Maemo meetup, Chicago

:D

I was there! Yesterday night, after some years meaning to go to the “Evening with S60″ events in Chicago, I finally was able to go to one. This post won’t have many pictures, mostly because I was more excited about playing with the N900s than about taking pictures. :P So, things I found noteworthy, in no particular order:

• The thing is small. First thing I noticed about it when first seeing it. Even after seeing comparisons with other phones on the internet. It made a T-Mobile G1 look incredibly bloated in comparison.
• Which makes the screen insanely sharp. 800×480 on that diagonal is superb. My camera couldn’t get the separate pixels.
• Back to the screen, the cursor mode on the browser is brought by swiping from outside. From what I got that means the touch sensitive area goes a little beyond the screen. Maybe gesture control using that area is possible?

Samir, awful pic courtesy 5800

• After the intro, there were a couple presentations. Head of Maemo operations, Samir Agarwal, showed a slide using tv out on his N900, when something went unresponsive on his N900 he simply took out a second one from his other pocket to continue it, it was kinda cool :P

Yes it can be used with gloves. Don't underestimate Chicago weather btw.

• Anssi Makela’s (or at least I think it was his) N900 had a One Piece wallpaper :P
• Lots of people asking about .mkv with subtitles support, there’s always mplayer amirite.
• One thing I noticed on the camera, focus is kept after the camera key is let go. So for example, press it to focus on something close and let the button go. On S60 phones focus goes back to infinity, the N900 keeps focused on close. Way better in my opinion.
• Macro mode was great too, able to get way closer to the subject than any other phone I saw. (mostly comparing with my N95 classic)
• Slider was solid, opened and closed it a couple times just to check it. No play and with a pleasant noise. (for comparison, I think the N97 is too loud)
• I saw Bounce running along with a flash video on the browser. Sure, that was shown in videos, but to see it live in front of you is just wow.
• One of the demo N900s had Transmission installed, with a torrent being seeded, 1gb upload on the counter. Edit: Whoops, sorry, it was a legal torrent. Still, the concept of torrenting on your phone is what matters here.

Way smaller than what I'd thought it'd be.

• Supposedly you can kill browser windows separately if they hang by using the “End task” option in the power button menu. Does that mean they’re using the Chrome/IE8 approach of one process per tab? Awesome if so, couldn’t check.
• I tried typing both “*#06#” and “*#0000#” on the dialer, nothing happened. Just thought it was noteworthy :P

You get that info on the Settings app. Also, there were at least 2 different software versions running across all N900s.

• Installing applications is amazingly easy and fast, installed AlmostTI on one of them. Clicked install then switched to the task manager, then when I noticed, the icon was in the main menu.
• And as nothing can be perfect, I didn’t really like the kickstand, doesn’t seem really solid.

Now for the meta part:

• All the Maemo people are incredibly nice, and it was a really personal thing, as in they showed their own devices with what they use them for. Extra kudos for John Loughney, Collaboration Manager for Maemo, as I was messing with his N900 the most. :P
• There will be two ways of installing apps, Ovi Store and App. Manager. Inside the App Manager you have the maemo.org repository, you can add extras. Besides that maemo.nokia.com’s Maemo Select section will pick the best apps from both the Ovi Store and the community for promotion. Seemed a little confusing at first, but seems that Maemo Select will just have .deb links, and won’t be yet another store.
• Software updates are really fast in the internal development, and I think the latest they showed us was a second release candidate version.
• Regarding updates, no promises made, but we were told to expect portrait browsing in time for Christmas. Nice.
• I didn’t get anything in the raffles :(, but I got a totally sweet shirt and three stickers with the Maemo penguins. lol

:D

I tried scanning one of the stickers for the penguin graphics (because they’re totally sweet irl) but it didn’t come out nicely. Oh well, if any Maemo marketing people are reading this and want to hook me up with the original graphic, feel free :P

I hate scanners

Aaaand that was it I think? I’m posting this two days after the event, so maybe I’m forgetting something, I’ll update this post if I do remember any other cool things.

To conclude: Man do I want an N900.