Nokia N900 - Pros and Cons

In one of my earlier posts I had mentioned some of the things I was enjoying doing with my Nokia N900. Now that I have had the device to play with for a solid month I would like to highlight what I feel are the pros and cons of the device. As I know most people just give these articles a quick scan in the first place, for reference I am just going to post my thoughts in an easy to read bulleted list.

Pros:

• Fast - The device is quick, sporting a 600mhz processor and 256megs of RAM (with an additional 768megs of swap space) it multi-tasks like a dream
• Storage Space - By default it has a 27gig storage partition for media and files. Also is a mircoSD expansion slot that will take up to anther 16gigs
• Powerful Camera - 5.8 mega pixel camera with a full flash. It takes sharp pictures and video recordings
• Nokia Sponsored Community Repositories - FOSS applications written (or ported to Maemo) by the community are housed in an official "extras" repository. Installing additional applications from here is as easy as adding software to Ubuntu via the software center.
• TV Out - Provided with the phone are RCA cables to hook your N900 into a television/projector that hook into the headphone jack.
• Fantastic Browser - The N900 arguably provides the best mobile web browsing experience out there.
• USB-Micro Charging - The N900 charges via a standard USB micro connection, instead of some odd proprietary jack like many devices.
• Crystal Clear Screen - The 800x480 resolution is beautiful! Everything displayed on the device is crisp and clear.

Cons:

• Battery Life - With heavy usage the N900 dies in about 6 hours. While this is still fairly good I've found I run the battery out almost every day from usage so I've taken to carrying a charging cord with me.
• Maemo Libraries - Maemo 5 is not compatible with most Debian Armel packages. This is because Maemo uses older library files for many (most notably libc6) packages. Updating said packages manually causes Maemo to stop working in most cases.
• Default Filesystem Setup - The default file system on the N900 is super non-standard and is my biggest complaint about the device. It contains a 256meg rootfs, 2gig ext2 /home, and 27gig fat32 storage. You can adjust these, but it is difficult to say the least and not something a new Linux user should attempt.
• Non-Standard Key Maps - Some of the key mappings on the N900 are not the same as a standard keyboard. As a result some Linux applications that are ported need to be remapped to work fully.
• Awkward Placement of Charging/Headphone Ports - It is awkward to hold/type on the device while either (or both) of these are plugged in. Not impossible, but still annoying.

Did I miss an pros or perhaps do you disagree with one of the cons I listed? If so, please feel free to drop a comment to let me know. Also if you are looking for some good N900 applications check here and here.

~Jeff Hoogland