After 4 weeks from ordering Nokia N900 device arrived at my place. Now I have one week to check is everything working and if not then request RMA from Nokia.

First feelings? Heavy and bulky. It is bigger then each of phones which I owned and feels bigger then N810 tablet (due to thickness).

OMAP3 processor which is in N900 has lot of power and it is nicely used — transitions are nice, normal DivX movies plays without problems. No lag noticed so far.

But how about software? This is other thing ;( Some things are just like they were in Maemo — more or less broken by design, some are missing, some things which were in previous releases are missing etc. For example application manager still does not allow to install more then one application at once and still does not scroll on keypress or limit entries on typing (which Contacts do).

Contacts application integrates also Instant Messaging. It looks like someone read my previous post about defining good contacts application — you have people and can add Jabber/Skype/ICQ/MSN/SIP/etc protocols to each of them. Looks really nice. But lacks any way to automatize merging of entries from different accounts so it took me a while to get most of them merged ;(

Email application is a disaster. It looks like it does not cache any data so going into my inbox (with just 550 mails) require half minute to get it refreshed — Profimail on my E66 phone handle it much much better. And I still did not found a way to go into inbox->mailinglists->development->oe folder which currently has ~14000 (yes, fourteen thousands) emails. According to talk on #maemo channel Maemo5 email client do not have an option to subscribe IMAP folders yet.

Software launcher is changed — no longer editable menu with categories but just set of icons sorted randomly(?).

Good thing is that PIM data got fetched from my Nokia E66 without any problems — I just had to pair them and everything got synced. Bad thing is that so far there is no way to sync with SyncML servers like ScheduleWorld ;(

I hope that some of problems will disappear after some use and/or in next software releases.

And one more thing — this is first Maemo device which has Polish language support out-of-box!

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz N900 arrived was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Nokia N900 discount
2. Things to check with Nokia N900
3. Syncing mobile devices

When I was choosing my current phone (Nokia E66) one of things which I wanted was ability to make video calls. I did not know what for I will use them but why not having them? Especially when they are treated as normal calls by my GSM operator (except roaming).

Some time ago I discovered why video calls are good to have. I have small daughter (~20 months now). When my wife has to travel somewhere (or I have to) we use video calls to wave her on good morning or before going sleep etc. Mira’s reaction is always positive and we usually have to be careful as she wants to keep phone and look at caller’s face.

And so far Nokia failed to implement video calls on N900 device :( So people — fix it or my daughter will force me to take my phone as a backup :D

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz Video calls are important feature of today phone was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Things to check with Nokia N900
2. Discounted Devices Program: N900
3. ai_ap_application_installer roxx

It was over eight years ago when I wrote application last time. Since then I had my hands in countless programs, libraries etc. but never wrote something new from scratch. Until recently…

Some time ago Mickey Lauer presented his module player for iPhone. I like the idea and started thinking about creating such one for my devices. After some discussions about Modland music collection with him I started coding.

To make things as simple as possible I used Qt framework with Phonon for playing (GStreamer modplug plugin underneath). Current version maybe is not so beauty but it is usable and works fine. Application will be GPL — I used code from Qt demos, read random snippets of code from other programs etc.

Things already implemented:

• playing local modules
• fetching modules from modland archive
• author/song selection
• playing next song on song end (with looping on author)
• seeking
• volume change (will probably get removed from UI)

Things to do:

• error handling (especially fetching related)
• download progressbar
• playing counters
• favorites
• playlists
• small screen usability (stacked windows/tabs)
• and others…

For readers: what is a real name of Lord Performer? :D

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz I wrote module player in Qt was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Released sources of my Protracker module player
2. Very small test of Maemo media players
3. BUG has arrived

Some time ago Nokia offered discounts for their newest tablet: N900 for about two hundred people which were active in Maemo community. For European ones the price is more or less 250€ which looks nice compared to original price which is ~600€.

But there is one nasty part in it — devices have just one week of warranty. What can be checked during that time? Dead pixels?

Situation got more strange when I looked at Maemo forum where people lists misc discounts which they found on the Internet… For example Dell had one for $442 which makes it just a bit more expensive then DDP ones but gives you normal warranty.

This is weird — developers and active people from community gets worse offer then normal users. And additionally all DDP orders are marked as “Critical” which probably is other way of saying “ignore as long as possible” because tomorrow there will be two weeks since I ordered N900 in DDP and all I got was locking of 250€ on my credit card and nothing more.

Previous developer programs were better at handling users (at least that is what I hear from people which were part of it).

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz DDP — does it has any sense? was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Discounted Devices Program: N900
2. Nokia N900 discount
3. Things to check with Nokia N900

My Symbian based Nokia E66 phone has Ovi Maps installed so one day I decided to make use of routing function in it when I was driving to the town (on a road where I did not needed to be guided). BT headset on ear, paired with phone and let’s drive.

At start road was selected quite properly, the problems started later. Many times it was recalculating route (the funniest was when I stopped at traffic lights it recalculated route and then made it again after driving for 5 meters). Directions changes information were also distracting: “on 200m go left” then “go right” when I reached point. Or “go left,right” when it was straight road or when I had to turn right at crossing.

I have to admit that after two tries I totally gave up on driving with it and switched back to TomTom device. But there is one good thing in Ovi Maps — it works quite good for walk navigation. I used it in many cities abroad and it handled. I hope that Maemo5 version will work at least that good as Symbian one.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz Driving with Ovi Maps was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Online map services and routing
2. Car navigation with N810
3. Nokia N900 discount

Today I found some time and played with Maemo 5 SDK. As I am one of those who do not like Scratchbox I used official image for VirtualBox. After boot I landed in GNOME session of Ubuntu 8.10 and after few moments I got Maemo 5 started thanks to instructions from forum.

Ok, so let’s test it. As official release notes mentioned Polish translation I switched to it. What I saw was disaster… And the problem is that latest firmware has same version available. Examples:

Note: I did system update by using “apt-get update;apt-get upgrade” followed by “fakeroot dpkg --configure -a” (because sbox root ‘emulation’ was too weak for “libosso-abook”). As a result translation “6.0+r7250+0m5″ were installed (”calendar-l10n-plpl” package). Scary, isn’t it?

Next thing which I looked at was instant messaging — which I was not able to use since there was no Jabber support. It has ICQ, Gadu-Gadu, MSN, Sametime, Salut, QQ, Groupwise, Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo but no Jabber. I even installed “telepathy-extras” but that added me yet another MSN and still no Jabber… Probably other package needs to be installed but why it has to be? OK, maybe SDK image does not contain same packages as device one but why it supports such poor thing like Gadu-Gadu out-of-box?

Contacts app is improved when compared to Maemo4 one — finally something closer to application which I described some time ago in other post. Has some bugs (I can not enter “+48123456789″ as number because only digits are available (and ‘p’ for internal numbers).

Looks like there will be a long list of things to report as bugs when/if I will get my N900 (so far it is somewhere in deep nowhere). Why not reporting them now? Simple — I want to be able to check them on device itself.

Other things I will check next time. Now it is time to sleep.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz Played a bit with Maemo 5 SDK was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. Nokia N800 emulation
2. Nokia N900 discount
3. Localizing Maemo

I just ordered N900 for 250€ directly from Nokia thanks to discount which I got recently.

Plan to write review after first days of use so stay tuned.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz Discounted Devices Program: N900 was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. DDP — does it has any sense?
2. Nokia N900 discount
3. N900 arrived

On Friday evening I got email from Quim Gil (Nokia) with information that I was selected for [Nokia N900](http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n900) device discount. Yes, even I got it. Not decided yet will I apply for it or not (need to check cash state).

Some time ago Andrea Gallo from ST-Ericsson called me and proposed participation in their workshop during ELC Europe. It will be about NHK15 developer board which is based on STn8815 cpu (arm926 core + dsp). I will present Poky Linux and OpenEmbedded based environments on it.

Few days later board arrived at home in a big carton box filled with stuff.

As it is shown on picture above package contains everything needed to use board. From top-left:

• tv out cable
• board
• debug board (serial + ethernet)
• miniUSB cable
• speakers + battery cable + wifi antenna
• ribbon cables to connect debug board
• PSU (5V)
• UK/EU/US power plugs
• headset
• serial cable

By default board comes without operating system flashed. The only thing available is test picture which can be used to test does device works at all:

NHK15 offers many connectors:

• audio in/out
• SD/MMC slot
• battery connector (cable included, battery not)
• speakers (separated left/right — both are included)
• WiFi antenna (board uses same chip as Nokia tablets)
• FM antenna
• TV out (cable included)
• miniAB USB device/host port
• camera (daughterboard with image sensor included)
• debug board (which provides serial + Ethernet ports)
• ETM/Nexus ports
• SIM socket

There is 128MB of memory and 128MB NAND + 256MB OneNAND for storage. Connection with world can be done over serial, Ethernet, WiFi or Bluetooth. Screen has WVGA resolution and touchscreen attached.

Now I have Linux running on it but plan to switch to Poky Linux (supported) and OpenEmbedded based systems (Ångström for start) soon.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz NHK15 arrived was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Related posts:

1. ST-Ericsson Community Workshop 2009
2. Bug Labs and their BUG device
3. ELC Europe 2009

What defines good Contacts application? Some will say that it depends on device which runs it, but I think that it is not true.

I am using Nokia E66 phone. It is running Symbian S60 3rd Edition FP1 (what ever it means). As a phone it has phone book called “Contacts”. Simple application which allows to have unlimited amount of entries with quite big set of possible fields. But phone also has GPS unit and is able to connect to Internet via WiFi, Bluetooth and GSM. Why I mention it? Because default address book ignore those elements…

So what should good Contacts application do? Except standard fields like phone numbers, SIP “numbers”, email addresses, web addresses, home/work addresses, birthdays, anniversaries, pictures, notes… I think that things like GPS coordinates for each address would be nice — add “Drive/Walk to” functionality and you get phone which can really be named “Navigator” (IIRC there was PalmOS powered PDA with that function).

Next thing which would be nice (especially with flat rate for GPRS) would be integration of IM communicator. Why I have to launch separate application to check who from my friends is available on Jabber, Skype, ICQ, GaduGadu, AIM, MSN etc. Why not have device auto login into those networks to check who from entries in address book is available to chat/talk with. And then let me choose do I want to make GSM call or Skype, SIP or other VoIP call. This will also remove situation which is present in most multi-protocol communicators: few entries for one person just because it use 7 accounts on 5 protocols. And let integrate all chats in one application with SMS/MMS stuff — this is done on Palm Pre according to their promotion videos.

And all those things should sync with external servers of course. So if I have Facebook account then let it fetch my connections from there and merge into address book — this is done on Palm Pre already. But let it be also second way (if user choose to) — so phone will check who from my contacts have a Facebook account and send join request.

Next thing: groups… Symbian has groups support and this is working, user can even define conferences numbers for groups and few other things. Next step should be linking contacts — you know: wife, kids, secretary, co-worker who do your job when you are on vacations… PalmOS Agendus had something like that, Symbian has only imitation (it is possible to enter person name but thats all).

Will there be such application? Maybe one day…

Related posts:

1. Calling on Maemo?
2. Choosing next cellphone
3. Syncing mobile devices