Resistive screens have other advantages though, e.g. much higher resolution than capacitive, and pressure-sensitive (different grades of pressure can be programmatically used to e.g. differ between select and open, for example).