I have transplanted my reviews already posted on TmoToday post, and will be adding updates to this #1 slot.
1. No solid reviews yet, but initial thoughts are that the OS is intuative,though i have noticed some lag here and there. great build quality, great screen, will try to post more detail\pics tomorrow.
2. no lag on full battery.
coming to you live during my morning commute on 495.
3. Ok, so I have been playing around with my N900 for several hours now and I have to say, for the most part I find the OS to be very intuitive, navigating the various aspects of the built in programs is pretty smooth. The touch screen is very responsive (if you are coming from an iPhone it will take a little bit of getting used to, but nothing major). The biggest thing that I have had difficulty adapting to is the physical keyboard. I had been using an iPhone for a couple of years, and never realized how the on screen keys had just become part of how I used a phone. That is not to say the keyboard on the N900 is bad, quite the opposite, I find it to ROCK, it seems to be perfectly suited for my average sized fingers and the keys have a great feel to them.
The most difficult part of this phone, for me, will be learning about the backend operations, I had gotten pretty good with the iPhone, but this is a completely different animal. I have found that there are a number of good forums available to learn about Linux and working with it and I strongly suggest that if you are going to start playing with anything involving the X Terminal that you at least give a basic Linux book a read.
The browser is nice…REAL NICE. I was a little apprehensive, because after all the iPhone seemed to have done the internet justice. This certainly does it one better, although I will say I do not care for the zoom method in which you make circles with your finger/stylus. Pages render quickly and you know that what you see on your computer is what you will see on your N900. Speaking of what you see on your N900, this screen is brilliant! It is truly incredible what Nokia has put together with the presentation of this device, the only weak spot would be the kickstand, I can see is getting broken by a good number of people despite the magnet that holds it in place.
There doesn’t seem to be a voicemail indicator for the status bar, so I guess you just have to remember when you have checked messages. I also have been unable to get the virtual keyboard to show up, maybe I am doing something wrong, I activated it in the settings menu, but have yet to see it make an appearance. The turn to activate feature for the phone app is a nice touch and works with little to no delay.
I am going to write more later, I just got a little pissed as I was looking at the phone for inspiration I noticed a dead pixel in the top left corner. Unacceptable, I will try the good ol’ reboot, but if that doesn’t work, Nokia is getting a fiery phone call. Not to worry though, I am sure this is an isolated issue and does tend to happen from time to time during mass production. I will be back with more later.
EDIT: Virtual keyboard now appears after reboot. Nokia is sending me a new phone to settle the dead pixel issue.
EDIT2: the haptic feedback from the screen can drive you nuts. i say this because it feels like the screen is loose, the screen is solid though. the whole phone is solid.
EDIT 3. Tetherimg is aweome (compared to tethering on 2G iPhone). I feel that the N900 is more prone to drop calls in lower service areas as compared to my unlocked iPhone, although there are only 2 of these areas I hit on my commute to/from work. sound quality is great through speakers and headset. I really like the headset as the earbuds actually stay in my ears.I have struggled with the virtual keyboard, I always hit the letter to the right of the one I want to be hitting. Multi-tasking is SWEETl I can't imagine not being able to now. The TV out is as expected from RCA cables, it doesn't blow you away, but it is totally usable. the touchscreen fumctions near flawlessly with stylus or finger (flawless with stylus). Women swoon.
EDIT 4: I am on the 5.99 T-Zones plan and it appears that i can use the following APNs on this deviice:
wap.voicestream.com epc.tmobile.com internet2.voicestream.com internet3.voicestream.com
i have not noticed any access restrictions on any of these, although the latter two seem to run noticeably slower.
EDIT 5: Adding sample video from car moving at 70 MPH.
http://www.youtube.com/v/UUPqYQYXhoc.swf4. So far no regrets with my purchase. I bought a car/home charger from my local T-Mobile store the other day and the salesperson seemed wow'd by the build of the unit. I do find the battery goes pretty quick when you are on the net all day
5. turned my phone on at 0600 after a full night's charge, have used the browser for roughly 1.25 comined hours. Signed into Google chat, had GPS on for an hour using 3.5g network, Ovi Maps and actually made some phone calls (20 minutes). Battery is down to roughly 75%, 25% left to go. Not bad for 6 hours of on and off use.
i was able to compare the unit side by side with a Cliq and an AT&T tilt 2, N900 wins usability and quality award. Tilt 2 wins the less than prestigious "Sexting Capable" award.
The N900 does not seem willing to let you use the camera feature while on a phone call citing that the audio device is already in use. Also, a sure fire way to drain you battery in under 3 hours is to be on a service hold loop and browsing the web at the same time. Droid does and so can the N900, multitasking at the finest of levels. Now if I could just get someone in Finland to pick up the phone I would be in business.
Some Photos
EDIT: OK now for a rant, a beef, an item of extreme disatisfaction...
Nokia's customer service and replacement procedure sucks major. After a day or so with my N900 I noticed that I had a dead pixel on the screen. I have spent exactly four hours and thirteen minutes on the phone with Nokia (namely with their annoying hold music and automated statement that someone will be with me shortly). After finally being able to speak to a person about the replacement (I believe Nokia employs the entire country of Finland) I was informed that I need to send them the defective unit, and once they receive it it might take up to 30 days for them to send me a replacement. Well this is horse sh!t. I use my phone for work I explained and could not be without a phone, especially not for days/weeks/month. Their response was that I could return it for a refund; I explained that if I was going to be returning it for a refund that they must not care much about their customer base and that I would be inclined to look at other manufacturers who are willing to work with their customers. I was informed that I could do that, they made no attempt to keep a customer nor did they offer a solution that would work, I even offered to drive to New York to exchange in their store (apparently nokiausa.com purchases can only be returned direct to Nokia). This leaves me in a less than desirable place as I was prepared to purchase a second unit for my girlfriend, now I don't know if I should drop Nokia or just deal with the dead pixel...RAGE!
EDIT: EDGE Speed Test
EDIT: New video
http://www.youtube.com/v/_HAWmlnNLLI.swf EDIT: Current Thoughts
Now that I have had this phone for a week and a half, I can't imagine going back to an iPhone (while being a T-Mobile customer). I think that this phone fumctions incredibly smooth while suffering slightly in low coverage areas (possibly fixed by a firmware update in the future?). There is no doubt that with future updates the phone will become even better, but at the momdnt having a power horse in your pocket is great, there is no need to carry a phone, camera and video camera. The internet experience is far and away the best I have used on a mobile device (I was surprised that they out did the iPhone). I will continue updating until I have nothing left to say on this matter.
EDIT: New Issues
So my dead pixel issue still hasn't been resolved and I feel like I keep getting the runaround, their customer care group keep transferring me to sales, and sales states that they can't help me. Now I have a new issue, the headphone jack only detects headphones, not headset. I have tried both the headset that came with my phone and that of another N900. My headset works fine in my HP Mini netbook, but does not register on the N900. It seems to be a common problem as listed in
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6360. I am firing off yet another email to Nokia, but at this point I will probably not get the result I am looking for. Keep in mind I am not looking for any type of a handout, I just want them to replace the phone on terms that work for me (IE. I can't be without a phone for a couple days or weeks). They seem to have conviniently not responded to me within the 14 day return period (I do not want to return the phone, I rather like the features that work, again I just want a unit that is not defective from the factory). So we will see how this goes.
EDIT: How to kill your battery in 4 hours.
I awoke and unplugged my phone from the charger at 0620 today, checked my email and went about geting ready for work. At 0710 I started downloading a file for work onto my N900 (550 MB). The download completed at 1020 and used both EDGE and 3G network speeds. I expect the low battery warning at any moment now, but I am impressed that I got 4 hours of none stop data use out of the phone.
EDIT: I just discovered that I can use the volume buttons to zoom in and out in the web bowser. This is a lot more convinient than making circles with my finge, it also provides a greater level of control when zooming.
in regard to the headset, the ear pieces now seem to work and the headset icon shows in the status bar, the microphone is not working however.I am still waiting to hear back from Nokia regarding my situation, in an effort to boost their awareness of the issue I have Twittered @Nokia with a link to this post (let us see if the views increase dramatically).
EDIT: The headset is back to not working at all. When I go into X-Terminal and run" dmesg | tail" and get messages about headphones being connected/disconnected.The network based location process has finally started working, not sure why it didn't work previously.
EDIT: the headset is not working on the N900 again. I have made progress with Nokia on getting a replacement unit sent to me, although a final resolution has not been reached (it is amazing how fast they respond when you copy in the CEO). The battery baffles me, there are days when I can get a solid 5+ hours of continuous use out of it and other days when I can't get 8 hours of light use out of it. I have dropped calls in lower signal areas (this didn't happen with the iPhone save for one spot). Despite the few negatives I have listed I still have a strong opinion of the device (I have also concluded based on other people's reviews that my issues might be isolated to a batch of phones and/or fixable via firmware update). Ovi maps has frozen on me once, I have experienced 2 random reboots and it drives me up a wall that I can't pair my phone and GMail accounts properly (Google Sync with push notifications FTW). I am pretty fond of the camera as it offers decent pictures and saves me from lugging around my dSLR, the video quality is better than expected.T-Mobile 3G is currently rocking my world in about 60% of the places I frequent. more to come.
EDIT: The network based location service (supl.nokia.com) works when it wants to, there is no identifiable pattern.
EDIT: Nokia is working on getting me my replacement. The device is mind blowing in most all aspects, tethering works flawlessly with or without the Nokia software on the PC. I have tethered both via USB and Bluetooth and have no complaints about either method. Tethering speeds via USB are consistent with the N900's 3G speeds while the Bluetooth tether seems to suffer slightly and drops connection speed down a hair.
I am trying to become more involved in the whole evalutation process, and bug reporting. Nokia has selectively released a new firmware (PR-11) and it is reported that this fixes a number of bugs and offers some enhancements to the device. While I can't report directly on any of this at the moment, I believe the release will be made public in a few short weeks. One thing that I wish the phone had was a Voicemail indicator in the status bar; you are notified of a message when it arrives, but if you ignore it you have nothing to remind you about it. Also the only "shortcut" to call your voicemail is to place an icon on the desktop. Holding "1" or having a dedicated voicemail "button" on the dialpad screen would be nice.
I still want Nokia/Google to play nice with Google Sync for all things Google, it really did flow nicely on the iPhone; but what I have is managable for now. I will feel better when I have the instant sync of Google Sync fully implemented though.
The FM radio doesn't seem to work that great, although this might be affected by the troubles I have been having with my headset being detected by the device.
I would have to imagine that as this device builds momentum in the market iPhone developers will start porting apps over (or the community will take it upon themselves to do this). Nokia still has a ways to go with offering full support for the N900, but I wouldn't want to be using any other device currently available. If anyone has questions, I will try to answer them to the best of my abilities and in a timely manner.
There are already some awesome apps being developed, one such app was just featured on Engadget
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/30/n900-turned-into-ps3-controller-courtesy-of-bluemaemo-emulator/. Not to mention the awesome unboxing promos that Nokia has floating about
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/21/nokia-n900-and-the-case-of-the-best-unboxing-ever/I got some very interesting speedtest.net results today...
WOW...
Nokia is sending me a replacement unit either next week or the following week; I finally got someone from the executive resolution department to give me a call and everything should work out just fine.
In the interm, this phone rocks, my newest N900 induced vice is Duke Nukem, the phone handles the game flawlessly and has brought me entertainment on many a lunch break.
Having given the Nexus One a good up and down, I am still glad that I put my money into the N900 rather than the latest Android installment, I am not bashing the Nexus One, this is more a preference for the QWERTY.
