N900 Anyone?

[Wildherb]

I've just replaced my mobile phone and based on a good experience of the N810 I've bought an n900. Early days, but here are some initial impressions:

The UI is pretty usable and the zooming is very slick and smooth. Lots of RAM seems to keep everything moving along when multitasksing, but the write speed of the memory feels slow. No benchmarks, just gut feel.

Application availability is still poor. Things such as Abiword are starting to appear on extras-dev but overall, way behind the competiton. Come on, Nokia!

Hardware is great. Its fast. FM transmitter, fast GPS, real keyboard - everything you need.

My plan is to do relatively little tinkering on the phone OS itself, in order to keep it working as a phone! but easy Debian is installed and that seems to offer a great sandbox to play in without fear of breaking the phone itself.

More later. Anybody else got one?

[Snappy]

Thinking abt it.  

Got a couple of netbooks and love the portability compared to notebooks.
Just restored my akita back to life, after the less than stellar adventure with Zubuntu.
Either I stick to the akita /w cacko 1.23 or I get a N900.  

Some of the new tablets are tempting, but until they have 7++ hrs batt life and 2~3 days suspend, they are less than useful.

[undrwater]

I nearly jumped about a month ago, but heard something that made me hold back.  It had been advertised with USB host, but folks on #maemo say it's not working, and may not work without a powered hub.  My Tosa has spoiled me, and now all my linux devices must have a working USB host!

So...I'm holding onto the Freerunner for the moment...hoping for something else more interesting to come along.

[zmiq2]

I'm using a fujitsu u810, and I'm very satisfied; it's 2 years old now, and even it's still performing very well, I'm looking for a replacement (geeks need to change toys sometime ...)

With the u810, I find suspend/resume very nice, just something like 5secs each, and extremelly robust; my last uptime was 35 days!!, suspending once or twice a day!!

It has 5'' tablet touchscreen, and battery wise is about 4/5 hours with the extended battery that comes as default.

Now I'm looking for an ultraportable notebook (not netbook), since I got a little tired of underpowered computers, that don't allow me running powerful development tools nor other os emulation.

[merlin1]

I got an N900 eight days ago, yes. So I can only share my first impressions but they're mostly positive.

Maemo 5's UI is nice and smooth, device is very snappy most of the time. Mine is a bit sluggish occasionally but a reboot always fixes that. I don't have many apps installed except for Easy Debian which I plan to use as a sandbox as well to assure Maemo remains functional, i.e. I always have a reliable phone. Going to try a few more apps over time and hope more will appear soon as it is, as you said, well behind the competition.

Multitasking works fine without any noticeable slowdowns. Good hardware (CPU, RAM, camera, storage etc.). When running Easy Debian I sometimes wish for a bit more horsepower but compared to my old N810 the N900 is much faster. Debian apps run slower than on the Netwalker though. Web browsing is a dream as nearly everything is there including Flash and sites look just like they are supposed to.

GPS takes a bit long to get a lock here and the keyboard is usable but not that great IMO. The non-centered space bar and only two arrow keys (remaining to are mapped to Fn-Arrow combinations) are two downsides. I have a German QWERTZ model though, maybe the US keyboard is different.

All in all I'm pretty impressed. A worthy successor to the N810. I don't actually compare the N900 to other phones – I own an iPhone too – but to MIDs/older NITs. The price is a bit on the high side if bought unsubsidized.

[TheWalt]

I'm on day 3 of my N900 impulse buy (needed a gadget fix).  

So far I agree with everyone, this is a nice upgrade from the N810 even if all the apps I used have not been ported yet.  The keyboard is fine for me, US version has all 4 arrow keys, and I can type on it better then the N810 even though it is smaller.  As mentioned the web experience is great, just like a PC.  Multitasking is also smooth, never feels laggy or like I have too much going on.

As far as phone features, ugh, not impressed.  I understand the learning curve is a little rough so not committing to a solid opinion but compared to iPhone or Android phone it is not an intuitive pick up and use device.  I really get the feeling like this started out as a tablet successor and somewhere towards the end of development cycle phone capability was tossed in.

I'm going to give it a few more days before deciding if this is for me, and if not do I want to keep it just as a belt pouch Wi-Fi only device (looking forward to Meego possibilities).

[xamindar]

I was looking at this and would have got it but I started reading that it doesn't have usb host. They slashed hundreds of possibilities with the removal of that one feature.

[undrwater]

I was looking at this and would have got it but I started reading that it doesn't have usb host. They slashed hundreds of possibilities with the removal of that one feature.

Agreed.  Plus limited or no 3g for networks such as AT&T.

There are a few other "open" phones being advertised as "coming up", but I'm really in a position to need 3g now.  OpenMoko won't cut it.  Problem is, AT&T's linux phone scene is pretty anemic ATM.

[desertrat]

I was looking at this and would have got it but I started reading that it doesn't have usb host. They slashed hundreds of possibilities with the removal of that one feature.

When I look back to what I used the usb-host on Z for, it was mainly usb-ethernet, bluetooth, access to storage. Since the N900 has builtin wifi, BT and plenty of storage, it wasn't that sorely missed.

[scottlfa]

Love mine, its a hack about device now having been swapped for a more phone like device [samsung s 4g].  I update it often and love hacking about with it.