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The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

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Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#101

Post by regularfry »

nicklaf wrote: post #59

Heh. The N900 was an amazing device and I cherish the time I had with it. However, it's also a painful memory, because I managed to brick the device after spending possibly hundreds of hours customizing it. The first thing I did was let the micro USB port come loose--a common problem with the device, which seemed to happen to many over time. I remember still being able to charge it somehow (maybe I bought an external…

Mine died to this. USB port came loose, sat in the back of a drawer waiting for me to get round to fixing it, to be thrown away in a fit of "I'm never going to get round to any of these 20+ projects-in-waiting that have been collecting dust for the past N years". The battery was probably knackered by that point anyway.

Genuinely regretting that now.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#102

Post by sleepysysadmin »

The N900 was fantastic. The phone was to be a leader until Stephen Elop.

Elop was a Microsoft employee who never stopped being a microsoft employee. As fake ceo of nokia he convinced the board to switch to microsoft OS and drop their success. Nokia did that and then when Nokia sales plummetted to disasterous level he proposed selling that division to Microsoft at quite the discount. Afterall who wants to buy a failing division. 11,000 employees laid off because of Elop's incompetence.

What the board should have done was fire Elop very publicly and move right back to the Linux ecosystem. They had a leg up to basically be what Pinephone, chinaphones, and so many other phones are trying to be.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#103

Post by Tor3 »

toyg wrote: post #33

I remember building simple PyQT apps on the N900, and then C++/Qt. At one point I was very tempted to start my own business and become a real developer for the platform while it was still "young", but it became apparent very quickly that Nokia was not seriously invested in it, and in any case they were not interested in small devs (getting an account for their joke of a store was a byzantine process, and expensive to…

I used my N900 until a week ago, I finally moved the SIM card over to another phone (a dual-SIM one), because the (original) battery didn't take much charge anymore. Hardware-wise it's as good as new (mine is Made in Finland). Over the years I've used it to do support work in Antarctica using VPN from whatever cafeteria I was at at the time, other types of work where I needed a Linux computer and only had the phone, it's been running my minicomputer emulator, I did development work for it (the SDK running on my PC - basically a Debian setup), and, of course, as my phone.

The MicroUSB socket was a weak point, the fix was to file off the two notches on microUSB cables before using them with the N900. So my N900's USB socket is still good as new.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#104

Post by simonh »

toyg wrote: post #33

I remember building simple PyQT apps on the N900, and then C++/Qt. At one point I was very tempted to start my own business and become a real developer for the platform while it was still "young", but it became apparent very quickly that Nokia was not seriously invested in it, and in any case they were not interested in small devs (getting an account for their joke of a store was a byzantine process, and expensive to…

I cut my teeth on GUI development with PyQT back in the day. I couldn't afford an N900 at the time, but was sorely tempted.

Ironically the best mobile platform for hacking GUI and mobile apps in Python now is, er, iOS. Pythonista gives access to almost the entire iOS API suite (and slightly hacky access to all of it), even has a GUI builder built-in, and is highly programmable directly on the device. Pyto is pretty cool too. Hard to believe, but that's where we are.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#105

Post by Tor3 »

squarefoot wrote: post #40
gtk40 wrote: post #13

I had a Nokia N800 "Internet Tablet" and loved that device. Android was a huge downgrade compared to what you could do with that in every way except interface, and the interface wasn't too bad.

I had the older 770, and loved it with all its limitations. I recall downloading Google maps images of a desired area trough a 3rd party tool that would also stitch them together, then and using them on the 770 with an external GPS receiver to have sort of a live map while driving. And the LCARS Star Trek styled screen gave a nice touch too. Nokia was developing great products back then, then one day Microsoft came a…

Did the same with my N800 while driving in South Africa. The downloaded satellite maps showed the roads that were actually there, unlike those on the maps.. and that was very important, as it turned out. Very glad we had that N800.

(I had the N800 first, and got the N900 when it came out)

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#106

Post by tom_mellior »

wmf wrote: post #15

Thom makes a really insightful point: "people who want a true Linux computer in their pocket". I wanted a more open iPhone and I hated the N900 because it was terrible as a smartphone. Between the stylus, unconstrained multitasking, desktop Firefox, and Flash it's like they were trying to prove Steve Jobs right. The G2 was so much better because it had an actual phone OS.

What's wrong with unconstrained multitasking? I thought it worked well on the N900. I also think it works well on Android.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#107

Post by agloeregrets »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #63

I still have one in a drawer. I worked at Nokia at the time. These were awesome phones. But they were deliberately crippled by management that preferred other platforms they had. So, several devices originally earmarked for Maemo/Meego (the name changed at some point) actually shipped with Symbian instead. Some fun facts about Maemo: Shipped in 2006 with the N770. Had a tablet UI based on X and GTK, a mozilla based b…

It's stunning to me just how many incredible technical efforts Nokia made to just kill. The N9 after this was killer but boom, dead, the Nokia X was okay but weird, Dead, the Lumia, alive, then boom, dead. It's remarkable that Elop was never prosecuted for his actions that clearly were in benefit to his prior employer.

It's almost hilarious that modern Nokia HMD makes phones now because I expect the company to randomly up and disappear and come back with a WebOS phone or some other weird offshoot.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#108

Post by simonh »

markb139 wrote: post #76
whereistimbo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Even before Elop, there were multiple layer of management and the culture of CMA (Cover My Arse) was so strong, as I heard from other Nokia ex-employees. Not to mention people from Symbian Inc wasn't good people according to the book about rise and fall of Symbian.

It's interesting how devices have gone. Nokia, when they were focused, were making devices smaller, cheaper and with improved battery life. Now we get these giant devices that need re-charging daily and cost >£1000

It's a good point. I think it highlights the fact that these are not really the same kinds of device, so can't be evaluated on the same criteria. If we were still just buying phones nobody would spend that much on something that consumes so much power. The mistake Nokia and the others made was they thought the iPhone was just a phone.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#109

Post by raverbashing »

lenkite wrote: post #74
toyg wrote: post #33

I remember building simple PyQT apps on the N900, and then C++/Qt. At one point I was very tempted to start my own business and become a real developer for the platform while it was still "young", but it became apparent very quickly that Nokia was not seriously invested in it, and in any case they were not interested in small devs (getting an account for their joke of a store was a byzantine process, and expensive to…

If the Nokia board had not hired Elop or had fired him in time, Maemo would have been a third mobile platform alternative today - one likely far more open than Android. Elop was a truly successful Nokia saboteur. An illustrative case study of how a single CEO can destroy a company for his self-profit and go out laughing with no legal repercussions.

Nokia's error was not firing the Symbian activists before it was too late

If they had set full sail on Maemo, it would have been the 3rd platform today.

Re: The Nokia N900: the future that wasn’t

#110

Post by bestouff »

tom_mellior wrote: post #106
wmf wrote: post #15

Thom makes a really insightful point: "people who want a true Linux computer in their pocket". I wanted a more open iPhone and I hated the N900 because it was terrible as a smartphone. Between the stylus, unconstrained multitasking, desktop Firefox, and Flash it's like they were trying to prove Steve Jobs right. The G2 was so much better because it had an actual phone OS.

What's wrong with unconstrained multitasking? I thought it worked well on the N900. I also think it works well on Android.

On Android it's very constrained. Background apps are quickly killed to save battery, whereas on my N900 any running app which wouldn't stop by itself would drain it in a few minutes.
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