The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
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The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
1–10 of 182 posts
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#2Before this was a "feature phone" the Nokia 9000, i loved it.
When this was out I was using the OG Motorola Droid. I wanted one of these but they were not available on my carrier so I stayed on the Droid line. The hot-dog slide keyboard was amazing. I had full terminal control from these.
Nowadays I actually still rock a 2017 iphone SE; dimensions wise I don't want anything bigger in width or height, but i would gladly add some thickness to get a full tactile keyboard again.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#3Before this was a "feature phone" the Nokia 9000, i loved it. When this was out I was using the OG Motorola Droid. I wanted one of these but they were not available on my carrier so I stayed on the Droid line. The hot-dog slide keyboard was amazing. I had full terminal control from these. Nowadays I actually still rock a 2017 iphone SE; dimensions wise I don't want anything bigger in width or height, but i would glad…
I used an N900 for a few years (got one with the early adopter discount when it was released). While the keyboard was miles ahead of all the on-screen stuff at the time I don't think I want to go back to that keyboard from a current decent touch-screen phone. The keys were a bit too small for fast typing...
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#4Still have this little linux phone. It missed compass hw, so map experience was not great and also resistive display was inferior to iPhone, but still loved it. It's bad Nokia didn't manage it create viable platform, but rather switched to Windows phones and also died there with broken teeth.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#5A family friend worked as an outside something at Nokia HQ around 2007(?) when the iPhone was announced.
Apparently there was an ongoing joke inside of the company that every button on these phones was one of the executives. And so you had multiple buttons/ways of doing one thing because consensus. Sounds like they were just bogged down and crippled in a corporate way that so many European companies were between 1990-2020.
Apparently when the iPhone was announced the whole company was in deep shock and disarray. They were planning on the first touchscreen phones hitting the market around 2010-2015, and here was a company promising to deliver one by 2008.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#6A family friend worked as an outside something at Nokia HQ around 2007(?) when the iPhone was announced. Apparently there was an ongoing joke inside of the company that every button on these phones was one of the executives. And so you had multiple buttons/ways of doing one thing because consensus. Sounds like they were just bogged down and crippled in a corporate way that so many European companies were between 1990…
Largely the same thing happened at Blackberry.
Because the iPhone was an AT&T exclusive in the US, Verizon pressured Blackberry to rush the release of their first touchscreen device, the BB Storm. It was released as a Verizon exclusive in late 2008, and coincided with the release of HTC/Tmobile G1, the first Android phone.
BB tried to argue that BBOS6 was a click trackball based OS and would not transition to touch well. In the end they went for a bizarre hybrid design where the screen pushed down when you tapped something on the screen. Like a button would. I got used to it over time but the first time I used it, I thought I'd dislocated the screen.
Within a year, Verizon realized it wasn't going to rival AT&T w/ BB, and had Motorola create the Droid brand, which may have been one of the most popular Android phones in the US before Samsung arrived.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#7I loved the Nokia N900's design, that hardware keyboard that made it so easy to do remote system administration over SSH, or keep doing everything that I want to do in Emacs just like on my laptop or desktop computers. Also like all Nokia phones of the time, it was nearly indestructible and could easily survive drops that would destroy a modern smartphone’s screen or casing.
However, in retrospect not all was rosy. Advocates of Linux phones today would prefer to avoid binary blobs that make upgrades impossible (the N900 is forever stuck on kernel 2.6) and a cellular modem connected directly to main memory.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#8I loved the Nokia N900's design, that hardware keyboard that made it so easy to do remote system administration over SSH, or keep doing everything that I want to do in Emacs just like on my laptop or desktop computers. Also like all Nokia phones of the time, it was nearly indestructible and could easily survive drops that would destroy a modern smartphone’s screen or casing. However, in retrospect not all was rosy. A…
I wish I had the opportunity to use the N900. I still have a partially working N9 (the SIM holder lock is broken meaning I have to hold the SIM in to use it for calls). I still browse and post on HN using it on occasion.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#9Still have this little linux phone. It missed compass hw, so map experience was not great and also resistive display was inferior to iPhone, but still loved it. It's bad Nokia didn't manage it create viable platform, but rather switched to Windows phones and also died there with broken teeth.
They had released the N9 and there was a developer only N950. I'm still using my N9 even today though the lock mechanism on the SIM holder no longer works.
Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t
#10Before this was a "feature phone" the Nokia 9000, i loved it. When this was out I was using the OG Motorola Droid. I wanted one of these but they were not available on my carrier so I stayed on the Droid line. The hot-dog slide keyboard was amazing. I had full terminal control from these. Nowadays I actually still rock a 2017 iphone SE; dimensions wise I don't want anything bigger in width or height, but i would glad…
I used an N900 for a few years (got one with the early adopter discount when it was released). While the keyboard was miles ahead of all the on-screen stuff at the time I don't think I want to go back to that keyboard from a current decent touch-screen phone. The keys were a bit too small for fast typing...
I wonder how it compared to the keyboard on the N97. Though it was a symbian based phone, the putty client allowed you to connect to a server and attach to a screen or tmux session, which worked okay with that keyboard and a few on-screen buttons.