Hi all,

I was so excited to get my N900 today, but after playing with it, it left me perplexed. Maybe I am doing something wrong, not sure. I haven't loaded any new apps or messed with it (tweaking it), everything I am using was installed from the factory. These are what I find odd.

How come Youtube videos look like crap, it's not smooth, somewhat pixelated and not crisp quality. Even if I am using Wifi connection. The Youtube videos themselves were HQ and some were HD and look very nice on my computer, I was expecting the N900 to look just as good due to a nice hi-res 3.5" screen, but that's not the case. Is everyone getting the same results? From my memory at the Apple store, the iphone 3GS had nicer Youtube playing quality. Is there anyway to improve the Youtube viewing quality on the N900 to rival the iphone?

I was expecting some nice pics taken with the N900 camera, but the indoor shots I got were grainy, washed out, and somewhat blurry. Compared to my older SE K810i (which I thought had decent image quality, not stellar), the N900 is quite bad. I thought the 5MP camera in the N900 was the same or at least on par with the renowned Nokia N82 camera. Are ppl having bad indoor pictures taken with the N900?

I fully charged my battery and turned off the Wifi connection at 6PM. I did some web browsing using T-Mobile EDGE for two hours (I don't have 3G plan yet), and checked my email for 10 mins, played some music for 30 mins, and Youtubing for 45 mins. My battery died at 10:30PM. That's about 4 hrs, that seems way too short, especially if I didn't really use/stress the N900 that much. Anybody have similar experience?

I hope there is some way to fix these issues that I am having. I really like this phone.

Nothing new here, really.

I haven't checked youtube videos lately, but can't remember anything noticeable. Maybe someone else will comment on this.

Camera is fine. There was a blog post that made the maemo.org frontpage that documented a few very nice pictures taken with the N900 camera. As for indoors, yes, it sucks. Most sensors have a very hard time with low light conditions. Use the flash or turn on a light, it really helps a lot.

Battery life improves as you charge the battery -- what I mean by this is that after going through a few cycles (without having the battery drained, so charge before it goes down) your battery life will increase drastically. In the beginning I was getting 4-6 hours; however I just completed a 18 hour trip where I was using FM transmitter, wifi, 3g, GPS, and MP3 the whole time and it held up nicely. I charged it up again and have been using it quite mildly for 2 days and it still has a quarter battery life.

Thanks CrashandDie for the consoling words of promise. I hope maybe like you said, maybe after a few battery charge-up conditioning will solve the short battery life.

As for the Youtube viewing quality, I hope there is a fix to that. I just downloaded and installed the Zoutube client app, and the quality from watching the videos are pretty much the same, not great at all vs. Youtube. Kinda makes me wonder why, the iphone has lower resolution screen, yet the videos play quite nicely. The N900 "should" trounce it with its better screen....?

In regards to my picture/image complaint, I shot pics in a medium lighted room, but the images are unacceptable. I'll take it out tomorrow and take some day time photos, perhaps it's a better performer in the day...but I wish it would be better in indoors, or at least be on par like my SE K810i. I hope there is a future firmwire that will improve indoor photos.

The N900 doesn't have any issues with playing standard Youtube videos. HD Youtube videos push the N900 to the limits of what it the hardware and software can handle. Perhaps in the future the N900 will Flash 10 with hardware accelerated video support. That will make the N900 fly when it comes to playing those HD videos.

Ok, since I started this thread, just wanted to follow up with my further findings with the N900 and hopefully help others. Now that I got the N900 for 6 full days to play around with and letting the battery fully discharge and recharge, I see improvements.

Youtube quality - It appears that the choice of Youtube quality depends on the video itself. Higher quality videos encoded in HQ and HD seem to look better in general and I am pleased with the results. Crappy/lower quality encoded videos, look pretty bad. So I guess, the N900 is not at fault. I did notice that videos played through Zoutube looks a tad better vs. watching on Youtube website. However, I wish there was a way to "search" videos on Zoutube, that would be great.

Camera picture quality - After taking the phone out and about and shooting pics at different lighting conditions, I would say the N900 takes decent to good pics. I think it's right on par with my old Sony Ericsson K810i. The only drawback on the N900 is shooting the low lighting environment, then you will see a bit of grain and lost of sharpness. If the N900 came equipped with Xenon flash, it might have been better.

Battery Life - On my initial charge, the phone lasted 4.5 hours. Now on my 5th charge, the phone was able to last 36 hours with the following usage: 1 hour of talking on the phone, sending/receiving 8 SMS, 1 hour of watching Youtube over T-Mobile EDGE, 15 mins of mp3 listening using headphones, snapping 10 pictures with flash on, shooting a quick 1 min video, and 1 hour of listening to mp3s via dual speakers and then the phone died out.

So all in all, I am very happy with the N900 now, I think my first impressions were pre-mature based on the initial battery charge. I do feel the battery does somehow get better with use and charging/discharging. I hope ppl have some patience with this phone and the battery and give it time. You should see improvements.

FYI, I am using a 9 yr old SIM card right now, hopefully when my new SIM card arrives, my battery life will improve as well...we shall see.

a 36 hours !! wow , i mean with this kind of usage , that would be impressive
thanks for sharing

Zoutube is a stand-alone YouTube client with support for HQ video, just like the iPhone has a dedicated app you YouTube too.

If you are in zoutube and you start typing something it will search through the videos. Just does not seem to have a next page. Or maby the ones I have searched for all fit on one page.

I think I know why the videos on youtube are perceived to have lower quality in comparison to the iphone and desktop. Are you watching the videos in full screen? Since the resolution is higher, watching it in full screen will stretch the video more than the iphone. Since you mentioned that higher quality videos are fine, higher quality videos are basically higher resolution videos. The higher resolution will mean the video is stretched less when played full screen. As for desktop computers, the monitor is placed much further away than you holding onto your phone.

Remember it is one of the first phones which supports the youtube website.

and yeah its blurry :S

the camera can be real bad too. but outside, without flash its actually pretty okay when the image is not moving