maemober

OH MY, sweet lord above (or below). One of the best games ever,...

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:32:42 -0500

OH MY, sweet lord above (or below). One of the best games ever, star craft (and presumably as its the same engine the awesome warcraft 2) has been ported to the N900. Now i presume the game originally worked in 640x480 so screen size isnt a problem :)

Tinned Luxury, Oh my WOMWORLD sent me a pair of these nokia...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:52:00 -0500

Tinned Luxury, Oh my WOMWORLD sent me a pair of these nokia BH-905 blue tooth (with wired option) noise canceling headphones to trial, and BOY they are good. I had a pair of sony noise canceling headphones about 10 years ago, and the were a bit rubbish. These are amazing, even without music playing a couple of seconds after you turn on the canceling - suddenly you get drawn into a silent place. apparently there’s 12 microphones built in to sample the surrounding sounds.

Music sounds great on them, I’m no audiophile but they sound really good to me, there are lots of specs that mean very little to me. Every bit of the product oozes luxury, the metal bit seem gold in some light and silver in others. Theres leather, fabric, metal, and a twist in every direction to get the right fit. This is solid engineering, yet they are smaller than you expect, lightweight and comfortable.

There’s a range of adapters for using in ‘wired’ mode, but the freedom of bluetooth make me never want to grab them. The carry case is quite large, and only really suitable for traveling. I would of liked to have seen an additional soft pouch for slinging in any old bag.

I had some drop out and that weird bluetooth catch up on the N900 when first connected, but no issues on the more mature firmware of the 5800. It worked a dream with my macbook pro, to give me spotify around the house.

My wife tried them out and I didn’t get them back for over an hour. Likewise in the office they got nabbed as soon as i put them down. Though we did have a tinny sound issue with a desktop mac pro, not sure why it was sounding very muffled, no problem with other connections so seems some sort of bluetooth compatibility issue with that mac hardware.

I made a couple of phone calls with excellent call quality. In fact it made a teleconference far less painful as i didn’t have to hold my phone for 20 minutes.

I’ve always avoided over the ear headsets before, but having tried these out i now want a pair, as they are so much better than the admittedly more convenient in-ear options.

They cost an eye popping £250, but you can get them a lot cheaper online, google shows £149 being best current price.

Click the main pic or HERE for lots of photos of the headsets.

Desktop vs mobile metaphores.

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:47:25 -0500

While messing with various twitter options, it’s apparent that obviously all ‘real’ web based twitter clients work just fine. (I havent tried tweetdeck, not sure if its linux version will play ball).

BUT they kinds don’t really work as they are designed for mices not stubby fingers, I know theres a stylus, but I haven’t used it once - whereas I use it all the time on the 5800.

I find a conundrum, I’m dazzled by the magic of having a full desktop experience in my hand, but from a frequent usability point of view I want a mobilised version. For infrequent use, doing the full website is fine. But for those you visit a lot I want it optimised for the screen size (not resolution) and native interface metaphors.

But hey its great to have the option for both, I’ve been using dabr.co.uk in it’s touch interface skin for twitter. But on the odd time I check facebook I get the full experience, though the app bar behaves a little oddly. Point in case i just check the facebook widget rather than visit the main site. Mind you i prefer the iPod/iPhone native app facebook to the full web version.

what are these little icon things I presume they are data...

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:09:00 -0500

what are these little icon things

I presume they are data traffic in/out

But I’m not 100% sure.

UPDATE, on day one i installed the load widget. its that. one bar is cpu the other memory.

As answered on the lovely nokia users forum.

Nokia messaging bad vibrations. About once a day, Nokia...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:12:21 -0500

Nokia messaging bad vibrations. About once a day, Nokia messaging decides to lose all my emails and reload them as if new, complete with 5 mins of bells and vibrations. seems to be a bug in nokia messaging across platforms rather than anything to do with the N900 or its native mail application.

I’ve had this happen on the E71 version too, but not as frequently.

I seem to be getting corrupted text in all the...

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:47:50 -0500

I seem to be getting corrupted text in all the ‘menu’ screens.

You can see original grab here.

twitter false alert!

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:28:59 -0500

arghh just spent ages looking for an N900 twitter app, announced and RT’d this am

but it seems it does not exist :(

dabr.co.uk will keep me tweeting on the go.

decent headphone at last, actually most N series ship with...

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:23:11 -0500

decent headphone at last, actually most N series ship with adequate headsets, but the N900 finally joins the in-ear gang, which offers much better bass for commuters. O.K. audiophiles won’ be satisifed but for most these will do nicely. nothing startling look wise, but the flat rubbery cables do prevent tagling quite well. Good solid sensible design.

Off for the weekend and forgot my charger. Started the day with...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:29:56 -0500

Off for the weekend and forgot my charger. Started the day with about a 20% charge I smelt trouble. Little did I expect it to be a flat tyre on the m4, maps saved my life as I pulled into a nameless industrial estate and called the AA. Maps identified the road and location so I could tell them where I was. When I arrived I popped onto tesco not expecting to find anything but a regular nokia charger (after years of demanding USB charging, I now had second thoughts) but I got a multiple ended charger for under a fiver, with a micro USB adapter. They also had car chargers just shy of £7.

In other news I discovered the swipe to unlock screen for the first time. It appears when you press the power button rather than the screen lock rocker. Nice.

Share online is really well integrated with the viewing app, its...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 10:54:59 -0500

Share online is really well integrated with the viewing app, its no longer a seperate app as such but handles multi accounts well, you can have two flickr accounts for instance as well as an ovi one.The interface has been overhaulled and is way easier. Sharing is super easy, geptagging works a treat.

While at the O2 last night, i took some regular photos/videos. ...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:30:34 -0500

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...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:21:26 -0500

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...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:01:03 -0500

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...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:19:07 -0500

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...

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:09:49 -0500

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.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:50:19 -0500

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.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:47:00 -0500

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,...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:24:21 -0500

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

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:59:57 -0500

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...

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:52:49 -0500

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.