Quick comment for now:
The N900 is growing on me, I needed a few days to get over the initial disappointment, that the phone OS is definitely beta but - I must say the phone has real potential.
Positives
- Integrated Skype, gmail, msn, yahoo etc - for chatting/calling.
- Nice looking GUI
- Multitasking (awesome)
- Media player - can play pretty much anything to throw at it, plus automatically shows up media you have available on your network to play on the phone.
- Browsing - Quick, full browsing experience with addons, better than the iphone in this department (I really rate the iphone browsing). The resolution is fantastic too so you dont need to zoom in at all. Plus the integrated flash means - video/online radio play = killer app.
- Keyboard, I really like it, its my first proper qwerty mobile experience, its quick to type on, I havent once experienced any issues with the supposed closeness to the screen.
- Design, it looks great, feels high quality, decent camera but a bit heavier than I was expecting..
- Emulators. Playing Game Gear games, with physical buttons = awesome.
Neither Pos/Negative
- Battery life is so so. Id say it lasts a day - using mail for exchange sunc for calendar, the email client, about an half/an hour of web surfing, listening to music, chat function on all day and some calls/texts (on a 3G connection).
Negatives
- Landscape mode! I realise that this 'phone' is designed to be effectively an internet tablet but not to have portrait mode is comletely unacceptable on a phone. Portrait mode is only available for the phone function. This makes texting whilst out and about very hard as you have to type two handed in landscape mode - you look like rather an idiot. This needs to be fixed soon - and will be apparently (sometime in Dec).
- OS - can be choppy, programmes can freeze, it can slowdown at times, using the media player whilst browsing, means the media player skips a lot. The 'glossy' graphics tear/breakup when switching between programmes. I havent had one restart, so thats a postive in one regard. But the OS really does need an update - to speed up/iron out the bugs.. -
edit - sorting out email has reduced teh choppiness a little which is good news.
- Music player, at times it can find some tracks - I think the phone has a memory issue, the tracks wont play/need to be skipped. (Vast majority of the time this does not happen)
- Email client - I have synced Gmail over Imap, having 13000 emails, the client is very slow indeed as it downloaded all of the headers - rather a big flaw - I use gmail on the browser now. -
edit - I have fixed this issue using Nokia messenging, I get push gmail now and now slowdown email issues
- Lack of physical buttons - I crave a physical button to get to the multitask key if a programme isnt responding (you can use the keyboard but not the same as having it on the fonr)- or a green call button to get to the phone function quickly. Indeed also a button to skip tracks rather than having to get my phone out my pocket, turn on the phone then press skip. I guess this is my gripe with modern touchscreens in general.
Im keeping my phone for now - with improvements to the OS it has potential to be a really decent phone/tablet.
