You can set it to only sync via wifi. You can turn 3G and GPRS off separately. It also has safeguards against apps linking over 3G while roaming. Shouldn't be a problem. It's a sync, not a full-online contact solution.

Also, you can set it to manual (each account has its own timetable). Once you are on a nice enough link, you can go Settings > accounts and tap-and-sync manually what you want.

It's quite civilized.

@ndi

Wow, mate you have done a superb job here, honest and very thorough. This is actually better in many ways than all those tech blog reviews, because you're a real, everyday user. I appreciate the effort, as I'm sure many others do as well.
I'm still sitting on the N9 fence right now, while stroking my E7 and looking at it with a face that says, 'sorry dude'. But I think a Lumia might be on the cards for me mid-2012 once Apollo grows wings and once creases have been ironed out more. I just really hope Nokia get it right here in the US. Really hope!

I noticed, some of those established review sites have incredibly terse and odd reviews. 3 minutes of video from a guy in a bar who struggles to remember the specs for the phone. They do have 25 different reviews for every color iPhone ever made. And then head-to-head comparison of X3 versus iPhone, ignoring one is 99 EUR and the other is 900 EUR and 99.

And they get paid. Oh well. I wouldn't touch Apple money anyway (I'm a b*tard, I would totally touch money with both hands).

IMO, N9 is exclusively for people who want Linux. I have 3 in family, and it annoys me in 5 seconds. I have always hated interfaces that make me learn everything by heart. This is the very definition for counter-intuitive. A device should be like a dog, learning your habits and holding the door when you exit, not like a master, training you to exit when it opens the door.

I also don't think the extra hassle and the accidental swapping and closing due to swiping screen is worth the extra advantage of not having one *** button. What did they gain? Is it waterproof? No. Is it scratchproof? No. Malfunction-proof? No. It still has power and 2 volume buttons. It's not like one more would kill the device.

"no button UI". Can you imagine these people making a car? "No, Sir, there are no brakes. Instead, stomp the accelerator and turn the steering wheel full left and it will brake. Also, if you want air conditioning on, you have to hold your foot to your chest like a baby, and sing softly to it."

I rant. It is a nice device, though. Very similar to L800 in design, slim, light and carefully crafted. Smells of quality from across the room. Problem is, it has Nokia-ish software. Copy/paste is limited, UI is unfinished, no flash (and not getting one), not optimized for the device. In fact, all the parts that are MeeGo in it have been designed to be scaled up to tablets and even PCs. This hasn't worked well in .. well, ever.

And then there are the bugs that are raining in. Wifi, tethering, etc. Google shows 4 million hits (two being TMO and the bugtracker, so it cheated). On the other side of the fence, Lumia has 1 million hits. mainly the battery bug, which has been fixed 3 days ago. That's right, already patched, compiled, tested and pushed to users. there are advantages to DLLs, you know, it's not all hell. So, -battery -bateria -baterie and so on, it's down to about 400K. Half of the first 3 pages have no mentions of bugs, it's just random hits from text on pages. And yes, MS does have a bug and suggestion forum with votes and stuff.

I'm not even going to lean into a the direction of a discussion that could remotely be interpreted as Windows versus Linux. That would be silly, especially since it wouldn't be true. I will say this: Your N9 bugs get listed on a Nokia tracker. For me, that is enough to not want it any more.

If you really want Linux (be it half MeeGo, half Maemo and all dead), then N9 is a nice, light, well polished device from a hardware point of view. Roughly speaking, the best and only Linux worth buying. It also looks like an upgraded N900, except it lacks a precise screen (capacitive) and a keyboard. Which is like saying it's the best girlfriend in the world, except she lacks a balcony and a behind. I don't really care if she can cook. I can look into her eyes and a better cook can cook for me (it's called SSH/VNC). And no, none of that we'll patch it. It's like saying that is she lost 50 pounds and get dressed up and touched up, she'd be fairly sweet. I can get fairly sweet right now, for the same price. In fact, it's more expensive than the L800.

90% of the appeal of N900 was the screen that could run PC-like UI if you had good vision, and it used all of it (because of the pen). With N9, 80% of it is the keyboard. Oh, and, it has no Ctrl, Shift, Alt or anything. I'm sure someone will or has hacked one in by now. Still, crammed bash (haha, sounds like a recipe. And la specialite de chef, chremed bash). Not cool. And if you have an external keyboard, then you have doubled the size of the device and paired a geek with a phone that looks like Tom Cruise. It'll just make you look bad. It's like hacking an alien spaceship with an Apple laptop. You're going to have your own internet meme.

But, as you said, in 6 months, the new Windows is coming out and frankly, this isn't so bad either. Plus, at 1400 MHz, there is no reason newer Windows won't run on L800. Even if you think Mango is unfinished, by July Windows is going to get new features that MeeMae whatever the heck is on N9 isn't going to have because I assume there will be little patching. And the 600Eur one pays for N9 is steep for 6 months if you upgrade.

What I'm saying is this:

If you lean towards Windows, either wait or get the Lumia now - I can pretty much guarantee it will be updated - it is currently the best looking, highest quality build, best brand name phone with WP. It will be carried on.

If you want Linux, get the N9. There is no point in waiting, there isn't going to be an N10 and the difference is only going to grow worse, I can't imagine N9 will get the same attention as the whole WP7 line. Nokia simply doesn't have it in them. The golden age of N9 is NOW. Ironically, it also has the most bugs NOW.

Oh, and, one more. There is such a thing as Lumia 710. It's not nearly as beautiful, and it has a lower camera. But it's cheaper with similar specs. Though I wouldn't. Why pay 500 for ugly when you can pay 600 for splendid?

...

This is related to the E7 or N900 how?

@ndi

I spend a lot of time reading reviews and people's experiences of various phones (like yours on the E7, which I consequently bought, and like very much). But that, in addition to watching a ridiculous number of videos on them as well, I find myself at - yet another - crossroads. Before, I was skeptical about the Lumia phones because they're so new and fresh out of the oven, I was thinking that maybe it would be better to wait until Nokia and MS had improved the recipe. Which is why I was tempted to jump in the N9 boat, because I do love the form factor, but I also love the look of the OS, and I like the idea of owning something that is rare (esp. here in the US) but also wonderful to use - I like all that swiping! Reading about the bugs does worry me though. And you're right, once the N9 fever has worn off, support and updates for it will drop quicker than Elop could drop an N900 into the nearest muddy puddle.

So here's my question to you: pretend you own neither the Lumia 800 or the N9 (with $200 taped to it), and somebody offers you one or the other, for free. Based on what you know, which one do you take?

It isn't. But this is a thread people ask questions in and read when coming to alternatives to N900, and, adding to the fact that there is already a new thread on Lumia I didn't want to hijack, I just kept posting here.

I was meaning to get a blog or something going and link up there, but (I'll be honest) I wanted the thread to be on TMO. It has been a nice home to me and since the thread has hit #2 on Google I kept it alive as I could.

I know it isn't the best thread or the most organized, but it's way better than several posts that basically said "I updated my blog". Seemed a very douchy thing to do.

Thing is, it's not new. In fact, WP7 is over a year old, but it was restricted to 3 devices for the geeks. If you haven't something against calling someone with Windows geek. I certainly don't. I run wc -l as you do.

Back to the point, however, 7.0 was really beta. No landscape support kind of beta. Not a recommended purchase, by any standards. As proven by the fact that the Windows user in me owned a Linux device.

7.1 is not a beta product any more. Well, kinda. Not everything works, but it's not the kind of beta that forgets to ring. We'll call it "late beta". By that standard, N900 was late alpha. It DID forget to ring.

And yes, we all ranted about N900 being born dead. It wasn't, it just died very young. I can't say the same about N9. Well, you never know, I guess, maybe Nokia will decide to change policies and finally support one phone till the end of time. Realistically though, I don't expect much. IMO, the N900 design had more in it than the N9.

N900 has a LOT of potential. With new CPUs, the generous form factor, the pen and keyboard, it really did promise to be better if upgraded, and it was still dropped. Heck, I still have wet dreams about an N900 with dual cameras for stereo pics and HDMI over composite. And tilt screen like E7. N9 doesn't have the same sturdiness. It's just a slab. The next slab will also be slab-like, but with better hardware. Why keep the old slab? Let's face it, it has the personality of... of ... a slab. There is no higher insult.

There is little to no incentive to keep the old hardware. I'd be willing to bet that if an N9.1 ever came out, it would have a dual core, and a kernel for dual cores, which meant it would be way faster and with a lot less bugs (and new ones). So, this one would be used to hammer nails in. No upgrade, nothing to show off (there is no incredibly unique hardware inside). Old, unupgradeable, buggy (by next year's standards), run-of-the-mill device. The fate of 99.9% of devices out there, might I add. Nothing personal.

So, whatever slab you buy, it's dead. The best you can hope for is a head over everyone, so maybe it will be good enough for the next iteration. Which is something Lumia seems to have, the 40% extra CPU kick. Whether that's enough, we'll see.

I'm kind of running in circles here, so I'll sum it up. There is a small chance L800 will make the next generation of software and it will live for 2 years as a nice, fresh device (one with this one, another with the July release of Windows). There is a very, very small chance N9 will ever get an update, and even if it does, it's even smaller it will run the next software iteration at its potential.

Pretend I have neither. All right. (scene fades to black and then to me climbing on a chair, holding a rope, looking up at a beam).

Ha. But seriously. Both N9 and L800 are so far over S3 Anna it's not even funny. S3 is small and fast, but come on. 680 MHz versus 1400MHz? Adreno 205 versus BCM2727? 256M RAM multitasking versus 512 basically single? Overall experience has a zero at the end.

So. A genie offers me one device.

I assume this is a one time deal, so I'll consider:

Lumia:

* Will get async updates

* Will have fast-lined fixes for major problems.

* Will have major patches 3 months

* Will get major releases every 6 months

* At least for a year, all updates are guaranteed to run on this one.

* There is a decent chance the next iteration of OS will run on this device.

* More power. As Clarkson would say, powaaaaah.

* Different, but not douche different like a pink iPhone

* Software from a successful software company (something Nokia ain't)

* Market adds ~170 apps per day (Oct study). 40K beginning of December, approx 50K by end of this year, grows at between 200-400 apps a day. I can't even scan through them.

* Supports, encourages commercial software, meaning whatever I want, I get. With cash, though. Still, options.

* Alternatives to software. First one is expensive. The next 4 will drop below 1 EUR if they want to sell. The 5th one is free. Advantages to easy development.

* Will work just fine with my desktop OS. There is only one Windows, it's not a Debian phone clashing with my Fedora or whatever (I don't have a decent grasp of branches). Windows phone will be well known and supported by Windows. In fact, Windows 8 will be built with WP in mind.

* Promises from Microsoft that the unified Silverlight API will allow for cross-moving applications from browser Silverlight to phone Silverlight (right now WP Silverlight is a restricted-function subset of Silverlight). They also promise that in time the OSs will sync so it will be possible to pause my game on the phone and continue on the PC. Don't bet anything on it, though.

* Beauty of cloud. Yes, privacy, still, if my phone dies, I buy another slab. Nokia or whatever. Purchase, input account, beam me down Scotty. I now TRULY have the ability to flip Nokia off at any point in time. Though now that they don't write my software, my hate is dissipating.

* Access to my data while phone is in the shop. Again, cloud. Edit my contacts, chat online, mail, keep stuff safe. N9 doesn't even have full PC Suite support. IIRC, it has NO support, you are given a separate tool. Can this even end well?

* Nokia independence (this deserves its own little bullet)

* Office. Cringe if you will, Office is great. There's a reason MS sells its product for 500/1000 EUR on the same market as Open Office (0) and still make a handsome buck.

* Games, games everywhere. And not the text mode kind, either. Tower defense. Shooters. Thousands of trials. I'm never going to know what all the games look like. Something an N900 owner would say.

* The Microsoft juggernaut is now with me. I don't have to wait for some dude to type up a Picasa app for me, for free, begging him all the way for a patch (not a stab at developers here, it's just that they have better things to do. Like work for money). The mammoth already integrated it. I don't even type my password when opening IE to get to Facebook. The live login the phone has is good enough for Facebook. Since I got this device, I am yet to log on to Google, Facebook, Picasa, Gmail, or anything else. It's either integrated, aligned, or I don't have an account. YMMV.

N9 (I'll try to mirror some of the points from L800 so ti makes sense):

* No updates, no fastline updates, it's all monolythic. If the trend from N900 keeps (and it's worse than back then, team ain't as big), I'll just have to live with most bugs.

* There is zero guarantee the next iteration of OS will run on N9. Or that there is going to be one. In fact, it's fairly clear there won't.

* Not a lot of powaaah. In fact, iPhone is also at 1G, but a dual core if I'm not mistaken. Run of the mill, to be precise. Not underpowered, though.

* Different. Really different, more different than L800. That's a plus. Not obscure, though. They sell.

* Market isn't a market. It's a respository where, if lucky, some of the stuff that ran on N900 will be ported. What we never had on N900 was because it couldn't be ported easily. That still stands. Except now it's harder, because it's a capacitive screen. And no keyboard. So, no emulated Linux, since an emulated text box will not pop a virtual keyboard. The "market" is an OVI store that has the incredible b_lls to sell me images. IMAGES! You know, the kind that Google, Bing, Facebook, and a million others offer. Sell. Me. Images. There isn't a tag to slant this text enough. Oh, here's one. ____ __ ______! 100% italic. Ha.

* Doesn't really support or encourage commercial software. In fact, it is based on an OS that discourages it. On the good side, tons of free stuff. On the bad side, either it's free or it doesn't exist. This is not fun. Linux apps can be ported to Windows and distributed freely, but not the other way around. I have "ls", you don't have "dir". This matters when building an app base. No app base, no users. No sales. No developers. No apps, which means spiral. The bad kind if spiral. The one that looks like a drain. Last I checked, N900 had 5000 packages, ~1000 were "user" marked. That's with -devel. Compare to above. No -devel.

* Virtually no alternatives. Once apps are published that do something, very, very few are rewritten. It makes no sense, since it's already there and it's free. And open. Why rewrite? But if you hate it, tough. Brew your own.

* Will work like hell with my desktop. Not OS, desktop. No software. Mass storage, which means no exposed backup, which means that when you switch tech, it'll be dead. I still have a contacts.db from N900. Lot of good that did me switching to Symbian. YMMV. Heck, it might be nice in Linux to work with. I doubt it though.

* Zero promises from Nokia that it will ever cross-application with a desktop. They did say it, and they lied. The phone got a Harmattan Frankenstein, and the other devices got Meego, if ever. If it doesn't die, the notebook will get updated packages and your won't. Never will the versions sync up. As soon as Python upgrades, you're dead in the water. Or QT. Or the new kernel. In fact, go ahead and start rowing.

* No cloud sync. The only cloud you'll see is the gray one over your head when you have to install Berkely DB or whatever they used to keep the .db in N900 with. And realize it's not built for your desktop. And with no device, no export.

* Access to data while in shop is zero. If it dies suddenly, your last backup is your last snapshot. There is a decent chance your on-disk backup will be incompatible with any other model, as mine were with N900. N900 backups only work with N900. And that was with Nokia OVI suite working. No soup for you.

* Nokia dependence. Yes, it deserves its own bullet. No flipping off. Your data depends on them, software support depends on them. I may be subjective, but I really don't like them.

* No Office. No, AbbyWord or what was its name is not office.. And you can forget IceWeasel and OOo via emulator with that screen.

* Few games. May get emulator, but without D-PAD in hardware, it's all iffy to me.

* No juggernaut. All fights are uphill. If you're not a developer, you're reduced to waiting. You can pass the time with bash while the as***le next to you with a phone 1/10 of the price plays a 3D shooter. Or plays around with a Flash game. Or uses their navigation offline (did they fix that? Did N900/N9 ever get offline search? Offline map cache? Saved destinations? Favorites? Voice navi? All that stuff I never had?)

So that's a point to point comparison, starting from L800. Turn it around, and you get a few points back:

* No Microsoft. If you're allergic, this is great.

* No online contacts. If you're paranoid, this is good. Though you're less likely to get hacked though a secure link than anywhere else. Sturdy password. Remote wipe is a b*tch.

* Free stuff. Though you'd be surprised at the amount other platforms get for free.

* Useful stuff. Fewer fart apps, more interesting and useful apps. The downside is, always function over form. Also, if it's really neat chances are someone will do one for the bad guys as well. We have VNC, SSH, RDP. Come to the dark side. We have SSH.

* Emulators. Virtually nobody else has them. The cool part, you get to play emulated games nobody else has. The uncool part, they're probably old games. You're not exactly getting Skyrim in there.

* Standard interface. Icons, Nokia-like apps, the familiar. No tiles, just desktop. Though I like the tiles. And I'm starting to hate the icon-grid. I can never find anything in there.

* Folders for your apps. That's good. No search. That's bad. Lumia has jump to letter, but that's hardly the same as having folders.

* Telepathy. That's cool stuff. Though while I did review telepathy as the coolest thing ever, the MS threads are a decent contender. Telepathy doesn't eat SMSs. OTOH, Threads don't support like 15 million chat protocols.

So there you have it, some things are going on for N9, though, IMO, not enough. I like Telepathy, but I like my left arm more. And I'd chew that off to not have to run Nokia's brew. By property of transitivity, I'd rather be on L800 with ants all over it than have the N9 with $200 strapped to it.

Unlike most people, I have the ability to right now straight-swap L800 to N9. Well, not right now, it's 5 AM here. But today. I'm not going to.

And just in case I was too clear I like the Lumia way more, here's a wrench in the cogs: All 3 people I know that own an N9 say they are happy with it. So there's that. It's not like it's a wreck.

And if you were leaning towards N9, I hope you don't like butter-smooth, 'cause here's a clue:

N9: SGX 530 GPU. 2005. 1.6 GFlops
L800: Adreno 205 GPU. 2010. ~3.2 GFlops

Adreno 205 also sports:
* Hardware-accelerated SVG
* Hardware-accelerated Flash
* OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.3, Direct3D Mobile, SVGT 1.2, Direct Draw and GDI.
* Streaming textures that can combine video, camera, SVG and other image surfaces with 3D graphics

So, one has built-in Microsoft support, on a Microsoft OS, was built when WP was out (to developers) and launched, bench-presses twice the weight while the other is wimpier and knows little of Nokia. In fact, in 2005, Nokia was launching E71. Also, Nokia-written drivers. Versus the DirectX standard MS has established and respected since 1995.

If it sounds familiar, it should. The SGX 530 is the GPU that pushes N900. Except N9 has a bigger screen and works in 24 bit.

Yeah.