Learning the Nokia N900

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Another day, another experience. Yesterday I managed to strech the Nokia N900 battery to more than a full day. This isn’t a miracle, it only takes turning off all the cute, but ultimatly useless eyecandy widgits. Not that they don’t look nice, they just spin up the CPU a lot.

However, today was much busier, lots of SMS, lots of Skype IM, calls and what not. I tried the GPS and bought a car charger. I then managed to download the new firmware update. I haven’t really see a much of a difference. But I have not tested, or timed everything yet either.

The update did not install cleanly, twice it claimed to not have enough memory. So I removed some of the apps I had been playing with, but did not intend to keep anyway. And it managed to install, but it did not manage to fix the media player that still does not play any video. I chock this up to a corrupt or missing media library.

Still, I am blogging from it, and I’m learning new things. It’s functional and feature rich, what more can you ask for?

Vodafone Speedtest with Nokia N900

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Vodafone speedtest

Originally uploaded by Branedy

The first time I tried this I was getting better than 1.2Mbs but I forgot how to do a print screen, this is what I got the second time, too bad that it showed so much inconsistency, but typical from what I’ve heard from other Vodafone users. It’s interesting that the upload speed is faster that my Eircom DSL line by almost 2X while the Eircom downlink was rated a 2.7Mbs.

A Neighborhood solution to water supply

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If you live close enough to your neighbor (most semi-detached homes would fit this description) you can attach your external faucet, from your non functioning household water, to that of your neighbors FUNCTIONING water supply with a common garden hose and By opening the valves on the waterless house, and then the working house. The house with the functioning water supply will supply the non functioning house.

You might call this an Irish solution to an Irish problem. And since we are not currently paying for the water, we aren’t stealing water, just loaning it.

The Nokia N900 in use, a perspective.

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I’ve had my Nokia N900 for almost 48 hours, and while I’ve have a few frustrations, I’m equally satisfied with the product. And so to keep it geeky and simple:

  • I’ve logged into the device (not really a phone) with SSH from my desktop. And it just looks like a standard Linux system.
  • I’ve logged in to my Opensolaris from the device shell (X Terminal) with SSH and that works like normal.
  • I’ve connect to the VLC server on my server, with VLC, from the device, and while the navigation of the screen size differences will be ‘fun’, it works as expected
  • I’ve Blogged from the device using MaStory.
  • I’ve sent SMS and received SMS’s, I received Phone calls. (gee)
  • I’ve been fetching emails, full html support (must turn off images)
  • I’ve found my location with GPS.
  • I’ve loaded up some songs, and they sound great with the stereo speakers
  • I’ve listened to internet radio, that works great.
  • I’ve used the keyboard, and I’m getting faster the more I use it.
  • I’ve browsed the internet, and it’s amazing, although my blog identifies it as a PDA (must fix that)
  • I’ve used the device to diagnose a neighbors laptop WiFi connection
  • I’ve taken a photo, not so great on the first try, no image stabilization, but relatively sharp
  • I’ve managed to post a photo to my Flickr account.
  • I’ve synced up my calendar and contacts with my Nokia 6300 backup using the Nokia PC suite (as OVI suite does not work)
  • I’ve connected to AOL and Yahoo IM with the Pidgin application.

However there is another list, of frustrations;

  • Battery life really sucks, mostly because I’ve had everything turned on (default) and have not found all the places to ‘tune’ them to better setting.
  • I can NOT get the Twitter application Mauku to connect to Twitter
  • I can NOT get the weather with OMWeather it won’t connect
  • I couldn’t get the MaxRoam SIM to dial anyone, though I could SMS
  • Some Apps from the App Manager WILL NOT DOWNLOAD no matter what I do, and there no indication about why they won’t download
  • I can’t get the FaceBook application which came pre-installed, to actually install, or function. It’s the same with several of the ‘pre-installed’ apps, they just don’t work without being ‘installed’ and they won’t install.

I am currently using a Vodafone Pay-as-you-Go SIM and it does indicate that I am connected with 3G. I have NOT tested it for dataroaming, or performance. The MaxRoam SIM did indicate that I was connected to a 3.5G O2 network But like I mentioned, I couldn’t call anyone, only SMS. I assume that it was my ignorance of setting for the MaxRoam SIM.

As for the phone itself, I like it, it’s a bit heaver than I thought, but a great deal smaller, it is not really any wider or taller than a Samsung Tocco Lite, but it’s almost twice as thick.

The keyboard is very small and not really thumb friendly, I started out using my fingernails to type. Now I can feel the contours of the keys, it sped up my typing a bit. I have a clear snap on case I bought from Amazon a month ago, but the screen section obscures the upper row on the keyboard, so I don’t have it on, so just the back is attached.

The resistive touchscreen is very sensitive. I have a Palm T/X and I know! It is nothing like the resistive screens of the past. There is virtual NO give to the surface, and while you can tell that it is ‘softer’ than a capacitive touchscreen, it has a great deal more precision. Just try and draw something in the ‘sketch’ app or better yet, the XJournal application.

Overall I could say that it’s a keeper, a Geeky keeper, and looks like it will be a learned love. It does do what I need it to do, be a computed device, with a phone in it.

I’m sure there will be other revelations, but I may be too busy playing with my new toy.

UPDATE : I’ve managed to get the missing FaceBook App to install and Mauku and OMWeather are working after I changed some of the connection setting on device to fixed ip addresses on my WiFi router.

Social platform evolution

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In the natural world, evolution is normally a response to changes in the environment which forces adaption to the change by natural selection. If the change event is dramatic or violent life forms can become extinct before adaptive evolution can occur.

But what happens in Social Environments, Platforms, particularly virtual Social platforms. Does change and evolution happen gradually or catastrophically? And what happens to the inhabitants of that environment? Do they all migrate to the next ‘BIG THING’?

Any suggestions?

Keeping up appearances

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I almost let my new resolution go today, but 23 hours in, I decided that that would be too much of a slip. so I twitted that my blog, only got 873,101 Hits, 273,506 pages and 32,382 Unique visitors last year. And I thought I owed you, the reader, something more. So if anything comes to mind, I’ll let you know.

Nokia N900 to be locked to Vodafone network.

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It looks like all the previous vendors (eXpansys, Amazon UK and other suppliers) of the Unlocked Nokia N900 have been consistently denied product to sell by Nokia. Now the word is, that the N900 will be exclusively the product of The Carphone Warehouse (with a Vodafone ontract) and Vodafone UK.

This means only one thing, there will be NO SIM Unlocked Nokia N900’s. They will all be locked to Vodafone SIMs and further OTA updates will be to Vodafone specifications. With the advent of Vodafone 360 they will be more and more tied to this service. You really can reach no other conclusion, so much for Nokia’s commitment to Open Source and Open Source developers.

Gore – As cardiac stimulator to the environment

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A cardiac stimulator (shock box) is not a heart rhythm but you can’t restore one without the other when it gets out of kilter. But in this nitpicky article Do-gooder Gore has it all wrong Where the author uses cherry picking statistical plucks about CO2 levels that the Media have elevated to importance;

Carbon dioxide forms only 0.04% of our atmosphere, so its molecules are widely dispersed. The space between them is almost 200 times their diameter. As altitude increases, air density decreases, which scatters them still further.

Pah!

  • Talk about the manmade pollution’s that cause increase cloud coverage that traps heat into the planet.
  • Talk about the bulk consumption of finite oil and gas as a reason to create carbon taxes.
  • Talk about the FACTS of weather, not the politics of the weather.
  • etc, etc,etc

Try and focus on the big picture, as in

THE BIG PICTURE

OK!

Amazon Looses a customer, Nokia N900 a Failure.

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Well after all the lame excuses for a release that Nokia has be performing with the N900 it’s should come as no surprise that I was notified that it has been delayed again. This time Amazon is not expecting to receive any product until after the 25 of December.

How lame can Nokia be? If anyone doesn’t believe that the Nokia N900 is a fake product only has to count the numbers of real handsets shipped. It should tally under 1000, a typical prototype batch run. What has been being publicized, have been those chosen few who have been shipped a ‘demo’ unit, or a few select squeaky wheels on the Internet that needed to broadcast the N900 greatness.

Guess what, I’m not one of them.

So just as a suggestion, if anyone actually HAS a real, purchased Nokia N900, would tell me where and from whom.

Fundamentally, if anyone wants to know why Nokia is failing in the Smartphone arena, they only need to look to the N900 release, or rather the failure to release of a real product.