To defend the asking price of this unit you will need a lot of 3rd party software.

For people to want to develop software they will want to earn money, to earn money they will need a lot of users, to get a lot of users you need a unit lot of people will buy, for lot of people would want to buy the N900 you will need portrait mode..

End of story..

Coming back to the subject, do you think that will be possible to see one portrait mode release before the end of the year ?

sure, im confident Nokia is thinking about it...as they said, if people will want it really alot, theyll put it in..i mean, they must if they want good sales

Now that I've had time to get over the initial lust, I've really assessed my mobile style on the go. I will definitely get the N900 if possible just because of its unprecedented power and versatile package. But the lack of universal automatic screen/UI rotation will severely limit the N900's role in my mobile life.

In my busy and hectic life, I always take time to exercise my 78 lb. pit bull Raki. I don't allow that to stop my productivity, usually keeping my N95 8GB in my right hand for posting to the Symbian-Freak site and forums, checking and updating my MySpace page, checking and responding to email and messages, and listening to the FM radio for sports news simultaneously. My dog's powerful dragging never stops me from carrying on my online errands and tasks.

The N900 will be a great device, but unless they embrace T9, preferably via a hardware keypad in portrait mode (and not the intrusive onscreen T9 option from S60), and in turn automatic screen rotation of the whole UI, its utility for highly active users will be limited.

Nokia seems intent on pushing QWERTY on the smartphones on the high end, and keeping T9 only for midrange devices. This will be a mistake, and ignoring the N95/N82 fans who have waited over 2 years for a suitable hardware upgrade. Many of us FAVOR T9, and Nokia and the community should really think of the direction going forward.

Without ASR, the N900 is a too small laptop. Still to cumbersome to use while active or on the go, more for quick pit stops. Shame

Sometimes when I want to use my n800 one-handedly, I just bring up the full screen keyboard, and hold the device sideways, and I have all the characters on the right side of the screen.

Though it is annoying to have to see all the characters sideways, but my thumbs can reach them all.

If we can just re-use that keyboard, and just turn all the keys 90 degrees, at least that would be a start.

Does the N900 have Automatic scree rotaion like the Iphone or dont ?
because in all the videos the screen can't rotate only in the phone call it does...

@DaKing: I think it only does that in picture viewer for the time being. If you're talking about technical support to do such thing, then yeah, it has 3D accelerometer that's required to detect the movement.

A sort-of mockup of my previous idea:



I only changed the Q W and A keys.

With as surprised as Nokia was at the N800 sales and with the huge amount of purely positive attention the N900 is enjoying right now, I gotta disagree with you.