It looks thick. I don't know why, but it makes me not at all interested. Also, what was so special about the N900 and is that relevant in the market today? I'm genuinely curious, I don't know much about the N900.
N900 had:
- HW keyboard
- Pixel-accurate touchscreen (with stylus)
- Desktop-ish hacker/FOSS friendly Linux OS
Essentially N900 was the embodiment of the dreams of what Nokia could have been if it weren't for EVIL Elop and MS ruining everything, and that is why the device has small cult following.
There has been occasional HW keyboard equipped Android devices since, but they have usually been of limited availability, and while Meego lives on as Mer (and the rest of the family) it afaik is not really usable as daily driver (yet). And Mer has been adapted to fairly limited number of devices, none which afaik have HW keyboards (besides N9x0).
Both were beautifully designed phones, with a unique and powerful operating system: swipe-based interaction, social feed screen, multitask, beautiful applications, good development environment (Qt).. This was the direction Nokia should have gone toward..
Edit: typos.
I somehow get 1.5-2 days use out of the thing, per charge, despite frequent multitasking (browser, SMS, notes, ssh etc.) and typically running it with a slight overclocking to 805mhz. A script switches on airplane mode while I'm asleep, so that probably helps.
Others have mentioned the screen, but I'm really comfortable reading on it. The Opera browser makes the peck and hunt game on desktop versions of sites obsolete. All the fuss about resistive/capacitive differences is beyond me. It's really quite easy to move (things) about on the screen, and I'm not into splitting hairs.
Some have mentioned the Psion series in this thread. I have to agree, the 5MX was a brilliant design for a mobile device. If that keyboard was coupled with modern, open HW in a similar phone it would be game over. For me at least.
I have been considering buying a folding bluetooth keyboard to type up notes and posts on the phone, but I think that's pushing it - my main 'creation' work still happens on the PC, for better or worse.
I don't do a lot on it that you can't do on any other phone, but it does give me a warm feeling that it's at least open and not phoning home at the end of the day to update Sauron.
Of course, progress has passed the device quite a while ago. I still see the occasional hacker using the phone, as that was the last phone many could consider having. A phone you bought and would actually own: http://flors.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/software-freedom-lover...
Disclaimer: I was part of the team that built the "Maemo Downloads" app store for FOSS applications for Nokia.
Plus the overclocking, the bash prompt, it goes on and on. It was a fantastic phone that none of my phones since have lived up to.
Ok, I'll buy everything in that statement except for "Evil" Elop. Elop is not the cause. He is a symptom, partly of Microsoft's colonial attitude towards companies like Nokia (which is somewhat evil), and the complete ineptness of the Nokia board who a) approved Elop as CEO and b) got Nokia in such bad financial situation that they were forced to do (a) in order to accept Microsoft's cash infusion (which is pure ineptness and desperation).
Yes, Nokia's rank and file got shafted. But their leadership likely pulled nice bonuses for selling off their comrades and company.
Blame leadership when they sell you out.
Personally I blame every single layer inside Nokia, from the grassroots engineers to the board and CEO, and everything in between.
The idea of it was great but the phone itself was pretty frustrating.
The idea is that it was a little bitty linux tablet, with something of an open source community behind it, that could also make phone calls. I explained some of my thoughts in this arstechnica thread[0] from 4 years ago.
But the reality once I got the phone was it was just slow and frustrating to use. Aspects of it were great (it multitasked the best of all the phones of its day), but over time it's glitchyness (hanging up on calls instead of answering them, because the buttons jumped around), and the lack of multi touch brought me down.
I still have my N900 in a box somewhere. If anyone in the Boston area wants it, ping me (email address on my profile here) and I'd be happy to give it to you.
It allows for bigger batteries, hardware keyboards, additional connectors & storage, etc.
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I can't speak for everyone: but the pockets in my wardrobe had no problem accommodating feature-phones from pre-2007.
What my pants and shirt pockets can't accommodate are 4.5"+ 1080p displays, regardless of how thin they are.
I will gladly buy a bulkier phone if they make good use of the extra space.
There is no argument for feelings but is there really any practical advantage to thinness, past a certain obvious point when it allows something to fit in one's pocket? It isn't blue, soft or delicious either. :-)
It does. It looks like it's the phone equivalent of a bathtub. With the cover closed, it appears it will be a brick. I think that box protrusion around the headset jack input on the side is thicker than some of the more recent smartphones.
You would really have to like OpenMoko to carry around a giant smartphone with no apps and no support with probably an old browser. I also imagine the antenna will be poor and the battery life awful and the UI stuttering.
edit: I guess this answers the question quite nicely: http://i.imgur.com/CNxmvfB.jpg
But this is a matter of ideology.
And this is coming from someone with fond memories of N900.
Like, tap-the-screne-wait-multiple-seconds slow. Even before the revelation of swipe gesture and smooth 60fps animations on iPhone, it was slow by the standards of its own era. I remember trying to use the phone to type out a quick text and being infuriated. Response time between keypress and UI update was atrocious, and even closing a window took well over a second, if not multiple seconds.
It may have been FOSS-friendly, but it wasn't really a good software stack otherwise.
Also the Busybox default shell was next to useless. The charging microusb port also always broke. How many cents did they save per phone by using a substandard part? The keyboard was very good though.
N9 was so much better than N900. The graphics and the fonts looked so clean, and the swipe UI was just pure genius. You could see it had some serious thought put into it. Android UI is a mess compared to that. It's very slow to switch between apps and tasks in Android. If only N9 had not been so excruciatingly slow. It didn't help that multitasking was so easy.
I guess such incoherent products are a sign of a malfunctioning organization.