Nokia review, day 4

Well I have discovered Hermes, why is this not a built in function/application? I was able to use Hermes to match my SIM contacts with my facebook contacts. It pulled all their facebook profile pictures, links to their FB profile and added their birthdates to their contact information. Good stuff. I also loaded all my gmail accounts, and skype, aim, yahoo, MSN.

I must say, this is best collection of information on my contacts list I have ever had in one place (which I promptly exported). I can click a contact and choose, cell/work/home/SMS/gtalk/skype/aim/yahoo/msn/facebook, see your birthday which it added to my calendar, and a link to your facebook profile page. Again I love how contact goes and pulls the picture for gtalk/facebook/skype. One problem I did have was with AIM. I noticed when I am driving around and I lose signal and then it reconnects AIM will send me a notice telling me that I am logged in twice. No other services did this.

I am in desperate need of a new phone, I currently have a RAZR that is about 5 years old. I had been watching all the Android phones and looking at the Motorola Cliq specifically because of the facebook integration. The main reason I have not been looking at the N900 is the price. If Nokia had gotten a carrier in the USA I would have already bought two n900′s. I have been hoping that perhaps there were some dealings going on that would make this happen. Although now that Tmobile changed its plans, you can save 20$ a month on a family plan with no contract and no free phone. So thats 480$ over 2 years, so I guess I would only be paying 260-270 per phone which is MUCH more reasonable than 500-600 per phone. Although I would still have to shell out all the money up front and hope the phones lasted two years.

One MAJOR flaw in this wonderful phone is the flash support. I cannot believe this does not have flash 10. I can load facebook, but I can’t beat everyones score on bejeweled blitz, might as well pull out the laptop. I honestly am not a big player of flash games, buy my kids and wife all are and they all think it should have flash 10

Another thing that annoys me is the facebook widget, it is too small and cannot be stretched larger. At least no way I have found yet?

Some of what I have not talked about is the interface. Coming from previous maemo device it takes some getting used to. Mostly just because you expect the device to perform one way and it does not. If you have not had previous Maemo devices you would just have the learning curve without some of the wrong expectations. Once you get the hang of how things work though you will be flipping windows back and forth like a pro, wondering why it was not made to do this long ago. I still find that occasional CPU spikes will slow down the UI, but usually not for more than a second or two. Those coming from previous versions of Maemo are familiar with this and while it is better it is not gone. Please note again this is from my experience as a heavy power user with email / chats / multiple web pages, I think if you are only doing one or two things at a time things run pretty smooth.

One thing I really liked was while I was logged into Outlook Web Access (exchange webmail) when I went to a large list of email addresses to choose from, the system took over the list and displayed it for me fullscreen, once I chose, it went back to the webpage. This is very nice and beats the zoom in and zoom out approach. Thought the tapping gestures to zoom in and out do work pretty well most of the time.

Oh and the addition of the mouse cursor for menus on webpages, nice job, it was sorely needed.

I must say at first I was really just wishing the screen was bigger and it was just a tablet. However the contacts and the phone functions are growing on me. I really don’t care for the feel of it when using the phone, I think if I was keeping this I would be buying a bluetooth headset. What really amazes me is that for all the previous Maemo device that required a separate phone with DUN (Dial up Networking) the N900 does not include it. Now matter how great the phone is, I always want to be able to plug into my laptop and get online.

Overall 4 days in, I am loving it. I am not sure what my phone future holds, but if these go on sale any time soon, I may just grab me two of them

more to come……