Hissings on the N900 - The Hisspurr Continuum

Rodney

Time to continue with our thoughts on this "Marmite" of a device. Love it or hate it, it will definitely stir up an emotion or two.

To keep the purrs going I would like to pass comment on the Contacts and Conversations applications. Something us geeky cats have been hissing about for ages on a Nokia device. Finally a paw in the right direction. The IM integration is great (albeit mostly by 3rd party plugins). It would also be nice if it showed available contacts automatically at the top but that is a minor hiss. But the real killer is the conversations app - threaded SMS and chat messages. PURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! This makes me a very happy puddy tat.


Ok so what can I say about the App Manager. Well why does it constantly need to refresh - what happened in the last 2 seconds that it feels the need to refresh. Nothing!!! So why it does this I have no idea. I do know one thing it makes my daddy say some things. Quite loudly too!! Us felines, as cat lovers will know, like to chase things. Especially things on the move. So for us the App Manager is Purrfect for the wrong reasons. Because of the constant refreshing with that green circle going round and round and round. Its great but does make me a little dizzy. As the regards the quantity and quality of apps available for the N900. Well what can you say. There are a few really nice ones that stand out namely WITTER, BARRIOSQUARE, HERMES, FRIENDSTATUS but for the most part they are mediocre. I am not trying to take anything away from the guys that do it in their spare time afterall I need my 18 hrs of sleep a day. You do a grand job but its not quite the same as a professional team. The lack of Ovi Store support for paid apps does not help.



Del

My turn to listen to some music (my bro always hogs the headphones when it comes to the music section so I sat on him. Hehe) and I am glad I did because the media player on the N900 is nothing short of superb. The loadspeakers are damn good too. And the best thing is I can download an OGG codec and play files at 500kbps. So purrleasing to a delicate pussy cat's ears. Especially with the BH905 headset so I don't have to listen to my brothers constant whinging and moaning. Whinging and moaning. Grrrr!!!





One app that kept me interested in the N900 was (believe it or not) Mahjong and I am not that bad at it either with all the boards completed in under 5 minutes. Not bad for a pussy cat if I purr so myself - although a well kept secret is my pedigree as Finland's current feline tic tac toe champion. Shhhh!!!!









Right sorry to put a downer on things but (hack, hack, cough, hack, hack - oops sorry Hairball!!) but onto Maps. Certainly nothing to purr about. It doesn't do anything. Certainly no use to our Jailers who can't find their way out of Ikea (it has arrows in case you don't know). I am sure this situation will not be rectified until the Meego build for the N900 is ready and maybe not even then. I do hope so. As I hope more quality apps will appear when the Meego build comes.

Also daddy jailer took the N900 away the other day - when he brought it back one thing was obvious. It was faster - great for chasing the screen around. I believe he did something with the cpu clock speed and I believe 800Mhz was uttered. I can't be sure as I never quite understand his rantings.


Now my bro Rodney will attempt to answer the Ultimate Question - no not Life, the Universe and everything and the answer is not 42.

Is The NOKIA N900 more interesting than a dripping tap?

Hissings on the N900 - (plus a few Purrs) - Our initial thoughts

Rodney

I am not sure whether to start with the Purrs or the Hisses, or maybe just mix them up so I hisspurr throughout.

Now I am quite a large cat (not as large as my brother but then he is a pig!) - we Maine Coons are amongst the largest cats - as daddy will testify when he picks me up (much to our disgust). So even with our size and obvious strength that brings (great for bashing mummy and daddy in the face when I want my breakfast) I struggled with the weight of the N900. Consequently my two paw test failed miserably (btw I have opposable paws). Its just way too heavy for even me. So both mine and my bro's tests are done with the N900 firmly placed on the ground.

Whilst on the subject of size etc I feel the keyboard needs a mention - do the Nokia designers hate us pussy cats - they must do. The keyboard is unusable, especially the top row. I can't get my pads in there to hit any of the keys and even daddy struggles to use it. I heard him the other day saying some things I don't quite understand but normally says to me when I have done something wrong. However it must be said that the virtual keyboard is by far the best Nokia have ever produced and better than any we have tried. Purrrrrr. Big Purr there. But I still wish I could use T9 one pawed too. Its a shame Nokia got stuck with it being a tablet and hence ignored portrait mode completely. Oh well such is a cats life.

Whilst I am still purring I should mention the kickstand. Great for watching our favourite kitty shows whilst the jailers sleep. Here is me chilling to The Big Bang Theory. Courtesy of daddy and "his precious".







Del (A happy-ish paw gamer)

Well what can I say about the N900 and gaming - purrfect, purrplexing. Both really. Why purrplexing you ask? Well I shall tell. I am purrplexed by the lack of games for what is an incredible gaming machine. I believe Nokia should have done more to encourage companies to develop for this platform. Look at Bounce Evolution and Angry Birds. Both by Rovio. Stunning!! Rovio themselves said they prefer the N900 to the iphone for developing games. So what is stopping developers. I have ideas (yes cats can have ideas you know) but no evidence. It is my belief the main cause is the lack of a decent app store for the platform that is putting companies off. Daddy to this day has still not managed to purchase the extra levels for angry birds. Well I believe that is part of the cause. Maybe companies just didn't think Maemo 5 would be around for long and well they were right. Whatever the cause is its a damn right shame. Why can't Nokia get this stuff right before a device is released. I was so looking forward to some serious gaming on this device. Instead a few 3rd party guys have done some ports of games which are ok but which lack the polish a company like Rovio brings. Hopefully with the advent of Meego and the weight of Intel and Nokia some more Developers will get involved. Time will tell. I guess I will be getting a lot of sleeps in before I see any more serious games. Time to rest those paws.

Purrings on the X6 - Purr 2 The Final Purr

Rodney

We kitties have very delicate hearing so music playback quality is very important - unfortunately although the X6 is quite good Nokia still ignore the true music lovers need for Ogg and Flac. We may be a small niche market but its a market Nokia does not cater for. Hopefully with Symbian going open source future devices will get this support whether via Nokia directly (our prefurred option) or by 3rd party developers. Nokia purrlease help us poor kitties out or we will invade Nokia House and drop fur everywhere (not really but it would be fun to try)

Del (A Paw Gamer)

I, like my fellow felines like to get out paws dirty with a bit of gaming - now you would think as the X6 has a nice capacitive screen that gaming would be superb. Especially as we now know thanks to my brother that the fur between our pads does not impede the responsiveness of the screen. But no. Sadly this was not the case. I happen to be a bit of a Skyforce reloaded fan and have played this game on daddies N97 and N97 mini (shh he doesn't know) but on the X6 it only worked with accelerometer control and not touch. I was so disappointed. However I must say other games worked great especially the Nokia published games such as Dance Fabulous (great for kitty grooving) and Climate Mission for the more concientious kitties out there.


Must Have Kitty Applications:




We kitties do not travel well and are prone to pooping and being sick when we are upset so making a journey as short and stress free as possible is very important to us. This is why we use Waze a social GPS turn by turn navigation application that is actually fun too. You can find Waze here. It supports all S60 V5 devices and V3 devices too that have a GPS module. The application is pretty easy to use plus if you like mapping you get to draw new roads as Waze is totally user generated. You get points for mapping roads, updating these roads using the online map editor, adding street numbers etc. These points generate a world rank (daddy is only ranked 1402 at moment - pretty lame but what can you do). Because waze is user generated you get all important traffic reports which is purrfect for keeping journey times to a minimum thus helping to prevent nasty smells and keeping daddy happy. Waze also has a Chat feature so we can also have kitty chats with fellow feline wazers - all in all a purrfect (well nearly) navigation app for kitties and humans alike.






Are you a musical kitty? - do you have a last.fm subscription? Then you need Mobbler. It does everything a kitty could want from a last.fm client. Start a new station, view friends, shoutbox, playlists, recent tracks etc. Its simple (great for us technically challenged kitties).





Well what can I say about Gravity that hasn't been said before. Nothing as it is quite simply the best (Better than all the rest) . It does everything a Twitty client should and a lot more too. I can checkin on Foursquare at all my favourite hangouts (The Back Yard, The local kitty Club, The Back Alley, everywhere a kitty wants to be) and it tells me where all my pawpals are. Great for a Tomcat if you know what I mean. If that wasn't enough I can also see my friends facebook updates and comment when I want to. And the great thing about Gravity is its developer. Jan Ole Suhr continues to improve it and add features. Not an easy task when you consider how good it is already.

These 3 applications are all top treats. Mobbler and Gravity can be found in Ovi Store. Waze is just downloaded from Waze's website.


Final conclusions on the X6

Its a good device considering the usual hardware limitations of the current S60 V5 devices. But its let down by the terrible onscreen keyboard forcing us kitty cats to use the T9 keypad. Which is very responsive but not particularly fast. The UI still needs improvements and kinetic scrolling throughout. Hopefully these will come in future firmware updates.
So without further ado our Final Paw Score is

Purrings on the X6 - Purr 1

So the boys having spent the day with the Nokia X6 have finally delivered their verdict.

Rodney

My main concern before trying out the device was the fur between my pads. Maine Coons tend to have a lot and I thought this may impede the purrformance of the capacitive touchscreen. I am happy to announce it did not. So all us kitties out there can be happy with the knowledge that we can use a capactive touchscreen without fear of our paws being trimmed.




Next up I wanted to see how the kinetic scrolling worked on the capacitive screen - I was very purrleased to see that music player with all the pretty pictures - something I will talk about later and the contacts had kinetic scrolling which worked extremely well. Better in fact than daddies favourite, the N97 white which I can never get hold of because he won't let me touch it. He calls it "his PRECIOUS" - how lame!! I will sneak a play one night when he sleeps. Anyway back to matter at paw. The kinetic scrolling - so how good was it - well for starters one swipe of my paw can take me through over 100 contacts - As for the music player - 6 swipes got me through all 553 songs and pretty pictures. I do like having songs with the pretty pictures attached something that has been very hard to do on a nokia device but now seems that solutions are there. Media Monkey and Ovi Player both do it very well now. Although it should be said I can get several sleeps in while Ovi Player is transfering tracks. A good thing you might say but I am not the most patient of Puddy tats so Media Monkey was the best as it took just 30 minutes to do the 553 tracks loaded with pretty pictures.

Del

Hi everyone - unfortunately the sniff test did not work out well as it really had no smell. Such a shame as I do like my toys to smell good and daddy refused to put some catnip inside the battery cover. This made me very sad.

Anyway on to more serious purrings. What did make me very purrleased was that I could play with and hug the X6 for many many hours without daddy taking it away and doing something with it involving a cable stuck in the wall. Nearly 36 hours of sleeping, hugging, playing and chatting with my bro Rodney on Ovi Contacts which incidentally was completely stable for all 36 hrs. I was very impressed indeed and it was still going strong with two of those little dashes in the top right hand corner when daddy took it from me with a bit of a fight - got a couple of scratches in. Muahahaha


Anyway after much debate our paw score so far is

The Blogging Team

Hi my name is Rodney and I will be helping my daddy perform vital tests on his Nokia devices to ensure their usability. The most important of which is the "two paw test" which we feel crucial in the success of a device.





And my name is Del "Lovely Jubbly" and I too will be helping my daddy test devices. My most crucial test is the "sniff" test. Afterall a device should not smell bad.





The boys are brothers and are just over two years old now. The right age I feel to start getting into blogging and mobiles.