Think of this not as complaining, but as constructive criticism spoken in the softest voice possible. I'm not trying to terrorize anyone's party, but in the spirit of openness, submitting my 2 pence.

The N900 looks like a wonderful device, and its sure to attract many new owners, however, I will likely pass on this device. It's not that it's not a great device, it is, it's just that there are a few flaws that I can't overlook and provide serious reason for me to consider other options.

If I get the opportunity to play with the device, I may very well change my mind, but as it stands, here are some things I'm not looking forward to:

1) The thickness. 18mm (almost 2cm!) is way too thick. The N810 was borderline too thick of a device for me (~14mm). There is no way that this device can fit comfortably in my pocket meaning it will have to be carried by hand or in a bag (I have a strict no belt-clip policy) either of which are extremely unattractive options for me.

2) The resistive touch. I'm a much bigger fan of capcitive touch screens. I find them far more comfortable to interact with especially given multi-touch.

3) The browser. I'll have to test this one out, but based on the video it looks like a lighter, faster browser alternative could have been chosen. Also optimizations for smooth scrolling would have been nice -- ie. clutter for things other than the desktop.


Here are a few things that I'm worried about. Some of these things can be determined upon playing with the unit or watching a video. Some of them can only be determined with time, and as I'm going to buy a phone soon, am not going to wait to find out.

1) Track record. I'm not convinced that this platform will avoid the same stagnation that seems to be afflicting my N810. If maemo succeeds and is great, I may choose to buy a maemo device in the future.

2) The apps. I've not heard many good things about the OVI store and 3rd party apps are a compelling reason to purchase a new device.

3) Defacto landscaped mode. Landscape is great when you've got two hands free, but not for quick one-handed interaction. I'm a bit worried that the majority of apps will be optimized for this mode, as it seems as if the device was built around landscaped mode.

As an aside, I'm leaning towards the rumored Android powered Sony Ericsson Xperia X3. Of course it'll have to pass the same rigerous set of requirements to be considered. It seems as if my days of fanboi'sm are fully at a close.

I'll probably be made an outcast for this post, but I suppose it could provide the foundation for good discussion.


YARR!
}:^)~
Tapt'n

I use a nokia n95-8gb. Its thickness is 21mm. That is 3 mm more than the n900. I generally do not have a problem carrying my phone in my jeans also...

Again resistive touch is not inferior. It is more accurate. With the help of kinetic scolling most of the smoothness of capacitative screen can be easily replicated. Just install mauku or tear web browser on your tablet and see the responsiveness for yourself.

This is one of the best browsers to date on a mobile device. You always have the option to use tear which is also nice and also replicate the user agent to any other useragent u want to use.


Coming to track record. This is open source and since it is a variant of linux i would expect a lot of developers to port their apps or just directly port linux ports.With the addition of data and accelerometers the platform is open to many more use cases. It has all the hardware capabilities of iphone and more except for the iphone. So i would assume developers to port thier applications. The earlier tablets did not have data access, accelerometer and open gl drivers, faster processor

Regarding the landscape mode.... true it would have been ideal for nokia to do it. But we already have screen rotation on the tablets and it will not take that much to port it to maemo 5.

Heh... maybe it's just because I'm a fat guy in giant pants but carrying the N810 and my N95 in the same pocket has never been a problem.

Hello Everyone ,
The problem the N900 is still new , and it will take a lot of time to have programs and games and that stuff for it in the market .
I hope it to be more stable then Symbian .
Thanks ,
Zi5

I did have a n95 and no problem carrying in my pants pocket. Also, I have found symbian to be the most stable when compared to winmo and palm phones. The iphone is stable but the no multi-tasking drives me crazy. Favorite phone to date is the nokia e71 and hopefully in the future, the n900.

Being a 'new' platform without DRM, I think the app selections will mainly feature FOSS apps and 'smaller' commercial developers\publishers. The bigger commercial offerings will be those that are negotiated directly by Nokia (a la MS Office, Dataviz (?) and such).

Certainly there's a lack of excitement in the community at the moment, but work is still underway in the Mer project to support the N810 (and others) and remember these are old devices now, the N810 wasn't much different to the N800 in hardware terms (which defines the sorts of software that can be targeted) and people had that more than 2 and a half years ago.

People are also sitting and waiting for the new hw (and releasing packages for it), which tends to stop work in general (waiting to see if they want the new hw, if they can afford it, etc.), but there's no reason to think it won't pick up again, especially if we have some challenging goals for the devs (OpenGL, audio driver in ARM kernel, re-implementing gpsdriver).

Just my thoughts on the subject

Why i don’t like Nokia N900...
http://www.8mobile.org/blog/?p=236

Do we know officially that all the built in apps only work in landscape?

As for the concerns about the ovi store, well I think maemo will need a store front (not just some rep dump) to gain mainstream developer support. But I think its to early to even comment yet... after Nokia world maybe...

You felt the need to tell us by placing a spam link to your blog instead of just posting the content directly, here?