I been using WinMo phones for donkeys years until last November when I bought an Iphone 3GS which I been happily using jailbroken with zero issues till last month. Can't knock it excellent piece of kit, I just got bored with it.

I sold it & got a Nexus One. Great hardware specs on paper but it was unusable. Terrible 3G reception, screen alignment issues, low speaker volume, crap Google contacts & calendar implementations, just to mention a few. Sold that & got a HTC Desire but that suffered the same issues as N1 plus I hated the optical mouse.

Anyway I sold that I managed to snag a brand new N900 off ebay for a bargain £285. Now I'm not new to Maemo having previously owned both a N800 & N810, but am a bit rusty with the OS.

Hopefully I'll get along with the N900 & keep it longer than 5 days with the N1 & 8 days with the Desire.

Just a few questions...

1/ as I don't think the phone I'm getting will have the pr1.2, will it be better to upgrade to it straight out of the box?

2/ Does the pr1.2 support East Asian fonts natively (Chinese, Japanese, Korean & Thai). Just need display no need for input.

3/ Other than OVI Maps is there any other SatNav program availble for it?

Thanks

Yes, you'll bypass any issues and won't have to battle an upgrade later.

It does.

Sygic maps, IIRC.

I'd update to PR 1.2 before anything, with a full flash, just to be sure what you're getting is totally current. I've no idea on the fonts.

As for OVI Maps alternatives, theres Mappero and Sygic. Both are nice. You can find plenty of "best of" threads. The one I promote is the one I OPed, which lists solutions to common issues people have w/ the device.