Hi. I had used N900 for 6 months.

But unfortrunately, I had little experience on Android phone and iPhone.

I had only used my friends' HTC G3 and iPhone4 for hours and could not feel the further difference of the OSs.

What I want to know is the user experience difference between Maemo 5 (or MeeGo) and Android OS / Apple iOS ?

There is a description that said Android phones and iPhone are smartphones with computer function.
And N900 is a computer with phone function.


Could some one describe the exact difference ?
or give me some examples of this ?

For example, in Maemo 5, I can put the widget / icons on anywhere on the desktop, but iPhone also can support this function by installing some app, so I cannot see the real difference.

Thx.

I think that you cant compare n900 to iphone. Just type to google ,,why iphone suck´´ and you will have your answer. Just brief example, you don´t have really multitasking on iphone, or cut and paste function etc...
And iphone is for customers which are not ´´tech´´ oriented, so wast majority of them don´t care about these things

I don´t have much experiences with android, but you really can customize nearly everything on n900, thats why it is called computer, and android has some limitations so it is smartphone

some limitations of Android, could you be more specific ?

As I know, you can also gain root in Android, though not that easy.

And about iPhone, no real multi-tasking, any other difference ?

I think one of the best examples is the "dashboard" application switching and the use of the terminal. Even in Android, switching between programs and closing active processes is a little more "hidden" from the general user. With Maemo, i hit the dashboard and I close a running application and I know it is closed. Yes, there are running processes in the background, but I can be more engaged in knowing what those are.

The fact that the terminal is an application readily available in the stock version of Maemo is another example. I can get a terminal in a moment's notice, and with a little work (not a lot) I can have root access and have a bash shell and use traditional linux commands to manage files. In iOS this is nonexistent and in Android it is a bigger trick to pull off.

Also in Maemo, you do not have the hardware trying to keep you from changing it. In certain builds of Android, the unit will try to reset certain settings to the carrier approved settings. There are certain apps you are not permitted to remove or add. All of these are simply there to stifle the user's freedom and to generate revenue for the carrier.

I think its funny that you describe the N900 as a computer with phone function, because it does a better job of being a phone than the iPhone 4!
I have wavered in my enthusiasm for Maemo and meego (I was recently using the HTC Vision Z/ G2, man thats some slick Android!), but I cannot deny that it is an advantage to have a phone that is unequivocally mine and not artificially limited by the manufacturer or carrier.

maemo is the only one of the these who have a exit button top right in almost every app. Thats why maemo kick ***!

and very nice multi tasking as well

hmmmm....maemo has xterm app built it!!! you can hack the root on the go! android needs ASDK and pc to access some root preferences.....iOS.....no idea.......have not used any devices with it.

i have Android 2.1 and it's horrible. It has some nice features, but if you don't use other desktops you can't turn them off, to do anything requires many clicks. Connecting to the internet in Maemo is tap status bar then internet connection; in Android it's settings, connections, wifi, turn on, connect. A big pain. That's most of my experience with Android: everything takes longer to do, and multitasking is a bit of a joke because it decides what to close and what to leave open, there is no task manager so you have to install one and most things don't have a close button. Without an SD card it won't even let you do most things like install an app or take a photo (!) and whereas Maemo5 it's pretty obvious what to do, Android leaves you scratching your head. I'm sure once you're used to it it's easy, but the point is it has a learning curve just to use out of the box features. Maemo on the other hand is perfectly simple out of the box but it can be more complicated if you want it to be.

Widgets aren't the same. AFAIK, you can't have desktop command widgets on it, and overclocking is far, far more labourous than installing a kernel and typing in x-term, of using the GUI in QCPU

There's few direct features you can just rant off the top of your head for Android vs Maemo. iPhone is pretty easy - though that **** about copy and paste is just wrong - they didn't have copy and paste for a while, but they eventually learned.

Anyway, iPhone just horribly limits everything. Want to completely shut of your device? Chances are you'll have to link it to your iTunes running computer before you can use it again. Want to just move files from it to your computer and back? No can do, iTunes insists of Syncing, and unless you force it not to, it'll be a complete ***** about it.

Want to interface with a computer? Better hope you have the proper cable. Can't send files over bluetooth. I don't even know all of the limitations of the iPhone off the top of my head, but I know I find the UI horrendously not intuitive. (Just like I find trying to use a mouse with only one button horribly not intuitive after using computers that have more than one. Etc.)

But it's extremely insecure (psst, every single iPhone had the root password "Alpine" as of recently), there's the lack of flash (and anyone who brings up HTML5, I point you to the fact that the two are almost unrelated, are only seen as completely mutually replacing courtesy of apple propaganda, and it won't be finished as a standard for like a decade). Because it hides so much from you, when something DOES go wrong, you can't fix it at all. Basically, there's hundreds of limitations - which you won't really notice or think about, until you find yourself running into walls.

Though the iPhone has other advantages, namely plenty of mindless entertainment, some actually good entertainment, and a decent batch of high quality apps that aren't really available on the N900. But it depends on what you want from your device.

Android is similar, but the nuances and blocks are less noticeable at cursory observation. A lot of things look similar on paper, but you do hit walls. It's also very much like a lottery - unless you're willing to wait until the device isn't too new, and then you can research it's carrier/manufacturer -imposed limits.

Because Android is what it is, carriers and to a lesser extent manufacturers can put whatever they want on the device (if there's one thing I respect Apple for, is not letting AT&T stick a bunch of **** on their phones - it may be a shiny yet utterly restrictive prison, but damn it, at least only Apple decides where your walls are and which doors are locked). Google didn't mean to leave any doors closed, but they didn't make the Android setup and interfaces as freedom-permitting as Maemo. And carriers are more than happy to close all the doors they can.

To say Android has overclocking/rooting harder is an understatement. Nokia never fought your ability to root. People ***** and moan on here about Nokia, but have you ever had to wait for Qwerty or someone else to patch Rootsh for you to be able to sudo gainroot after a firmware update? No. On all Android phones I know of, rooting is an until-firmware-update thing. When that happens ,you have to wait until the next firmware update rom is cooked up.

And now phones like the Droid X come with bootloaders that directly TRY to brick your phone if you're experimenting with rooting it. Which means if a reliable method exists you can root it, but it probably will never exist because the people who are working on figuring out how to root it would probably have to go through multiple copies of the same phone before they succeed. And they probably won't make that investment.

overclocking the n900 was as simple as whiping my az! iphone cant even do this due to its "perfect hardware" fu steve jobs selling overpriced junk hardware

That's what people thought initially, and I'm sure Motorola would love to implement that, however that isn't the case. It's entirely possible to root devices they produce, you just can't install custom ROMs and new kernels.