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Introducing Neo900

neo900.org

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Re: Introducing Neo900

#91

Post by Gravityloss »

potatolicious wrote: post #62
simias wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to develop why it was shitty?

I never owned one, but I did have a couple of friends that let me use theirs. The touchscreen was a bit dodgy and the battery life was suspect - but IMO those are minor complaints compared to the main, insurmountable problem: the UI was extremely slow. Like, tap-the-screne-wait-multiple-seconds slow. Even before the revelation of swipe gesture and smooth 60fps animations on iPhone, it was slow by the standards of its…

Taking calls with the N900 was especially hilarious. The phone was ringing but it sometimes took many seconds for the phone app to appear on the screen. When you took the ringing phone from the pocket and pressed the green receiver icon to accept the call, it just before your finger hit the screen managed to rotate the screen and of course the red receiver decline icon was there in the other screen orientation. That's some ingenious design easter egg and symptomatic of how unfinished this stuff was.

Also the Busybox default shell was next to useless. The charging microusb port also always broke. How many cents did they save per phone by using a substandard part? The keyboard was very good though.

N9 was so much better than N900. The graphics and the fonts looked so clean, and the swipe UI was just pure genius. You could see it had some serious thought put into it. Android UI is a mess compared to that. It's very slow to switch between apps and tasks in Android. If only N9 had not been so excruciatingly slow. It didn't help that multitasking was so easy.

I guess such incoherent products are a sign of a malfunctioning organization.

Re: Introducing Neo900

#92

Post by codezero »

I really can't adjust to keyboards that have the keys in each row perfectly aligned. I know it's not used the same as a full sized keyboard, but it still always drives me mad.

Re: Introducing Neo900

#94

Post by glabifrons »

captainmuon wrote: post #8

I wonder whether this has an open-source* baseband/firmware, and open-source graphics drivers. If not, it's not better than, say, a Nexus 4, which you can unlock and put custom software on it (e.g. Ubuntu Phone, I'm sure you could port Meego/Maemo/whatever it's called nowadays). The Nexus of course has vastly superior hardware. If I buy such a tinkerphone as this, I want to be able to play with it at all levels. For…

"I want to be able to access the audio stream programmatically, which is not possible on 99% of android phones."

The N900's OS uses PulseAudio.

Examples: I can redirect audio output to the FM transmitter and instantly have the FM radio in any pre-bluetooth car become a giant speakerphone. I have tiny applications for recording calls (intercepting the audio stream between the GSM radio and the amp), and other applications for recording from the mic directly (for verbal note-taking).

Re: Introducing Neo900

#95

Post by glabifrons »

A lot of the negative comments I see in this discussion are about the slow to respond UI, battery life, and the lack of a "retina display" level of pixel density.

The slow UI problem was licked some time ago by the Thumb2 project (porting a huge portion of the OS & apps to the more compact Thumb2 architecture), which freed up an amazing amount of RAM. The slow UI problem, you see, was cause by swapping (to flash). I switched to the Thumb2 CSSU some time ago and it's nothing short of astonishing. The difference is much bigger than when I overclocked my 600MHz N900 to 1050MHz (that didn't do much for the UI, but it did eat the battery faster and make it run hot). As a nice side benefit, the lack of flash-burning (swapping) resulted in ~3x battery life.

The pixel density of the device is actually too high for me (my eyes are too old). My N800 (and 770) display had the same resolution at 4.3" instead of 3.5", and I can still read small fonts on it fine. The N900, on the other hand, is barely usable as a computer anymore (remember, Debian based OS - real xterms). I'd like to someone over 40 try and read an xterm on a 5" 1080p display without bifocals.

The Neo900 project handily solves the 1st problem in hardware... one of the biggest problems this device had wasn't the CPU, it was the 256MB of RAM (it needed ~320MB to run efficiently - my rough guess based on the difference the Thumb project made).

Unfortunately, the screen density issue is (obviously) not addressed by a motherboard replacement... and the price is sadly too high for me to afford.

As to the "why?" questions about the device:

Most open phone OS I've seen on any commercial phone (I'm not talking about a limited hacker-marketed Neo1973 here). I can get root on the device without breaking any laws or EULA anywhere... as it's not restricted from the owner. I can modify how the device works easily (many functions are event-triggered via D-Bus, which opens amazing possibilities). A minor, but very useful example is the remapping of the camera button (when the lens cover is closed) to bring up the application menu for quicker multitasking). It goes on and on.

The most open phone device I've seen (same disclaimer as above) with the ability to run numerous OSes, multi-booting between them: Fremantle (stock OS), Mer, MeeGo, Tizen, Debian, Ubuntu, Android, possibly more (yes, I know #2, #3, & #4 are related, just as Debian and Ubuntu are).

FM Receiver (yeah, I know)

FM Transmitter... turn any car radio instantly into a speakerphone, or play any music on your built-in 32GB of storage (or 64GB of microsdxc) through your stereo, amp up your games, etc.

TV-out... play games on your TV.

IR transmitter... a really versatile universal remote. ;^)

Did I mention 32GB of built in storage and a microSD slot that can use sdxc cards as well as sdhc? Remember, this is a device released in 2009!

USB-OTG... use wired ethernet(!), optical drives, joysticks, USB-sticks, etc. (anything over ~100ma requires a powered hub as the device won't supply more)

Resistive touchscreen with a stylus. Yes, I consider this a plus as I find it absurd to try and click on a small cluster of pixels with a finger that covers tens of thousands of them. My finger is fine for dialing, but outside of that, I want accuracy. I'd much rather type with a stylus on my old N800 (pre-N900) than with my fingers on my HP TouchPad (~10" capacitive touchscreen).

Camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar optics and a sliding cover. While the stock software could only record 480p video, a modified library can be installed that allows 720p video recording (uses a mild DSP overclock, IIRC). The fact that this sort of modification is possible without the assistance of the manufacturer is a testament to this device's versatility.

Video calling (more on that below)

Deep integration of communications via plugins (highly expandable). Want to IM someone? No need to dig for the right app for their choice of IM providers, just IM them - all protocols are handled by the same UI (even IRC!). Take a picture, share it via whatever sharing service you wish (using the same camera UI), from Facebook to Twitter to many, many others (I never used this feature, but always thought the way it was integrated was impressive and elegant). Want to call someone? It doesn't matter if you're calling using VoIP, Yahoo-IM-voice, POTS, Google Talk, Skype, etc... you used the same phone UI to call them. Deep integration, done extremely well.

OK keyboard (not nearly as nice as the ol' SideKick II, but I've found nothing that compares to that keyboard).

For its day, it was pretty powerful. The closest device Apple produced was the iPhone 3GS (same CPU, very close to the same 3D GPU).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900

Edit: Clarification of calling integration.

Re: Introducing Neo900

#96

Post by chx »

fragmede wrote: post #70
werkshy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's a 3 row keyboard. I upgraded from the G1 (5 row qwerty) to the G2 (4 row, numbers-on-the-qwerty-row) and it's next to useless. As a phone, I need to use the number line a lot. As a computer /terminal, I need to use letters, numbers & symbols a lot. 3 and 4 row keyboards are bad for both of these use cases. If someone makes a decent, interesting 5-row qwerty phone, I will buy it tomorrow.

> decent, interesting 5-row qwerty phone If you're in the US and are on a CDMA network, there's the DROID 4/Photon Q for Verizon and Sprint, respectively. Outside of that I'm not aware of any recent phones with a keyboard, unfortunately.

The Droid 4 runs on any GSM network -- as long as it's not in the USA, those are backlisted somewhere very deep in the phone. I have ran mine in Canada, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary. It's not even hard to root and adjust build.props then throw in a micro SIM and off you go.

Re: Introducing Neo900

#97

Post by Kliment »

captainmuon wrote: post #8

I wonder whether this has an open-source* baseband/firmware, and open-source graphics drivers. If not, it's not better than, say, a Nexus 4, which you can unlock and put custom software on it (e.g. Ubuntu Phone, I'm sure you could port Meego/Maemo/whatever it's called nowadays). The Nexus of course has vastly superior hardware. If I buy such a tinkerphone as this, I want to be able to play with it at all levels. For…

glabifrons, you are hellbanned as of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6246450 for no obvious reason.

Re: Introducing Neo900

#98

Post by streetnigga »

Hot-swappable battery. Hot damn.

A portable computer that can be on an extended length of time with practical wire-free ability would be swift. No "where is the closest USB port/wall socket."

Re: Introducing Neo900

#100

Post by zokier »

r00fus wrote: post #87
zokier wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, what was so special about the N900 and is that relevant in the market today? N900 had: - HW keyboard - Pixel-accurate touchscreen (with stylus) - Desktop-ish hacker/FOSS friendly Linux OS Essentially N900 was the embodiment of the dreams of what Nokia could have been if it weren't for EVIL Elop and MS ruining everything, and that is why the device has small cult following. There has been occasional HW keyboar…

> Essentially N900 was the embodiment of the dreams of what Nokia could have been if it weren't for EVIL Elop and MS ruining everything, and that is why the device has small cult following. Ok, I'll buy everything in that statement except for "Evil" Elop. Elop is not the cause. He is a symptom, partly of Microsoft's colonial attitude towards companies like Nokia (which is somewhat evil), and the complete ineptness of…

I personally do not blame Elop of anything. I was merely presenting the narrative from N900 cultist point of view, which to tend to blame either Elop directly (which is ridiculous) or the boared (as do you, which is more reasonable but still bit narrowminded).

Personally I blame every single layer inside Nokia, from the grassroots engineers to the board and CEO, and everything in between.

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