Nokia N900 Review: Cell Phone

Cell Phone


Rating: 1 out of 10

In a word, HORRIBLE.  The poorly thought out and implemented feature will make you miss phone calls, make it difficult to interact with automated phone service.  At least the interface doesn't crash. But that's all I can say about it.  The software developer who plopped this turd on the mobile computing community has apparently never used a PDA cell phone before.  There are NO features that you would expect from a PDA cell phone.

There are no visual screen indicators that you received a message or a voicemail or a text or an email, except for... get this... a tiny colored LED in the bottom corner of the device.  Now this to me is unacceptable in a device.  PDA phones since the beginning of time have realized you need an indicator to let you know you have a message waiting.  Every cell phone I have ever used has visual indicator.  The Nokia N900 is the ONLY phone I have ever used that omits this feature.  Rather, it has a multicolored multi-purpose LED light.  That's it.  Do you remember Star Trek from the 60's?   Remember on the bridge control screens, where the only computer feedback the crew had was a bunch of blinking flashing lights?  It's kind of like that.  Only now take away all the lights except one tiny light tucked away in the corner of the device.  And in the control panel/options menu... get this... you can overload this tiny single LED with a kazillion functions.  A light LED is supposed to mean that the N900 is charging, it is low on battery, you received a voicemail, you received a call that you didn't answer, the device is on, you received an email message, and the horribly intelligible "other notifications" event has just occurred on your phone.  All from one tiny single LED light.  That is your ONLY notification.  There is no graphical icon to tell you anything.  And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, the software comes into play and screws up even that menial feature.  I tried to disable everything except text messages and voicemail.  The light still seems to turn on sometimes when charging, but it never turns on when I have an unread message or voicemail.  Good times.

Next is the interface.  Dear lord... the interface.  The only portrait mode application is the phone, and the randomly triggered animation causes you to miss phone calls, and makes automated services hang up on you when you are waiting for the animation to end.  The interface was not well thought out at all, and makes what should be incredibly simple task incredibly difficult.  If look through your phone history and see your contact, and want to send them a text message, there is no way to go from the contact information in the phone history to a text message.  There is a method to do this in EVERY PDA/phone I have ever used since I had the misfortune of encountering the iPAQ H6315.

A typical experience answering the phone on the N900 will go one of two different ways, depending on how long you have owned the N900.

1) (the N900 noob way)  The phone rings, and you look around for the phone on your desk.  You pick it up in the middle of the third ring.  This is a critical mistake, this move really identifies the N900 nubs from the expert N900 user.  You see, when you pick up the phone, the screen will try to switch orientations, regardless of how you pick it up.  Depending on what is running in the background, this is a seemingly exhausting animation for the N900 to perform, taking all its might to flip the screen around in some virtual 3D world.  I suspect that the N900 is actually flipping the entire universe about itself, and what you see in the screen is a GUI that is actually stationary.  This would explain alot... for instance, this explains why the animation always pauses at some point in the middle of the animation, as if the N900 is exhausted by the effort and needs to catch its breath, put its head down for spell, or maybe take a breather and pop out to the pub for a bit... (in my mind, I picture the 3D Mario animation huffing and puffing when I hit him with one too many goombas).  While you wait for the phone to complete its animation, you stare at the screen and guess where the answer button is going to appear.  The worst thing you can do at this point is to panic, and physically rotate the phone back to the original orientation.  This causes the animation to repeat once it finished the first animation, and there is no possible way you will answer the phone in time.  You will have to wait for a voicemail.  So you put the phone down, and if you are absent minded like me, you will forget to watch the screen and start doing something else.  You will look back over to the phone, and look for the all knowing indicator light to light up and show you if a message has arrived.  No light, so you go back to work... A message was left, of course, but the light didn't turn on, and tomorrow if will be one of the 10 messages in your voicemail that you didn't realize had accumulated from the last three days.


2) But your experience with the N900 doesn't have to be like this.  The N900 will train you like an uber jedi ninja to be patient and methodical.  When the phone rings, your body immediately and instinctively assume the 'tiger' position.  Now you are in the N900 zone!  From your jedi training, you know that touching the phone or disturbing its orientation in any way may trigger a universal rotation event.  So you advance on the phone like a lioness approach its prey... you reach out, hang your finger directly over the phone, and with a carefully aligned vertical motion, you press your finger downward squarely and lightly on the screen, then withdraw it quickly.  Success!  You have answered the phone!!!  But its not over yet...

You bring the phone to your ear and try to enjoy your conversation, but in the back of your mind, you knw your jedi power of concentration are still to be tested when you try to hang up.  You see, when you talk on the phone and hold it up to your ear, the touch screen turns off so you don't dial accidentally with your cheek.  When you finish your conversation, you pull the phone away from your ear.  The screen turns back on, and without fail, no matter what orientation you hold it in, the poor N900 feels it must go through that... whew... exhausting animation and it diligently tries to flip the universe on its axis once more.  Now, if you are using an automated interface where you have to press a button, you are once again proverbially screwed.  But you are a well trained N900 jedi, you know that you must be in speaker phone mode to use automated services.  You are just trying to hang up, so you take a deep breath and close your eyes lightly, and patiently wait for the universe to unfold itself one more time, suppressing the urge to rotate the phone into another position as if you had caused phone to rotate.  You may announce "Hold on, I'm hanging up the phone now", and again take a deep breath, because you friend with an iPhone knows exactly what you are doing.  In the distance, you can hear his muffled laughter through the N900's speakers.  In a few moments, you open you eyes and see the universe settling back into place.  Calmly, and with a sense of calm wonder, you press the end telephone call button.

GOOD. TIMES.