Unlocking system of N97 when phonecall arrives is one helpful feature. You just have to swipe one of the active bars on the screen, and you're ready to hear the caller.

I hope N900 will have this feature one day as it has phone (touchscreen) capabilities as well.

The N900 unlocks when a phone call arrives too. Because of the proximity sensor it wont unlock in your pocket, but when you pull it out the screen is instantly active and all you have to do is press the big green button to hear the caller. Alternatively you can also reject the call by pressing the big red button..... No swiping required!

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Short press on the power button brings up the slide to unlock feature - so you can hold it in portrait and unlock it. Although I do fully agree, having an alpha-numeric button pad in portrait for texting would be a very very useful feature - for me anyway
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I don't have my n900 yet but I don't see how it would be too difficult to turn screen 60 degrees and compose and send short messages with your thumb using virtual keyboard really needs prediction though

You are saying 90 degrees right?

The point is, what about one-hand operation while walking? Since S60v5 and Maemo are both owned by Nokia, why don't they somehow merge some important features and capabilities of their OS, like for instance, alphanumeric keypad from S60v5 (N97, 5800) to Maemo.

I agree completely about qwerty or T9 software support for use while walking or on the move, which is what I do alot being a student.

My suggestion is a workaround for one handed short message typing, since the n900 is smaller than the iphone (and I can do it on that) it should be easier.

Hold the n900 portrait but slightly at an angle (60 degrees) so that your thumb is straight and can reach across the screen to hit all the letters (which will be in landscape).

The base of the phone is where all the stability lies so it must be gripped well by the other fingers but positioned to get full thumb use over the screen.

I am 6.2" tall so maybe its not possible for everyone.

Nice try there. I believe you have longer fingers. I tried that too, but I'm a bit scared to drop it off my hands.

Maybe developers out there will make it a little merrier if they can develop small applications which could bypass horizontal virtual keyboard, and display something like small portrait qwerty or T9 (alphanumeric) keypad, if necessary.. ;P

ok - all I did was go into recent phone calls on the N900 which forced the phone into portrait mode and when I closed it, everything else stayed in portrait mode. Had to reboot to get it back to Landscape.

The screen scrolling for the desktops worked ok although my icons were obviously not positioned correctly. So perhaps it's coming very soon. I just tried to replicate it but it didn't work this time.

Two different code bases. It'd be like (probably a poor example) combining Windows 7 and OSX (Snow Leopard? Is that the latest one?).

To give you an idea of how shallow (as opposed to "deep") the portrait support is for N900, you can't exit full screen in the browser when in portrait mode. Basically, Nokia just decided they didn't want to deal with having to adjust any UI elements for portrait mode, they just rotated the page rendering.

Try closing the browser in portrait mode, or selecting a new website from the address bar. Can't do it.

Nokia just says deal with it, they "don't have plans to support this."