nokia n9 vs the real world.

firstly, while it may look it, i mean no offence to all the peoples hard work that went into the n9/meego. the n9 itself is a solid piece of hardware and the software joint effort is an amazing feat. props.
i am taking a huge leap here writing this as it will no doubt get a lot of backs up. n9 and meego are great yes, but not as great as everyone is saying. here is my personal opinion on the 'final' product you wil be buying.

the short story. lets start with a meme
OH I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE
meego took every intuitive feature from maemo5/n900 and decided to go completely against that and choose to go with all the worst features that everyone hates in the iphone and android. awesome. this IS meego on the n9.
if intel is indeed dropping it for tizen, meego needs to fork immediately and run with it on a community level.
i bought a n9 64gb black. there are hundreds of simple changes i could define to make meego far more intuitive, which i can document in great detail, if pr1.2 doesnt have a lot of these fixes i want in on the QA/UI developement direction. SIGN ME UP. i can see the power of meego, and it can be awesome, its just not at the moment. if i could put meego as it is on an android phone with a keyboard i would do it in a second. that simple. if i could put maemo5 on the n9, i would do that in a second too. a personal feeling i still find a bit confusing myself. n9 needs a keyboard, but the maemo5 needs the n9. a keyboard makes a load of difference.

the long story, part one of a five part trilogy...
being that i had a motorola flip phone for *years* that didnt have a camera or net, but could call and text and had a comprehensive contact list feature, moving from this phone was a matter of time and technology to catch up. i used a phone as a phone and a computer as a computer. around 2008/2009 i started looking at smart phones in a new light. my options then were an iphone, an android maybe the motorola droid, something sony or a nokia. after lots of research i went with the only logical choice. the nokia n900.
a few months after getting it out pops samsung, motorola and htc with some killer android phones, but the software was still extremely weak and has never really gotten any better. why do you need a dualcore 1.5ghz cpu for a mobile OS?
i am in an interesting position where i get to play with almost every new mobile that comes on the market locally. handy. so i get to compare my n900 with everything that comes out.

things n900 does very well
multitasking!!! and still years ahead at the time of writing this!
superb ui experience and logical intuitiveness
web browsing. everything works perfectly like a desktop. like a boss!
contact list, messaging and service integration (im, skype, facebook...)
media playback with stereo speakers.
loads of storage out of the box.
anything and everything to do with ip networks and telnet connections.
powerful niche apps like any desktop
customising everything right down to the os. anything is possible, mostly.
a kickstand and my personal favorite... the sentinel known as the r2d2 light

things n900 does not do so well
gps is a bit of a mess... and no magnetometer. non essential feature
front camera. terrible res, raw unprocessed image. rough. rarely use skype video calling when out and about, unless its *really* important.
cpu speed, although this can be clocked fairly safely.
os ram/swap space. sometimes swapping takes time and frags up a bit.
developement community is small, but dedicated and quality.
updates to core device. once nokia dropped it and focused on meego and dropped that too, future looks grim.
formfactor of a brick.

the n900 came with a lot of things missing, and while at release was average specs it dated very fast as mobile technology from htc, motorola and samsung leaped ahead. i was okay with that for many reasons and it has performed like a dream for over 2 years now. very stable and the niche apps i need have worked very very well. everything i need in a laptop in my pocket.
when i heard about the next incarnation from nokia.. the then unnamed meego device i have watched closely til release. every pic at the time showed the n950 with keyboard and all the nice specs, and of course the n9, the more consumer version. during this time i had use of the highly rated (bought it too but not for myself) htc desire (bravo) and a htc desire z (tmobile g1?). the desire i found to be a superb quality device. amazing screen and all that. once rooted and android mod put on it was even better. low internal ram makes androids not fun, and back then android couldnt put apps onto the sd card. that feature came much later. i was really impressed with the desire z with the full keyboard. now this is quite a dreamy device in itself. same issues as the desire though. if i didnt have an n900 i would have this. but the n950 was coming out sometime so i waited.

to my dismay when i heard that the n950 would be semi crippled and not be available commercially and only focusing on the n9, i was feeling a bit disappointed like being wounded by friendly fire. also was not too impressed by what i saw meego developing as. i wrote a letter to nokia finland which they responded to within a few days. impressed to even get a response letalone in that turn around time. in short the main point of the n9 they said was to have no actual controls on it and fully driven from the screen. logical i guess, but my n900 is like that already and has a handy keyboard too, as i suspect the n950 felt like. odd marketing suicide pill being that they had already announced meego developement by nokia would cease and this would be the only device... considering the interest in the n9 worldwide seemed to be off the charts. i took all this as 'less moving parts, less repairs'. no sdcard slot wear n tear. no faulty keyboards. no internal tinkering or dust traps. only things that can go wrong are the volume/power puttons, simcard slot which you wont be messing with much and the usb slot. i guess the little cover can get torn off easily. i am sure they bet on tried n true design. a hardware or screen fault would show up quick or never. oddly they didnt make any other part of the externals sealed like the motorola defy. not even a little.

so i waited for the release, watched a hundred videos online, read reviews and user experience and recently got a n9 64gb black. this is premiumly priced for a niche 'unsupported' device, more than an iphone 4s 16gb, more than a samsung galaxy s2, and far more than the old htc desire z. all great options on the market.
so when it arrived in the mail (although they do sell it locally, only the 16gb version available for a *very* high price, higher than what i paid for the 64gb imported) i quickly opened it to find it was almost fully charged. lots of getting to know it time.

first impressions.
tiny box for such a costly powerful device.
very black and shiney, nice to hold.
great looking black screen, good curve.
simple design, i could imagine it with a keyboard.


powering it on was another story...
what a drab POST. a semi shined nokia logo and a echo ripple. they could have done *anything* with this. looks like they spent more time on the advertising and webpage graphics. the n900 had a nice wide nokia logo, some moving dots, a pretty nokia handshake movie that always made me smile and some nice sounds as the desktop became visible. great gfx and feel instantly of a polished product. the n9 was another story. a chime, a badly lit back drop nokia logo and then after a bit more of a wait, a circular edged square throbber indicating more initialising. a quick demo of how to get to grips with it much like the n900 had.
finally, a screen full of colourful icons. very sharp screen.. odd colour of blue/green if you dont look at it directly. very bright for medium brightness. the icons look like they are not on the screen, almost a feel of 3d about them. terrible shape to the icons and while simple in design, easily understood by anyone. pretty generic stuff but done in a very low quality kind of way considering the offerings from android and apple in the icons department. not sure what the aim was here. lack lustre but effective.

jumped onto wifi and figured out quickly how to get the 1.1 update down. took an age to install. booted fine afterwards.

so, now it was ready to be tested. i opened many apps and started to get to grips with this swiping. pretty easy, even the lock screen double tap (lol zombie land) became natural. so icon/app screen (exactly as seen in iphone), an activity/update screen and the open apps multitasking screen (ala n900 when app is minimised). the top of the screen where the clock and battery are tap to get a similar menu to n900, very thin and small text, but sharp and readable. hopefully this menu can be enhanced like n900. and there is a swipe up from the bottom to get 4 quick apps menu. ripped directly from android (iphone 4 has it too) but can only be activated in certain situations.
so.. being of the mentality i love to see under the hood, i hit the settings. it all seems fairly limited options wise. lots of menus with few options within. control here felt a bit strange/alien compared with the n900. no screens have shrink or close icons, feels very android-ish. i say android for its minimalistic menu style. iphone does this same style better in every way. some screens have a back arrow at the bottom. some do not. some have save and cancel icons at the top. some actions have spawned new tasks without you knowing and its hard to know unless you swipe to the multitasking screen. it feels very clumsy in places just navigating the settings. it all feels empty and you are missing a *lot* of controls compared to the n900 and android. some things feel like they should be merged or displayed better elsewhere. some are just pointless. the only positive i have to say here is the 'about product' screen is very well rounded and is how everything else should have looked and felt. some items have an (i) beside the option. clicking takes you to an information screen. this is a terribly formatted html notepad description of the option and only viewable in portrait, i am sure it would look a lot better in landscape as a lot more of the os would. oddly the information given seems to make no sense and feels unmistakingly windows xp helpish. not an entirely useful explanation. had a nice back arrow at the bottom with a iphone style theme to it. oddly, the user guide in the apps menu that looks exactly like the settings information help, but it can rotate portrait and landscape... what gives here ?
verdict : phone settings feels like i am in basic mode. no intermediate or advanced settings at all. help is not consistant with the user guide app...

now, before i went any further i had this weird feeling. only a couple of things i accessed would allow to be rotated to landscape. and when they were, it looked wrong. i have seen and tried the portrait/landscape hack for the n900 work a lot better and control the icons and layout better. meego felt poor in this department... but i thought back to the email i received from nokia. they wanted a device that was completely screen driven. okay. considering its completely symmetrical you cant really tell which way you are picking the device up except for the logo at the top which can be easily missed. the front camera and status light (n900 did it better...) are at the bottom which is easily mistakable for being the top like every other device. there are hacks in android and various mods to make the phone display correctly anyway you hold the phone. upside down or whatever. meego is a blunt no in every way. its either 99% portrait, 1% landscape or nothing. with that fact and the valuable screen realestate with the virtual keyboard. i would rather be using this device in landscape the entire time and have some apps hardset to portrait like i do with my n900.
verdict : desktop and every application needs to be able to be run on any rotation. this is simplicity at its finest, as adverising slogans go on the webpage. android does it. meego demands it. the formfactor of the n9 demands it.


speaking of android. the thing i rip about every mobile operating system out there is the contacts list and integration compared to the n900. the n900 stomps to dust every other contact list out there. its my sole reason for not buying an android for my personal use! the iphone does it pretty well i must say but not like the n900. not even close. what do i see in meego ? a contact list and contact cards that i could swear has been ported directly from android. absolutely soul destroyingly rubbish. this is like some people on the dev team had iphones and androids and had never seen the n900. its unusable compared to the n900, which in itself was not perfect and only needed self defined fields... but this meego contact card is unbelievable. its uncontrollable and has fields that are completely useless. it looks themed like iphone, and the rest is android. home (landline) and mobile both have sms icons. adding other phones gives a black screen with limited options. cant just choose a service like skype or facebook to add in there, it has to pull this from *your* account services somehow. i bluetoothed all my contacts from my n900 into it. looking at some of the cards in the n9 it has numbers repeated and all kinds of extra rubbish i cant remove or hide. this needs to be seriously overhauled and brought up to par with how powerful the maemo5 n900 contact list is. this sounds like a dumb thing to say but this alone makes the device very weak and generic and if i had of known this fact before i bought it, i wouldnt have. i would have gone with an android with a keyboard. complete rubbish.
verdict : contact list needs to be brought inline with n900/maemo5 contact list with customisable nameable fields for phone numbers (ie insert a number, is it mobile, landline or what, and what is this number for?home, work, play..). why dont the n9 contact card birth dates show in the calendar? EXACT same issue with every android. again, not an issue with n900..... this lead me to believe that a lot of maemo may have been taken from android?


so, onto some app play.
came with some games. angry birds *deleted*, golf *deleted*, some ea need for speed game. not a bad demonstration of gyro controls and 3d gfx. but nothing really dazzling over what the n900 did with that ovi freebie game bounce. the space game with screen thumbpad controller was interesting.. *deleted*
the apps menu icon screen. so you cant remove any of the actual system installed apps. this is a given like many mobile os's, even n900 is like this. but they cant be hidden either and this is basically your desktop. apps i dont and never use on n9 are now in my face for ever. but i can move them to the bottom of the icon stack. great. uninstalling apps is a very standard affair. you can close the icon and it will come up with an uninstaller which is pretty much like dragging an android icon to the trash, or alternatively by going via the settings to get to manage applications which runs a *very* android stolen app manager. this app manager has no navigations at all... wait, im lost. its actually a seperate app it loaded from the settings so the only way out is to close out or swipe away. that felt weird and disjointed out of place. not like n900 at all, not even android felt like that.

the middle screen, not app icons and not multitasking aps.. yes, the useless one.
havent really found a use for this screen properly. if you dont use facebook, twitter or other internet feeds its mostly useless. i would have found it better if it was more like the n900 and incoming texts, sms and im showed up on the multitasking apps screen so you could immediately click on it.
the screensaver screen shows updates and received message updates too. replicated work i think.
so the feed screen shows me the day, date and stuff, and the accuweather app links in with the weather icon on here too which is updated every hour. accuweather looks pretty. but it has NO settings. you cant remove locations and have no control over any part of it. what gives ? and how does this link in with the feed screen exactly ? can i change that ? who knows... the feed screen has no settings either really.
verdict : this screen should act like a widget screen. n900 calendar and weather widgets would look perfect on this screen, as would network status/ip/stats if you wished to show them. internal/external search (see later) should be on here too. compass, quick map location. woefully sad missed opportunity here.


clock and alarms.
i use these a lot and not much to go wrong here. wait. too soon. no world clocks damnit! this is as barebones minimalistic as you can get. analogue hands clock only. tiny day and date often obscured by the hands. teeeny hard to read location and gmt zone at the top. the clock can not be edited from here at all, no region or time zone, only alarms. n900 did this part perfectly. n9 epic fail. this one app could have removed a bunch of rubbish from the device settings that didnt need to be there. you cant remove the clock app so it could have atleast been made functional.
verdict : go play with a n900 to see what a real clock+alarm app looks and feels like


making calls, dialler
pretty basic and pretty much the same anywhere. only difference between this and n900 is n900 can take you to your accounts to add or remove calling methods, and can take you to your counters immediately. n9 has this hidden away in device settings menus. this is what seems to be a major drawback with navigation of the n9, nothing has logical paths to related items and settings like the n900 has. on the n9 very few apps have any settings at all and when they do there is nothing familiar or logical about them with any other system app. i have ideas how to remedy this.
verdict : does the basic functions and tried to be pretty, but really just pretty ugly.


searh app
handy, does a full search for apps, filenames, messages, contacts.. the works. its all indexed. while it searches internally really well, there are no options to make it search externally like ebay, amazon, google and so forth.


messages app
pretty generically the same as with anything, same as with n900 but this is a little more clumsy. feels exactly like android with a few features.
the initial messages screen takes you to your recent conversations. the top has a filter by available services/accounts ie sms, facebook, skype so you can seperate them out. the bottom has an icon for a new text, and an icon to select a contact to text. both of these technically do the same thing but they are infact completely different. new message has cancel, no back arrow as you would expect it to have by now. but the choose contact to message is actually via a service (skype, facebook)and has no cancel or back arrow or anything to get out of the message you are typing, and swiping shows its the only app open. ohhhh.. what you see at the top that thing that says message is actually an icon to take you back to messages. can go in circles here very easily. can be a little bit messy and confusing at times it seems
receiving messages is pretty much the same as the iphone. mms messages display inline nicely in portrait, not in landscape. from an active message conversation messaging is very run of the mill.
verdict : simplify contacts cards, simplify messaging... the basics. i dont understand why sms/mms, im services and the like are not all inline if you are talking with the same contact but in different mediums. sms, mms, im, services with the same contact should all be in the same conversation, and you should be able to filter the conversation by service/account method (skype/facebook..) easy yes ? apparently NOT!


maps and navigation
other than the 5+ seconds load time maps 4.1 is pretty impressive. 3d structures of prominent buildings and icons even in my little city splatter the map liberally. pinch zoom and two finger rotate. pretty smart. no landscape mode, portrait only. although you can rotate the map it wont work out your direction looking from the compass. wasted opportunity here. maps can get a bit sluggish and framey when a lot going on in the map, like lots of points or places. however, i turned those off and 3d landmarks and no change in peformance. i guess this is rendering a lot more in street dense areas. maps are free downloads, 70+ countries. good details in maps and terrain view. satellite view wtf? what year were these taken??? and wow low res! still a very cool app.
navigation map pretty much the same load time this can be portrait or landscape, how odd... can do turn by turn voice navigation in many languages, free updates and downloads too by the looks. pretty much a very good gps unit for any car. the portrait map is bigger than the landscape map. why??? both apps need some intuitiveness tweeks and would be awesome. but google maps app for android is years ahead. and has streetview plugin. this is the benchmark.
verdict : very smart and showing off what it *can* do... but is mostly standard on other mobiles for years i guess. i believe this is exactly the same version as on the lumia 800. looks like a symbian port lol.


music player
no landscape. they kept it all pretty simple here. half the screen is album art, lower half is controls. long names dont scroll. tapping a song name brings up some file details, album, name artist, genre.. and file size, length, compression bitrate, sample rate, played and how many channels it plays in. drm too. only one menu to make song a ring tone, the default one. no settings at all. scrolling the album art changes track, the limited actual controls are play/pause, back and forward skip and a seek bar. tapping the album art pauses.
the speaker on the n9 is at the bottom of the phone, not the back or sides or stereo like the n900. it has okay-ish volume, but higher volumes create some serious shakes and vibrations. headphones has a good volume level. removing phones plug pauses. and a bonus good feature is that phones and speakers have serperate volume levels. phones in have it on max, unplug and continue at the volume level the speakers were at before. nice. headphone volume is good, but has this been limited at all ? my hearing is superb but to get a good sound out of it i need it between max and 3 below max. you can barealy hear anything below half volume.
apparently theres a feature for it to find similar tunes in ovi music. not my collection lol. same with album art.
verdict : functional, it works well at what it does. also shows up on the lock screen with some controls.. right over where the time WAS. move it!

video player
menu of videos available is portrait only. playback is landscape only.... rotating for this sucks as there is no next or previous video while playing. has an options in the phone settings to play at original size/aspect, or to full screen it. and by full screen they mean horizontally fill it, not vertically, so you get stretched picture and not aspect ratio scaled footage as you would expect. you can pinch the screen during playback to change between this. volume controls remain the same as if in portrait and for me it feels a little wrong that when in landscape that the left volume rocker is up volume and the right is down volume. considering the volume slider on the screen (which you cant slide yourself) goes in the opposite direction of the rocker you press... ummm....
options are slim pickings here. bringing up the only menu pauses the video to share/rename/delete. tapping the video information takes you to a page similar to the music player.. also pauses playing. could keep the audio at least.
tapping the screen while playing brings up the seek bar, but no onscreen controls. just a play pause. tapping the playing video can pause sometimes. when video ends it goes to the video selection menu (portrait)
the dolby soundscapes demo really shows off the sound if you have phones on. impressive.
when putting the n9 down and having a video running (no kickstand) you can really notice the colour change of the screen from different angles. that blue/green tinge it gets is *very* obvious.
720 playback is rubbish. do not even attempt it. youtube ripped 480 mp4s looks sharp as nails. refresh rate is super. colours are rich... when looking straight on. this all may be good. but playing the same video on the htc desire the screen looks better than the n9. the n9 is black as black but the picture is better on the htc. i dont understand. is this the pentapixel showing it head? i played with the brightness on the n9 but no luck matching it the 18 months old desire.
because no 360deg rotation of desktop/playback.. the headphone jack needs to be moved to the top right corner. its in a shite location when playing landscape movies with headphones on and holding with left hand.
all the hype about dragging the screen while a movie is playing and still seeing it playing is a con. as soon as it minimises to the multitask screen it pauses. it again could continue to play the audio at least!
verdict : it plays videos. it does that. wont play all out of the box. hoping some codecs in the future. 720p is terrible if it plays at all. needs a lot of functionality added... battery usage is impressive! plays forever!


camera
it works. touch focus, facial recognition. gps and stuff. usual settings.
video works too. dont really use the camera for much
flash/light seems a lot weaker than the n900
gallery could be more functional but comes with some basic editing tools. ui needs serious improvements. i believe the camera and gallery are getting an overhaul for pr1.2 ?


web browser
the best for last, and probably the shortest. its fast. its compatible. who needs flash anyway? youtube works perfectly. google maps DID NOT WORK on the full web version. you could pinch but not scroll around. completely wrecked the browser! gmail too. hotmail seemed to have a few issues but resolved itself somehow and could pinch zoom and all the rest. funny. every webpage i have ever been to seem to work fine on n900 browser. have never had an issue.
now. the bad things. the browser is ****. no settings at all. none. cant hide the url bar to add screen realestate. comes directly from iphone but worse. n900 browser may be dated, but damn it is controllable and a whole lot friendlier. i remember in all the videos there was a lot of hype over the n9 browser. its not even as good as the not updated in 2 years n900 browser. how could this happen with all the browser development out there? hello chrome and gecko!
verdict : go with a gecko based browser, quickly.


overall problems
built in system app themes change regularly, nothing is visually consistant. the many themes used that change regularly throughout seem poorly thought through. take a look at n900, android or iphone. visually reliable in identification and recognition, this enhances usability and intuitiveness.
that back arrow on the bottom is ugly. menus should be treated like pages in a book. swipe the screen back to go back. saves disjointed movement and finger mileage. the save and cancel at the top? what? maemo5 did naviagion better?
apps that jump to other apps are very disjointed. with the above two issues it makes navigating a real mess and the user can feel a little out of control.
a serious lack of room for personalisation much like the famous iphone.
no apps have settings. completely out of control. serious lack of settings and controls in the device settings. i should be in control of this phone, but it controls me.
apps need to have a menu that has settings you can change directly rather than having to go into device settings. ie the clock app you cant change the time... would need a menu so you can edit the time, time zone/region, day, date, analogue, digital... cmon, the basics the n900 did perfectly.
some apps are full screen. some apps leave the battery meter and time visible. the bar at the top is tiny. keep it visible. messages app keeps it visible for a moment when rotated too... yes, you can swipe down a little to see it if you wanted.. but i like to know what my phone is doing while im doing things. when the bar is not visible you no longer have the ability to touch to do things.
needs to be a consistant way to bring up a search bar...
when swiping down to close the only app running, it should take you to the app icons page.. not the empty multitasking screen.. lol. i have to swipe twice to run something
so many issues with how the ui does things. when you are on the multitasking apps screen and you tap on something to bring it up. it drops it to the back removing it from the tasks screen, shuffling the rest and then it slides from the side into view. it only takes 1 second or less, but its painfully slow to watch. and depending which way you swiped to get to the tasks screen depends which side the task when clicked will slide onto the screen. n900 if you click on a multitasking app it maximises it to full screen in a nothing fancy transition. simple and feels responsively faster.
the status bar at the top should be the location for the sytem/app settings. although its not intrusive in the slightest it could be a swipe up to hide, down to view, and it could be an overlay (always on top) in which you control the transparency level and transparency colour.
must have a setting to hide that feed screen. or atleast make it better as i have mentioned earlier
ui is lacking in what the phone is actually doing. usb is in.. nowhere easy to see or find do you know the usb is in and wht its doing. no icons anywhere. delve into settings > accessories (what the...) > usb. this will tell you here its currentl ycharging via usb. cant change the mode to charge only/mass storage/syng from here either. this needs to be on the top tap menu, as does the battery app. so much more can be done with that top tap bar to enhance control.

for a device thats sold at THE premium price, technically aimed at all the n900 fans albeit with no keyboard, it feels like its been aimed for android fans but designed for kids because it feels more like a toy than a tool. n900 by comparison feels like a powerful brick. the n9 lacks the intuitiveness.
the hardware is pretty average for whats out there already and they cost less too. you had better be okay with what i have written when you shell out for a meego n9.
for all the time they spent writing harmatten it feels like it was knocked out in a very short time. meego needs work and they are well aware of this by rolling out the updates which is great. the apps that come with it are immature and in a primal state considering all the developement nokia has already done over the years, and with the n900 under its belt it makes no sense to have such a release in such condition. plenty of resources and experience and it all came to this. many apps need redevelopement or replacement. this squarely indicates where nokia is and has been at for the last few years, and why they are failing in market share. meego was their real future but because of past mistakes it could no longer take the meego path without facing possible extinction. it just wasnt worth the risk to them when it is fairly obvious there *is* no risk that is not already been taken.

i often wonder if it is possible to put the n900 UI on the n9. that would completely own. the gpu is the same. the cpu is the same... some slight changes. surely ? i would do that in an instant. i understand that n900 maemo apps have some trouble porting to meego, a meego problem ?

final verdict : i love the look and feel of the n9, but no keyboard is a kick to the nuts. would a keyboard have made my experience with harmatten better? probably. but not by much. it may be on newer and better hardware when compared to the n900, but the n900 did it so much better in so many ways. i am extremely torn between waiting for the n9 to catch up ground and sort out some of these issues and get some developement behind it, or sell it and keep using my n900. i have had the n9 for 15 days and have ported my calendar and contacts and a bunch of data over as i would be regularly using on my n9. i am doing on the n9 what i would be doing on the primary n900 where possible so this has been a good test.
there are a *LOT* of things i like about the n9/meego. some great new ideas and features...dont get me wrong.
i am extremely happy with the battery life on the n9. gps routing, browsing, messaging via services, music and movie playing and all the rest. lasts days.
the lock screen idea is brilliant. double tap to bring it up, swipe to go. that screen alone can be really powerful if utilised right. but answering calls while in locked state is very bad. needs to have a red reject at the top and a green answer at the bottom. swipe down to reject, swipe up to answer. currently its extra non intuitive work to answer calls and handles poorly.
the feed screen needs to go. that feed screen should be an app you multitask with, its really what it is anyway. lose it. calls and messages should act exactly like the n900 and multitask the messages or calls app to show missed or waiting viewing, as it does on the lock screen. lock screen should show weather updates and calendar events too, of course with more controls added.
and i am also not having any of the issues that people are discussing on this board. no lost passwords or accounts.. however there seems to be somethigng with the calendar where it constantly forgets that i have set monday as the first day of the week. always returns to sunday... odd. and to change this have to delve well into the settings as the calendar app has no settings at all... yes, apps have no settings to control them is a BIG problem.

i am serious when i say that meego can be absolutely powerful and smarter than android, with more intuitiveness. meego has the responsiveness of a f1 race car on half the specs. it wont outshine the epically rounded ios in a hurry but it can certainly easily do everything it can do. meego just doesnt. yet. i have hope. empty hope.
i would love to be able to give input in UI functionality and QA testing somehow. i am very good at both. i would take the time to screenshot and draw up how the ui could be made a lot better for futher input and discussion from there. a little work and it would be on its way to being absolutely killer. but no doubt it will all fall on deaf ears.

this has been an epic post. i must apologise for any offence caused. i hope this causes some positive discussion towards change. thanks anyone for reading this far.

..Is that all??

Simply put, the N9 is awesome but it could be waaay better!

... and thanks to the community, il will be almost perfect!

alas some 6000 words that had to be said as no-one was really saying them... no hype.

Very hard to read due to choppy sentence structure. Not using capital letters didn't help.

The whole gist of your lengthy essay (not review) is a comparison with the N900. The N9 is NOT an upgrade to the N900. Once you accept this you can see the N9 in the proper perspective instead of making endless comparisons.

They are different devices which target different markets. The N900 was an experimental device for geeks and power users but the N9 is a mass market product. Some things just have to be simplified and some power removed for the mass market.

I think the N9 is wonderful and I think a physical keyboard is irrelevant but that's just me. As for removing the app notification screen I strongly disagree.

The active apps screen is one of the things i hate the most on the N9, it's so counterintuitive.

Every time i close an app because i want to *do* something else, i get 'stuck' on this screen, even when nothing else is active. It's the ultimate UI dead end, and i get depressed each time i see this "no active apps" text. Why on earth do you bring me there when there's really nothing i can do or activate there?

Well yes, it's necessary because leaving anything running in the background on the N9 kills the battery -- Fennec 10 and 11, nice options but dog slow in use and heavy on resources drains the battery in hours when left in the background. So the whole paradigm of the Meego system requires that i get told what's running all the time, but on a touch-only device optimized for interaction the chosen approach for me is just a terrible user experience.

One third of the *entire* primary interaction is a dedicated screen that 90% of the time is telling me "no open apps", and even after 2 weeks i keep forgetting which way i need to swipe from there to actually *do* something again, half of the time i end up on the feed screen first...

Thank god I didn't buy an N9.

The only saving grace for MeeGo right now is for a very talented group to emerge and complete the missing puzzle.

I can only think about a talented crew like Cyanogen to iron out any bug and make it "power user friendly". Then someone needs to pay Myriad or engineer to have Alien Dalvik implemented. Also need a crew like MIUI to give MeeGo give a complete UX overhaul, make it customizable, intuitive etc etc. Then they need a talented bunch to (dual) port it to the Nook Tablet (or Kindle Fire) ... that way it gets lots of showlight. After that it can get ported to the SGTab, Tab 7+, Nexus S and other handsets

So yeah we get (Linux + Qt + UX + Dalvik) + Good Hardware = Winning.
But we'd need three or four talented groups to get there, and frankly if I had won the lotto (and didn't care for the money) it would cost at least a cool $2M and six months.