Nokia N900

[storkus at storkus.com]

It's not just American companies in this case: Nokia reports that, while
they have a lot of interest, most carriers are also complaining that
Nokia won't let them "customize" it either.  As for said American
companies, this device is designed to work on T-Mobile USA's network as
far as 3G (UMTS/HSDPA) goes (AT&T's band plans are different, I
guess--for the same reason my AT&T/Cingular V3xx won't do 3G on T-Mobile
if unlocked), but since they can't lock it they won't sell it, and this
was confirmed by a sales rep in a store yesterday (a week ago they
didn't know what I was talking about, so enough people must be asking
around the country that they put out a general memo to all stores). 
OTOH, he confirmed that, while they won't sell it, they have no problem
putting a 3rd party phone on the network (even 3G portions) as long as
it's compatible.

Of course, all this is moot if you're die-hard on a CDMA carrier and the
far better coverage they usually provide (along with ridiculously
locked-up phones).

My problem is that, while my inner geek is drooling over this, my
financial sense is saying, "Whooaaa, boy!" about blowing more than a
paycheck (for me) on this when I have a working cell phone and laptop.

I've been wondering about gaming on this for a while, so I did some
research: the GPU in this thing is a PowerVR SGX530, capable of OpenGL
2.0, DirectX 10.1, and 14Mpoly/s (from Wikipedia).  After a whole LOT of
research, which led me to a whole slew of devices with very similar core
architectures (iPhoneGS, Palm Pre, the Beagle Board, and the Pandora as
a small sample), it looks like it has a good chance of playing Open
Arena, but not more advanced games like Urban Terror (with more
textures, bigger maps and memory footprint, etc).  One big problem: it
does indeed have NTSC/PAL TV-out, but no VGA for a monitor--got to
wonder about THAT choice!  For regular (non-gaming) purposes, I'm
guessing one of those USB->monitor dongles may work if the kernel in
this thing supports it.

Oh, and Bob, thanks for the link: I see why my search over my PLUG mail
folder didn't find it: I used "n900", but no one mentioned it by name!

Finally, everyone is taking pre-orders.  Wikipedia says the expected US
ship date is the 27th, while mobilecityusa.com says their expected
arrival date is October 12th: at least the wait is almost over.

Mike

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:04:47 -0700, "Stephen" <cryptworks at gmail.com>
said:
> That's because American cell companies won't sell a phone that has
> been locked into crappyness for some reason
> 
> If ever anyone does the unlocked phone freindly network they are going
> to have a boggleinh influx of tech users
> 
> 
> On 9/25/09, huertanix at gmail.com <huertanix at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Actually it was last month. :P I said I wanted one to make iPhone users
> > jealous of my flash playback. Alas, there's no sign of when if at all it
> > will be available stateside. :(
> >
> > Sent from my BlackBerry Slowphone provided by Allfail
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: storkus at storkus.com
> >
> > Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:46:03
> > To: Main PLUG discussion list<plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
> > Subject: Nokia N900
> >
> >
> > I'm very surprised no one has brought this device up for discussion yet!
> >  It would appear to blow away the current Android and OpenMoko devices
> > by packing a 600 MHz ARM proc, 256MB DRAM, a huge wad of flash, 802.11bg
> > AND bluetooth, and--biggest of all--quad-band GSM AND a 3G radio
> > compatible with T-Mobile USA.  It also has USB2 and, curiously (I don't
> > know exactly what it is) "TV-Out".  On the software side, it runs their
> > distro called Maemo which, GUI-wise, has Qt at the core, though you can
> > still run GTK apps like its predecessor the N810.  It's almost entirely
> > free software and hackable, one of the biggest ones that aren't is
> > macromedia flash being included (presumably so you can play Youtube
> > video--I couldn't see playing flash games on an ARM...).
> >
> > The way I (and a lot of others) see it, this is like the early OLPC's or
> > eeepc's in terms of horsepower and (somewhat) memory.  More than one
> > person out there has suggested it could be used as a sort of hand-held
> > file server.  The geek in me is going even more nuts over buying this
> > than the Sheevaplug since I could obviously do so much more with it.
> > The few reviewers that have gotten their hands on it so far were mostly
> > morons that obviously couldn't fathom the potential that could be
> > unlocked from it.  For instance, the keyboard gets griped at a lot.  So?
> >  Get one of those roll-up USB keyboards from Thinkgeek: since it's a
> > lightweight distro (Busybox was explicitly mentioned) and (hopefully
> > full) kernel in there, I would presume that USBHID hasn't been neutered.
> >
> > So what do you all think?  My current phone (a Motorola V3xx) is still
> > working ok, and the N900 is nowhere near cheap...but, damn, it's making
> > me drool!  Should I get it or not?  Are one of you planning on it?
> >
> > Mike
> >
> > P.S. Another thing not discussed here: Slackware-13's out. :)
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> 
> -- 
> Sent from my mobile device
> 
> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
> rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
> 
> Stephen
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