You’re a carpenter, you see your house “needs some fixin”, what do you do?

Qole your daddy…

Modest seems to have many bugs at the moment and the capitalisation doesn’t yet have a solution. For some reason a ‘modest -s’ on a terminal prompt works 9 times out of 10 but the answer is to start modest, check mail, if bug persists close modest and try again (many times usually).

This is the one thing that is driving me crazy. It is doing this to only one of my accounts. I can access all of the other imap folders except the inbox. Is there a solution to this problem? Seems like it would be an easy fix.

FWIW, Access (company behind Palm’s webOS) has had a booth during GUADEC in Vilanova i la Geltru: that’s 2006 (Nokia has first shown up on GUADEC in Stuttgart, 2005). They’ve been working on it for years, and even though “web” in the “webOS” is definitely a more recent theme, it would be wrong to say that Nokia has worked on it much longer than competitors.

Now, there is one huge difference: while Maemo has a big number of proprietary components, its development happens mostly in public compared to webOS or Android. And it uses the stack I am already familiar with (of course, there’s that changing stack debate).

How to call someone quickly: open keyboard, start typing name.

Scroll bars ARE shown by default, but disappear after a (too’) short moment.

Modest: No problems here (Gmail). IIRC, it DOES cache. You might want to research that.

Hardware: Big and heavy, yes – but sturdy and functionally rich. If you compare, please compare to ANYTHING with the same featureset hardware wise and an equally well implemented keyboard.

Google Sync is not officially supported, complain with Google about custom Non-Standards implementation…

Call problems: problems of your provider/sim?

I have to admit that I am very happy to read some “negative” reviews on the N900. It sort of gives me the feeling that some else out there is thinking what I am thinking. So far, everybody i going crazy about this phone. I pre-ordered the phone and waited weeks to get it.
The N900 is very promising but is not there yet !!! There are so many “basic” features that a phone is supposed to have, and believe I am not benchmarking against the iPhone here.

* touch “clicks” about 30- 40% not registered, the device freezes for seconds
* the yellow, notifications are very cool, click-touch 50% probability registered.
* the device is very responsive within a set of applications that are “freshly” opened. e.g. opening email, photos, conversations, calendar and 2 other whatever apps, then switching between then is fast, but after a few minutes or one sleep state in between switching between one application to dash board view is not responsive any more.
* you cannot search or filter the emails
* showing your inbox takes at least 30-45 seconds, I tough that was an IMAP thing. accessing my mail through POP produced the very same results.
* browser: you can successfully install add-ons like delicious,
or evernote. Restart the browser, like nothing happened. No add on !
* super frustrating is the next screen gesture !!! you need to swipe over the whole screen, a quick swipe is not interpreted as a gesture, it just bounces the screen back and forth
* it is stupid to wake up the phone with one simple fast quick move. you need to hands to do that (toggle button next to the microphone) or press stand by button> swipe to unlock
* accessing the most important features of the phone (part one): the phone !!!
press stand by button > swipe to unlock > press stand by button > choose phone. then give the device at least 5 seconds to decide what orientation it will take, then make the call.
* accessing the most important features of the phone (part two): the phone !!!
press stand by button > swipe to unlock > swipe successfully (usually takes several attempts especially if you are in a hurry) until you reach the screen with the phone short cut
* placing the widgets and short cuts on the screen could have had a nice snap to grid functionality (minor but nice to have)
* adding extra storage with an SD card will simply cripple the phone.

Finally … the phone could have been great. It just should have been as responsive as promised by the tech reviewers all over the web community. May be I should buy the Nokia N910 I have very high hopes on maemo.

Cheers, Peter

I’ve had my hands all over the N900 for about 3 days now, and from the start most things have just simply worked. My IMAP email, which was never right? Simply flawless now. Google calendar sync? YES! Ok, the email doesn’t work, and it misses some of the calendar details. But its working, which is more that I’ve ever had before (yes, I used mcal but it never auto-updated for me).

I’d almost recommend you get another N900 since it seems like maybe there’s something wrong with yours. But it does sound like your almost a bit biased. Even so, I’d highly recommend getting your hands on another one. All of my calls have been fine, my SIP works just great and so far I couldn’t be more pleased with the device. Sure, I’m a bit biased and maybe even a fan boy. But I’ve felt your pain, and therefore encourage you to give it another try (with a different piece of hardware of maybe reflashing the firmware).

Just my .02

I like the n800, my father still uses it.

I was impatient with the n810.

tired now…

* Email checking is impossible because a) one of my accounts gets its inbox capitalized to INBOX so when I click it, its not available and b) imap folders don’t get cached so it takes ages to look at an account.
* The hardware is heavy and big, far more cumbersome that the competition (and yes I know it has a keyboard).
* One handed operation is impossible due to no portrait mode.
* Many occasions I’ve not been able to make a call (it doesn’t recognize a number) but picking up the iPhone and dialing the same number works.
* Same for receiving calls. Nokia = some ‘straight to voice mail’ calls, iPhone = never happens in the same situation.
* Web browsing is frustrating due to inconsistent zooming, back button UI, scrolling and clicking screen registration randomness.
* Many, many other problems

I like where Maemo is going but this device is aimed at the mass-market (you can get it free with a contract here in the UK) and I feel its far too early.

Now that I finished reading your post I am a bit disappointed. You fail to explain or elaborate on your reasons or the bugs you found instead you put in a bit of google and palm without going into details what it is that keeps you from liking the product – and that was what I expected to read here.

I give you an example on why I can’t follow your post:
Modest – I simply don’t know what to not like about it. It’s fast, optimized for the tiny screen, does IMAP well and hasn’t failed me since I have the device.
Browser back in history: just press backspace and your done, but I assume you are refering to the back button in the toolbar which brings you to a graphical history which isn’t fast acutally – right?

At least there is one thing that I hope the gnome devs and you ubuntu guys are now seeing is that Nokia is way ahead of the Desktop Environment of Ubuntu (and any other Distribution of GNU/Linux for that matter) in one area: They got IM, Mail, SMS and VoIP together into Conversations and in partnership with Contacts and that is how it should be on the Desktop as well, IMHO. Not to speak of bluetooth headsets which still are a pain in the … and are so smooth to use on the n900

Just dreaming here, but if you now could get that right on the Ubuntu desktop as well that would surely be very nice and probably appreciated by many users:
- Split contact from evolution GUI
- adapt nokias design for contacts and presence to the desktop
- Loose the empathy roster stuff and use contacts for that
- Integrated IM and Voip smoothly using telepathy, melt the UIs down to one communications tool that just does all kinds of voip and IM (possibly mail, too).
- Split the calendar from evolution GUI
- Make the calendar work right and behave nicely

Finally allow contacts and calendar to sync with other pc’s and of course the n900 as well.

On a side note – The main reason why I still could not test the N900 PIM functionality fully is because Ubuntu lacks the ability to sync contacts and calendar. – this is not only to the N900, also to other ubuntu boxes. I still have a single point for contacts and calendar which is evolution on my tablet pc running karmic because I haven’t found a reliable way to just sync to my desktop pc also running karmic.

If that would finally work sync to the n900 should also be doable.

Sorry, I got a bit off-topic here, but I hope you could update your post and make it a bit more informative, give some more examples, etc…

And if you have a suggestion on how to get my evo to sync against google or calendar server or whatever and back to my pc (or directly pcpc would be even nicer) and possibly the n900 please let me know.

— Mike

This is a 7 paragraph blog post which dedicates a single one sentence to explaining the main thrust of the article. Not so convincing in my opinion.

Should I get an Android phone and compare? 30 seconds with an iPhone failed to impress me once.