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Ask HN: Geek phone / Phone to work
My girlfriend needs a new phone and she just told me that I could get a new one and she gets mine.
I have an HTC Magic, and my two options are Nokia N900 and HTC Desire.
The Desire is like the Magic, but with a faster (Snapdragon 1000Ghz) CPU and a newer version of the Android OS (2.1 and upgradeable to 2.2 Froyo) while I upgraded the Magic to 1.6 cyanogenmod, and it seems it will not be upgradeaable to 2.2.
As long as I've read
N900 pros:
Hardware keyboard
700+ Mb swap
Great browser with flash support (although Android 2.2 features flash support as well)
Maemo flavoured linux with out of the box linux shell
Great 5Mpx Carl Zeiss Camera
Great multi-tasking capabilities
32Gb internal space + microSD
Audio/Video codecs
N900 cons:
Bug 6063 (https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6063)
Resistive screen
Far Fewer apps than in Android Market
No portrait mode without exploiting a bug
Bigger
600 Mhz CPU
Battery Life (Many people reports that it doesn't even last a full day)
When I first read about the Nokia N900 i got excited: a linux computer in my pocket!! But bug 6063, battery life and resistive screen and quite a deal breaker for me...
On the other hand, I have already used an Android phone for almost a year now, and yet it sometimes freezes and I have to reboot, and is sometimes slow and unresponsive the overall experience is quite satisfying, and I think that with a better hardware (like the Snapdragon CPU) and newer version of Android (like 2.2 Froyo vs 1.6 Donut which I am currently using) would addrees these problems.
Maybe the rumored Nokia 920 solves the aforementioned issues, but it is not even officially anounced yet, so we will have to wait. Moreover, Nokia N900 uses Maemo 5, and the next step in Nokia phones will be MeeGo (Nokia Maemo + Intel Moblin).
What do you think? Is the N900 worth a try?
- pook 16y ago> (Snapdragon 1000Ghz) CPU Heh. That is one hell of a phone.
- jacquesm 16y agoMaybe he should time-share it with a local university?
- drKarl 16y agoOr with the World Comunity Grid with Boincoid, the port of BOINC to Android http://boincoid.sourceforge.net/ http://boincoid.sourceforge.net/
- jacquesm 16y agoThat'll do wonders for your battery life. The OP probably has a portable generator hooked up to his phone anyway so he probably doesn't care, but for people with regular phones this might be an issue.
- drKarl 16y agoOf course it will drain battery life. I don't intend to use it, only point that actually there is such application.
- jacquesm 16y agoYou seem to have done an awful lot of research on the N900, why not put the same amount of time in to researching the HTC Desire if it is going to be a choice between those two ?
- drKarl 16y agoYes, you're right, but if I take into consideration that I'm already an Android user, and I like Android but in my current phone it is sometimes unstable and slow, I guess that with a better CPU and updated firmware the experience with the HTC Desire should be far better than with the HTC Magic. I wish the N900 was usable but the cons seem to shadow the pros. I hope the next generation Maemo/MeeGo phone is better.
- dagw 16y agoEverybody I know who has an N900 basically say it is an awesome pocket computer that happens to come with a really crappy to mediocre phone app. Basically if you mainly want to do nerdy linuxy things, and can live with lackluster phone performance then get one. Otherwise you're likely to get frustrated.