I used to use a calendar. Now I use an N900.
As part of the excitement of getting the N900, way back in February 2010, I discovered that Ovi.com had a very cool online calendar feature; or maybe I discovered that in May, after I resumed using my beloved E71, rebounding from the initial heartbreak of the N900. In any case, on returning to the N900–the un-recovered abuse victim inevitably returns to the abuser–I discovered that Ovi.com does not sync with the N900. ! Well, nevermind, thought I, we will make do. Except then there is this other issue with the so-called complex recurring entries in the calendar. Don’t look here for detail on how to remedy that issue. Come here only to abandon hope.
In a nutshell, let’s say someone wants to enter all their regular work shifts as recurring entries, but then wants to change one–only one–of those future entries, for a day off let’s say. Not on the N900. Can’t be done. Recurring entries can only exist on the N900 if they are all identical. Welcome to my nightmare. And if you want something as exotic as editing each day as it passes to keep a record of events (like, to record the actual hours that you worked?) give up. There are alternatives; for example you could enter everything individually. One. By. One. But the best workaround I found was just going back to my E71.
The failure of the calendar on the N900 is so dismal–it wouldn’t even pass muster as a programming project for school–that it overshadows some of the device’s other failures. No MMS (except via the hack of fMMS, which does work, I guess, but only after tons of tweaking and arcane configuration, and even then never works in an integrated way with the phone). Or spluttering MfE (Mail for Exchange) performance. I got it to work. A couple times. And only for calendar synchronization. And when MfE did work, it wasn’t of much use. I’m not sure if this is because a synchronized crippled calendar, is still a crippled calendar, or because MfE sync with Google is unreliable; apparently Google chooses to work poorly with Open Source products. (Unless they are Open Source in name only, like Android.) 😉
The camera is good. The camera software is not. This may change with the now-extant PR1.3 upgrade, but that appears unlikely from early reports from those who have succeeded in upgrading–I can’t upgrade right now, but we’ll get to that. The hardware for the camera, and for the whole phone for that matter, is really very good. The software chooses to focus using the entire frame, which is good for some types of pictures, but not for all, and makes it almost unusable for macros (for which the phone has a specific setting). For macros the software should reduce the focus area to the center of the frame only–in fact it should do this for all images, since that would work as well for landscapes as for close-ups, and the N900 team does seem to have a deep aversion for making such things selectable.
Also, the camera software tries too hard with dark images; it over-amplifies dark pixels, creating low-light images that are very noisy. This works if you want to record your trip (the drug-induced kind) but only if you see a purple haze when the lights go down. It doesn’t do rainbows or kaleidoscopes. Only purple haze.
One other small complaint with the camera software. When a picture is taken, the phone allows you to share it right from the camera app. Unless you close the lens cover. And when I want to share a picture, I stop treating the phone like a camera (taking care not to smudge–or heaven forbid! scratch–the lens) and I start treating the phone like a keyboard, since I am going to type some things about the photo I want to share. Holding the phone like a keyboard, but not touching the camera lens, are mutually unlikely, if not exclusive. So when I start to type, I close the lens cover. But then the camera app closes, taking with it that intended-to-be-convenient feature of sharing right from the camera app! Jeesh.
I keep the E71 close. One of these days I am going to fling the N900 with great vigor against a hard surface. I won’t enjoy seeing it in pieces (though that will be interesting). And I won’t be happy to lose its lovely screen, along with its sometimes-fabulous camera. But then I can start keeping an accurate calendar again. One thing the N900 has taught me though; I don’t really need an accurate calendar. It has also taught me that I don’t really need it or the E71.
I almost forgot. I did mention the PR1.3 upgrade. Which I can’t get.
One of the things I do really like about the N900 is my ability to interact with it through Linux-based programs, like ssh and sftp. One thing which unlocked Nokia devices have always been good about is not corralling you into a limited feature set; they have always allowed wide latitude in accessing their devices’ many capabilities, most of those capabilities under-promoted. Or not promoted at all, like the streaming radio app on the E71. I don’t think Nokia ever promoted it. And it was separate from the media player, a detail which made it possible to listen to the local police radio stream, while simultaneously listening to The Doors. But I digress.
I often ssh into the N900, which is more preferable than using the onerous Application Manager on the phone. And, it seems, different at times. The AppManager will often not tell me of upgrades which are available via “apt-get upgrade”. And using apt-get tells me more on the command line. I sometimes need to know the things apt-get tells me because Nokia has chosen with the N900 to keep the most useful apps in the extras-devel repository. I know all the very cautious reasons for this, and all the horror stories of all the bricks (that from some dire reports seem to be raining down on us) as a result of people recklessly enabling extras-devel. My point is that Nokia could themselves have developed some of these essential programs instead of leaving them for independent developers to produce, sometimes poorly, and always slowly. As a result, most of the people pursuing the promise that the N900 holds, will inevitably enable the extras-devel (and the -testing) repositories.
This has had a side effect, at least in my experience. AppManager knew nothing of yesterday’s PR1.3 release, and still knows nothing of it today. Apt-get however told a very different story, and led me along a very different path, the painful details of which I will omit here. I discovered that apt-get will fail to do a dist-upgrade on my phone with the extras-devel repository enabled. It will not fail if extras-devel is disabled. But there is no upgrade available right now on my phone via apt-get dist-upgrade! What is interesting, however, is that yesterday, when everyone else was “upgrading flawlessly”, my phone did a HUGE regular upgrade (a plain “apt-get upgrade” not “dist-upgrade”), and by huge I mean close to if not over a thousand packages upgraded. As far as I can tell, my phone now has all of the meager improvements that PR1.3 offers, yet my “About Product” applet in Settings manager still says, “version 10.2010.19-1.002,” which is the PR1.2 version.
But this is all speculation. For all I know, if I ever get it, the PR1.3 upgrade may make of my N900 the perfect companion for which I have always pined. Ha! I just can’t get the upgrade because I made the phone do (by enabling extras-devel and -testing) what they promised it would do when I bought it. 😐
So that is my story with the N900. I love it and I hate it. I am not sure I even want to be bothered with tracking down why it won’t “oficially” upgrade. That is just another example of the tedious arabesque odysseys this phone forces me to take all the time. I do so miss the completeness of the non-touch Symbian operating system. The N900 was the best thing that ever happened to my E71.
But I do like the camera. Kinda. I’m going to go take some drugs now.