Top notch stuff

simple

I'm pretty pleased overall. I do have some spots on my LCD so I'm gonna have to swap the device, not a big deal.

Software-wise, the media player is definitely on the funky side. Definitely usable, but funky performance sometimes with skipping/stuttering being the worst offender. You also can't search in album view which is ******ed. The type to filter search works great in song view (and artist view I think). Today I started watching a movie, then left the media player for a moment. When I went back to resume the movie it said format not supported (tried it again just now and after about 5 seconds of the knight rider-ish lights the movie resumed, I have restarted the device and refreshed the media library since the last time I tried to play it).

The email app (at least for me, using an IMAP server) is pretty terrible, but usable. It's slow, especially loading images in HTML messages. This also worsens the performance of other underperforming apps (ie. the media player). The other thing which is super annoying is that it doesn't put sent messages or drafts on the server. To be fixed in Harmattan :-/

I'm sure apps will get streamlined and work better as time goes on (or people will make/port better ones). I love the device and the platform, but I really don't want to be hyping up the Maemo 6 device next year because of how it fixes all the problems from the N900/Maemo 5.

EDIT: The reason for this post being primarily negative is to counteract all the people saying it's "perfect" or has no problems. It's definitely a bit rough and people should be aware of what they're getting into. Everyone already knows all the awesome things the N900 is capable of (or is claimed to be capable of).

pretty much everyone mentioned the good sides so here I am gonna focus on the 'potential improvement side':

graphics:
N900 comes with decent sgx: unfortunately with such high resolution screen, there are some tearing problem if you have noticed that sometimes a few pixels of buttons / texts might be randomly missing. N900 has more overhead to draw each pixel than say iPhone in nature due to the number of total pixels. I don't know that is good or bad.

linux friendly but ...:
first question I have received is how to flash the device. For me it's like cake but for others it's not. It recalls me the age of Win95 when general public often has trouble to reinstall their Windows...

customer support
if you bought N900, you can't rely on Nokia support to help you because they don't know what maemo is. I bet people here are more well trained. I know this device is not for everyone. But that's not enough for new comers or new developers: They are spoiled!

this device is defintely more potential than any other phones. But you need to know how to tame it first.

Thank you all for your posts, this is most interesting.
I wonder if there are really only 26 owners on this forum I would suggest changing the thread title to something like

'Poll for N900 owners: Issues, dissatisfaction or pleased?'

I think that might lure a lot more people in

So first off, I love this device BUT I have a lot of issues and wanted to know if anyone else has the same problems or if my unit is defective (please let it be defective lol).
So besides all the awesome goodness that is the N900, here are MY issues so far (after about a week of use). I put them in order from greatest frustration onwards...

1. Worst battery life ever lol - Don't get me wrong I love the phone and I did use it way too much when I first got it, but I have purposely not used it very much some days just to test the battery life with "moderate use" and it still goes from fully charged to completely dead in under 5-6 hours... and yes I have the latest firmware and Wifi, Bluetooth, FM transmitter are all off during the entire time. I even turn off the internet connection as soon as I'm done using it. This has got to be my biggest complaint and I was curious if anyone else has this same issue or if my unit is defective (again please let it be defective lol).
Talked to Mugen Power and another company and they are working on an extended battery as we speak, should be ready in about 3 weeks they said, but I'm hoping they have a model that doesn't require a new back cover so my N900 doesn't get any larger than it already is, I like the size).

2. Sometimes tells me I have insufficient memory available when I don't have anything running and my memory monitor widget says only 180MBs are being used of my 1GB... seems to happen if the phone has been on the charger all night and I try to use it in the morning. Have to turn off and on to resolve the issue. And sometimes (randomly) the screen goes blank and I have to click the top button and click End Current Task to get it back.

3. My IMAP email (Gmail) is horribly slow (think I saw someone else report this too so guess its not just me). I actually stopped using it and started using my Gmail in the internet browser instead...

4. When apps are installed and then uninstalled, a lot of their files are left behind. For example, when I install Irreco and create a remote, and then uninstall it and then even FLASH the device using the Nokia Software Updater and then reinstall Irreco, my remote I created appears at start up. So not only does uninstalling an app not remove all the files from that app but even flashing the device doesn't fully erase everything. Other apps have done this as well, I fear this could cause issues later on after you have been installing a lot of apps.
Truthfully though maybe I just don't know how to fully wipe the device (I assumed the flash would do this for me, but it even keeps all of my contacts etc so I cant flash it to start over like I would like). Does anyone know how to COMPLETELY set the device back to out of box state? What files need to be deleted before I do the NSU Flash so I can start from scratch? (Yes I even go into the file manager and click Format on the N900 folder).

5. Media Player skips occasionally - not horrible but happens sometimes.

Another Issue but I think this is T-Mobile and not the phone (they are putting up 3.5 in my area and the phone even pops up with 3.5 in the status bar occassionally, no speed increase, but proof its being worked on).
6. Signal strength is worse than my previous phone on the same network. In places I used to have 2 bars I have zero now and it also seems to jump from 2G to 2.5G to 3G to 3.5G with varying signal bars randomly when I'm even laying on the couch over a period of 30 minutes...

I know that seems like a lot of bad lol But after reading what I just wrote it seems more and more apparent to me that I need to send my device in for a replacement. Just figured Id check here before I do and see if I'm not the only one.

Thanks guys!

Wow? Battery issues? Mines been going for 10 hours today, including 7 hours on a dodgy cell-signal, a good chunk of playing and configuring and d/l about 4mb of email during the day. It's still over half full. What are you using it for?

NOT WORKING MIC fu&&^%ed.

Have you tried to switch to use GSM/Edge only, just to see if its an issue searching for 3G draining the battery?

Really?! Well when I first got it I was "excited" lol And I was surfing on it constantly etc and it would die in about 3-4 hours of hardcore use.
It lasts almost 6 hours if I barely use it, check a site once in a while, make maybe 2 phone calls, send some texts. Trust me I go through a lot of phones and I understand that battery life goes down with my crazy amount of use I usually do, but this is ridiculous...

If you use the N900 "hardcore" how long does it last you?

Not yet, I'll try that, but I did switch to 3G only and it has signal almost all the time so I would assume it could find 3G fine. I guess the issue could be that it is using a lot of power being on 3G? But that is an issue in itself, should be able to stay on 3G without causing an issue, who wants a phone they have to keep on EDGE constantly, right?

Also I've been turning off the internet connection so it is picking up 3G but no internet signal (cept when I use it I manually turn it on then turn if off again when done) and still it dies in 6 hours... weird.

I'm assuming from your responses so far though that it seems it's just me with the crappy battery life...