Obsessions: Maemo

Ah, the mythical PR 1.2. N900 owners have been waiting for the official release of this software update for so long that some of us had given up any hope that it would actually see the light of day but last week, Nokia released the update which cleaned up a few things and was, overall, supposed to make my N900 that much better.

Having spent 2 hours on Friday night installing the new update, the update itself only takes about 20 minutes but I had to do a back-up first – just in case, I must admit I wish I had waited. The new update does include a few new features and widgets that are pretty cool (including an email widget which I was excited to check out) but the drawbacks are so many I’m pining for a return to the previous version of the software.

Here’s what I’ve noticed in the two days since I’ve installed PR1.2:

Battery life is even worse than before. Admittedly I installed a few widgets that live-update and likely eat a lot of battery. I turned them all off yesterday after my battery drained in 4 hours on Saturday and though it’s better, the battery performance is still worse than it was before. Good thing I have a spare I’m now carrying around for emergencies.
The Application Manager is gone to shit. It takes forever to load and I’m having issues uninstalling and installing new software. The uninstall feature doesn’t seem to be working at all (it won’t load any of the programs I have installed instead saying “no programs installed”) and the install feature is hit and miss sometimes loading but mostly just freezing while trying to load the download menu (I’m having Windows Vista flashbacks), forcing me to close program. Also a bummer: the search for applications feature has also disappeared, a disappointment since I use that all the time.
The scrolling speed does seem to be improved but the applications seem to be taking longer to load.
New night mode video feature is cool but I haven’t had too much of a chance to use it. Looking forward to the opportunity soon.
New layout of onscreen keyboard is sweet.
Media player is not working well. Actually, it’s being a pain in the ass. I transfer my music onto my phone in mass media storage mode which loads my N900 has a hard drive and allows me to dump my music directly into the Sounds folder. When I open the media player, it adds the new songs to the media library. That’s not happening right now. I added 100+ new songs last night which still aren’t appearing in the media library. They play when I force them to (going through the file manager and finding the song) but they’re not loading in. If that’s not bad enough, sometimes when I start the application and try to browse through the artist list, the list comes up empty. It’s frustrating as heck, especially since I’m constantly listening to music.

As it stands, the update has so far been more trouble than it’s really worth. I’m going to do a little digging to see if I can solve some of these issues but if I’m still having trouble by the weekend, be assured that I will be looking for a how to on rolling back to the previous version.

UPDATE: After a bit of online poking around, discovered that folks were having issues with certain themes and PR1.2. I reverted back to one of the pre-installed Nokia themes and voila - seems that most of my complaints are mute (except that the application installer is still slow as hell).

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of partaking in the first of what I hope will be more Mobile Geeks Meetup.

The event was organised by Tom who you may recall hooked me up with an N900 a few weeks ago. I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially since I’m more of a geeky phone user rather than a developer but I went, thinking I might learn something new and go figure, I did.

The night started with a presentation from Samir, a Nokia expert (I think – it was so loud I missed his formal introduction) who started off by wowing the crowd with the N900 and its various features. From the built in social networking aspects (like integrated uploading to services like Flickr and Facebook) to multitasking and the awesome browser which plays in-browser flash (meaning you don’t need to open a new application to watch YouTube videos and the like). It seemed a few folks in the crowd were pretty familiar with the device even if they hadn’t actually seen one (though I did get a couple of over the shoulder looks while I was tweeting away before the meeting started – mind you, with the new red protective case, it’s hard to tell what phone it is).

Samir then continued with an overview of MeeGo, the recently announced new platform Nokia is helping to develop. My non-geeky understanding of things is that MeeGo is a sort of cross device open source OS which will allow users to run the same system on all of their devices from their cell phones to their connected TVs. What that means is that rather than running one set of applications on your phone or pocket pc, your netbook, laptop and whatever else you might use on a regular basis – you’ll be able to run the same applications on all devices. The bonus for developers? One set of APIs with only minor user experience changes for each device.

From here the discussion moved into some “above-Marina’s-head” talk about development, DRM and cross platform integration (there was some muffled chat about Android application on MeeGo devices).

One of the major highlights of the night was news of the first MeeGo device to be released later this year. I’m excited to see what that new device and what MeeGo has to offer. It may mean another upgrade next year but from my limited reading so far, it looks like there will be a MeeGo install available for the N900 later this year. We’ll have to wait and see what it offers over the current OS and what sort of applications I have to choose from.

Tom also had some cool toys on display including a couple of E72s and the two Booklet 3G mini laptops which are really spiffy. I’d love to play with one of those for a few days. If all the new info wasn’t enough, I also walked away with a bit of swag – a great new bag and one of the coolest USB sticks I’ve ever seen.