N900
There’s been a lot of chatter on the planets about the N900. I have to admit, I’ve been very blah about Maemo for the past 6 months or so, despite having a 770 and a n810. And it’s related to why I’m not exceptionally exited about the n900. I’ll get to that.
You see, I was hugely excited about the 770. It was a great little device, and I bought it as soon as it was available. I skipped the n800, because it wasn’t any improvement for my uses, and because I was pissed that Nokia had EOL’d my 770 after about a year. But, I was seduced by the hardware keyboard, daylight-visible screen, and extreme prettiness of the n810 to ignore my misgiving about Nokia, and get one. Again, early adopter. And the n810 is a fabulous device: well made, very useful, etc.
However, I noticed trend. Bugs for Maemo on the n810 got ignore, or closed “fixed in freemantle”. Features and development for the n810 (and n800) stopped. Everything added was not backwards compatible. Barely a year into my n810 ownership, and Nokia was already quietly EOLing it. Now, it sits in my car and acts as a GPS.
So, on to the n900. The hardware looks awesome. The software, ditto. I’m extremely excited about it as a device. But I can’t bring myself to actually care about it, because twice now, Nokia has screwed me. Come on guys: for a $400 – $500 device, you have to support it longer than a year! 3-4 minimum!
So, I’m not excited about the n900. I can’t afford to be burned again. I’ll stick with my Android phones for now.
“Features and development for the n810 (and n800) stopped. Everything added was not backwards compatible.”
Could you be more specific about this? I though that maemo isnt hardware dependend and that fixes / additions to maemo should work what ever device you have. Was there a new version of maemo and the new software was available only for that new release? Thanks for the explanation!
They stopped making images for the devices, and added dependencies on hardware that didn’t exist on the old hardware. Sure, most of maemo is open source (although all three ITs had closed source components), but Nokia stopped supporting them. I didn’t pay the maemo people $500; I paid Nokia. I expect them to support the device.
I *can* put anything I want on the devices (assuming I can get all the hardware to work, by hacking around the closed source drivers), but that’s entirely besides the point. If this is my phone, it has to work, and it has to continue to work, for as long as I need the phone.
I don’t use my ITs anymore, because they stopped improving, and started bit-rotting.
thanks! i’ll take your experiences into my considerations – i didnt really expect anything like this to be an issue … i really would enjoy having the n900 as probably anyone else, but a similarly soonish EOL would be quite a disappointment….
Take a look at the Pandora handheld. You might be interested. It does lack the phone and GPS, however.
I’m sorry to hear your disappointment in the Nokia tablets. I have been waiting because they earlier models didn’ t have the gsm/mobile data on board. Besides your experience I’ m afraid the tablets will lack broad support from software vendors. After Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm another platform. On the other hand, it’s a good concept and relative open. I will wait for the reviews.