What about the Nokia N900?

[HappinessNow]

Is anybody using this?

http://maemo.nokia.com/

[andrewabc]

I like the penguin shooting fricking laser beams.

[Islington]

I am waiting until the maemo5 moves to qt. Then it will be a fight between android and maemo for my cash.

[pwnst*r]

recurring ->

[HappinessNow]

I am waiting until the maemo5 moves to qt. Then it will be a fight between android and maemo for my cash.

when will this happen?

[Giant Speck]

I like how friggin' expensive it is.

[m3topaz]

N900 convert here. OK - it's £500 and there's no sensible sync yet (grrr!) but it's basically Debian on a very good phone. The usability is terrific, the speed, smoothness and memory are more pc than telephone, battery life isn't marvellous so you'll need to arm yourselves with micro-usb everywhere...
However, this device does so much and so well, even hardened mobile industry cynics like me soften in its presence. It's quite simply the best phone I've experienced, and responsible for me just discarding the N95 (my best camera phone), 5800 (brilliant music phone and good, solid all-rounder but weak camera), and my Bold 9000 (nothing to recommend it: Nokia Messaging kills the only good thing on the BlackBerry).
BTW I'm an Ubuntu convert on the desktop (******* is for virtual environments) and I use every phone I can try as part of work. If Nokia can sustain a Maemo ecosystem off the back of really decent hardware like the N900, they will definitely create a new niche for those who want genuinely powerful phones. The N900 is a good step in that direction.

[Colonel Kilkenny]

when will this happen?

Never. Maemo 6 will switch to Qt, Maemo 5 uses GTK+.
Qt is available for Maemo 5 and GTK+ will be available for Maemo 6.

[Buffalo Soldier]

Is anybody using this?

http://maemo.nokia.com/

I am :) Highly recommended for anyone looking for a "GNU/Linux + phone" device.

[gnomeuser]

I own one, and while the hardware is sweet the software on there simply doesn't compete with Android in any other area than it's interaction design (which is awesome). Their Skype integration is also better than on both iPhone and Android, but it is prone to network connection errors which seeming screw up the entire phone.

For a phone in this price range the softwares lacking quality and feature deprived state is inexcusable. It is slow, laggy and hangs constantly.

I do quite like e.g. the integration with Tracker but the way they tied it into the UI is hopeless right now.

The profile concept is really brilliant though, it lets me have an easy way to be always on without being woken by beeps and dings when I get messages at night. I do wish though that email was part of this and that the email client wasn't something that should have been left back in the 90's.

I am hoping that MeeGo will fix a lot of the problems. For now I am fairly unhappy with it as a device, it's not really bad, but it fails so obviously on some simple tasks for no good reason. It also feels like the whole thing was prematurely launched and then they abandoned the platform right afterwards (Maemo 6/MeeGo is going to be a big chance). So you feel like you paid a lot of money to be a beta tester.

The N900 is like it's hardware. Technically really sound, but the cable placements e.g. make the excellently backlit hardware keyboard awkward to use when you are e.g. listening to music. The camera has a really nice optic and a protective cover. The software is intelligent and helps you enhance your photos, tag them, upload them, sadly for some reason they are all out of focus. The screen is bright and colorful, but it feels like fine grained sandpaper against your fingertips. This is apparently so you can also use the stylus they included... which you never will. This also leads to the interface thinking many common finger movements are really taps, behavior that really sours your day.

You also have a 1400mAH battery in this thing, but it dies way to quickly. E.g. I spent one hour talking to my girlfriend on skype on a fully charged battery before falling asleep. 6 hours later I am awoken by the double beep indicating that the battery level is now critically low. Also don't expect to use the N900 as an mp3 player on your trips to town as it seems to deplete it's battery after about 4-5 hours, quicker if you are streaming music over 3G.

[earthpigg]

@gnomeuser -

based on your description, it sounds like potential n900 purchasers would be better off thinking of it as a 'netbook that you can make phone calls with over 3g'.

[ve4cib]

The N900 is like it's hardware. Technically really sound, but the cable placements e.g. make the excellently backlit hardware keyboard awkward to use when you are e.g. listening to music.

Yeah, I found the cable placement choices a little odd as well. The headphone problem isn't nearly as bad if you use headphones with an L-shaped jack instead of the straight one Nokia provides though.


The camera has a really nice optic and a protective cover. The software is intelligent and helps you enhance your photos, tag them, upload them, sadly for some reason they are all out of focus.

I've never had out-of-focus pictures with mine, unless I was taking pictures in very poor lighting. I've got no complaints about the camera/video quality so far. I've never used the tag/enhance/upload pieces of the software, so I can't comment on those.


The screen is bright and colorful, but it feels like fine grained sandpaper against your fingertips. This is apparently so you can also use the stylus they included... which you never will.

My N900 is the first touchscreen phone I've owned, but I never noticed that the screen felt rough or anything. It feels like a smooth piece of plastic to me. And I use the stylus quite a bit; hand-written notes, doodles, etc... You might never use the stylus, but that hardly means that no one ever will.


Also don't expect to use the N900 as an mp3 player on your trips to town as it seems to deplete it's battery after about 4-5 hours, quicker if you are streaming music over 3G.

Yeah, the battery life isn't so great. I've been getting 6-8 hours of audio out of it (on Wi-Fi/2G), but I definitely have to make sure to put it on the charger every night. One night I forgot and woke up the next morning to find the battery was down to ~25%. 60 minutes later I was at work (having used it as an mp3 player the whole way) and the battery was down to <20%. But plugging it into the USB port on the computer at work got it back up to 100% by the time I went home for the day. The battery may not last a very long time, but it does seem to charge up quickly.

[gnomeuser]

@gnomeuser -

based on your description, it sounds like potential n900 purchasers would be better off thinking of it as a 'netbook that you can make phone calls with over 3g'.

Well, I will say that the browsing experience on the N900 aside the fact that it doesn't default to mobile versions of the websites like Androids browser does and the twirling motion you do instead of pinch and zooming is a bit.. unhandy at best. The browser experience is superb. It is very logical and gives you the most space possible for your browser window. It is though fairly slow.

I would think of it more like a reminder that Android might be designed better for a phone than a full Linux is. the N900 really is more like a pocket sized netbook that runs out of power when you use it for it's intended purpose and hangs for no good reason.

The weird thing is that I have the Nokia N810 as well which is the earlier model of the same Maemo stack and hardware. That has excellent battery life, it's fairly stable (provided Skype doesn't run for more than 2½ hours for some reason - probably leaking like a sieve). It's a very nice device in terms of build quality (solid as a rock, I accidently dropped that thing on the floor a couple of times, not a scratch), the software is fairly solid though not maintained as well as one might like and the selection of applications isn't impressive. I expected the same experience on the N900 but that was kind of hoping for to much.

For now I am tempted to go back to my HTC Hero and sell the N900. All in all the smartphone world has so far cost me a lot of money and no one phone seems to be right. I had such high hopes for the N900 especially with all the praise it has gotten from the Linux developer community.

I am though waiting eagerly for MeeGo 1.0, I am hoping it will deliver some improvement to the software, which would greatly lift the device as a whole. I am though not thrilled about the choice of QT, though now that MeeGo has officially adopted Banshee as it's media player of choice and considering Novells huge investments in Moblin and MeeGo we might actually get a worthwhile environment and some managed code on this sucker.

One exciting thing is that a proposed MeeGo SoC project would bring support for syncing with the cloud to MeeGo which is needs bad. I hate not being able to easily import my Google Contacts, sync with my Google Calendar. Add this to the social side of Moblin and I think we might have a winning story to tell on the N900.

[earthpigg]

All in all the smartphone world has so far cost me a lot of money and no one phone seems to be right. I had such high hopes for the N900 especially with all the praise it has gotten from the Linux developer community.

me too, but that is why i tend to be a fairly late adopter, for a nerd. i waited a good while before getting a netbook, the dell mini 9... i temper my eagerness to try new geeky things with my inherent cheapness, but still tend to end up with things before most people.

[djyoung4]

The N900 rocks. I've had it for about 5 months and I haven't had any major problems. It's got everything I need and is very easy to work with. The only problem I have is the keyboard buttons seem to be a little small for my big fingers. I played around with my uncles htc touch pro II and found the buttons on that to be alot bigger. I love the stand on the n900 though. Makes watching movies effortless. The screen is awesome. great picture and great audio from the speakers. I haven't had any big syncing problems except with the facebook chat integrating into my contacts. The full internet capabilities is amazing too. flash is supported but videos are a little slow and sporadic. Overall this phone is the best though. im leaving this reply from it right now.