While at the O2 last night, i took some regular photos/videos. The set is here to look at. Again very good performance from the N900.
I went to a gig at the O2 indigo2, on the way over I installed QIK (on the bus, no problem) and gave it a quick trial (pun intended) you can see the videos it produced here. Not bad, esp in tricky light, or lack of light.
little update on album art…
someone on nokiausers asked how amazon mp3’s were….
I’ll try amazon mp3 purchases, they never worked for me on S60 (ie the album art showing up) the only ones that ever work on S60 one was iTunes purchases
which is odd as 7 Digital/ Amazon ones have album art in iTunes, without manually doing the ‘get art’ like you have to when you rip your own cd’s
ok just put an album i bought on amazon on…..
and yep it’s album art is working.
I can’t test anything from nokia music store as its not supported!! ;)
also I can’t find any way to manually add album art on the media player, for all the ones that dont work. oddly the standard art is a turntable, which is still an icon for music?
Odd as most people haven’t played music on vinyl for 20+years. Many younger owners may have never played music like that, guess its like the continuing use of a floppy disk as an icon for save. old habits die hard.
I love bounce on n-gage (the n95 version) and the touch version on 5800. It’s a great little game, now the N900 has bounce evolution, which is a graphical quantum leap.
Sadly its just a demo with two levels at the moment, but it’s going to be ace, it seems to borrow a bit from system rush/f-zero in the second demo level. But here is the two versions side by side in the ‘Forrest’ levels.
Shows great promise for N900 having iPhone/PSP quality games.
Ok, so time for some music and video. I’ve recorded a warts and all video of me connecting the N900 to my macbook pro, to get some music and video on. I had a little glitch in that i needed to disconnect the usb to get it to see all the music i uploaded, which was weird and a plesant surprise in it finding my uPnP server, which was in an expired demo mode, so didnt actually work, but thats my fault not the N900.
Once i got the music uploaded it behaved similarly to the S60 player in its handling of album art but otherwise is way snappier and a more pleasant experience, no need to update library. Though its a little customisation lite.
Video was a breeze, working instantly.
sorry for the rubbish quality (totally unedited) video, will try harder next time :)
A whole new interface.
The N900 is a real shift in how you use a mobile phone. As it’s not really a phone, the phone is just an app, as much as anything. The Maemo interface has 4 modes, three navigations modes plus in an application.
You have:
- The multi screen ‘desktop’ which holds widgets and shortcuts.
- The application ‘icon’ menu, most like a traditional nokia grid view, though it has a fixed size initial screen then a scrolling ‘more’ screen.
- The open apps menu. Whish shows thumbnails of all the applications that are running.
- The current application running, when you are in an app, touching the icon in the corner allows you to access the main three modes.
At first, the switch between 1-3 is a little confusing. You have to basically toggle between them with the icon in the top left corner.
You basically have to throw away your usual mobile habit, closing apps, to save memory. It’s just not needed, and the interface is designed to navigate all your open apps, never quitting anything. It’s a weird shift from the S60/android/Win Mo world, where you have to periodically check whats running, and quit some apps to let things work sans crash.
Commuters rejoice.
The N900, really comes into its own commuting, having a desktop like experience on the train is awesome, and I’ve yet to try video and music while I travel.
I’m getting used to the keyboard now so can type at a reasonable speed with about the same amount of errors I get with any mobile text entry. Or even a desktop keyboard.
The other side-issue bonus is that using a t-mobile sim, I actually get data, all the time, unlike the massively over burdened O2 iPhone data network, which just can’t deliver.
Party Pictures. Indoors artifical light, basement dining rooms, night time. All the enemy’s of camera phones (and to be fair most compact digital cameras) The N900 seeem’s to do very well in these challenging conditions. And lets face it we all take photos at such events, so it needs to at least make ‘facebook’ worthy photos. No problem here.
Nokia Messenging
I’ve been using nokia messaging, with its push email and collating several accounts via one log in for a while now. Luckily its on the N900, so all I had to do was enter one username/password combo and i got 3 email account syncing. SWEET AS.
Though on set up it takes a while downloading the last weeks worth of email, with a lot of vibrating alerts. But once you are up and running its plain sailing. Oh and at last it seems to handle HTMLemail much better than the s60 version.
That said it’s not quite as nice as the iPhone/Android/Win Mobile handling of HTML emails.
hermes, is a godsend. It basically puts pictures/more info into your contacts.
based on facebook/twitter user profiles. So it won’t fill up all your contacts but its a great start and plumps up those dull contacts with photos. which lets face it we never bother to do for more than a handful of people.
