Ideas & Opinions, Products & Services
Nokia N900 portrait mode voted top of your wish list
By Mike on 14 October 2009
GLOBAL – Last week we posted a reader poll here on Conversations based on your suggestions, asking you what extra functionality would you most like to see in the Nokia N900? Now, we never imagined quite so many of you would be so keen to get involved, but the response has been amazing – we just closed the poll a few minutes ago, with well in excess of 5,000 votes stuffed into our digital ballot box, making this officially the biggest poll yet to appear on Conversations.
Earning the top slot on your Nokia N900 wish list with 12% of the vote is the ‘ability to run everything on the N900 in portrait mode‘. Read on to find out how your other most-wanted suggestions fared in the popularity stakes.
MMS came in second place corralling 10% of the vote, with a number of you sharing your thoughts in the comments section. Here’s what Peter had to say:
Peter: “I use MMS a lot. So, no MMS is in fact a deal-breaker. Few of my friends have e-mail on their phones, therefor to communicate in real-time with photo’s, MMS is a necessity. I also use MMS instead of sending postcards when on holiday. Due to roaming costs this is cheaper that sending e-mail. So: please bring MMS to the N900.”
Another reader, Fadi, touched on MMS not being crucial, but it being a useful occasional feature:
Fadi: “Although this is an “old” technology and is barely used (at least by me)… but it’s nice to know that it’s there and I can send an MMS when I am truely in need to do that.”
Interestingly, the suggestion for ‘Wi-Fi music streaming and sync’ landed third place on the podium with 9% of your vote, clearly highlighting that many of you see the N900 as a prime entertainment device. Is that truly where a lot of its potential lies? It would certainly seem so, with ‘gaming’ voted into fourth place with 8%, alongside the ‘ability to use N900 as a multimedia remote control for home entertainment’ earning an equal percent of the vote. Both suggestions being ones I’d personally love to see explored and brought brilliantly to life by the dev community. Likewise the ‘ability to use phone/calling in landscape mode as well as portrait’ and being able to ‘run Symbian apps on N900 via emulator’ each landing 8% of your vote.
Next up on your N900 extra functionality wish list, with 7% is ’social media syncing – ability to sync Facebook profile photos/birthdays to N900 contact list’. Certainly an exciting area for development. Fifth place was shared with the ‘ability to tag photos with contacts in your contact list’. Another great suggestion that struck a chord with many of you.
Extra photography talents snapped into sixth place with a ‘panoramic feature for photos’ of the shoot-and-stitch variety securing 6% of the vote. Earning the same percent of votes were ‘flashlight’ functionality and a ‘driving profile with messages automatically read out-loud when received’ – even though this was bottom of your wish list it still managed to warrant over 300 votes, which still makes it a much-wanted suggestion.
Do you agree with how the vote played out and what surprised you most? As always please share your comments directly below.
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(cc) Mauro [...]
October 14th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
being able to run Symbian apps on N900 via emulator would be awesome.
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Sean Reply:
October 18th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Maybe I am missing something, but why?
Symbian OS is designed to run on devices which don’t have the hardware required to run a traditional desktop OS such as Linux. It supports a smaller range of programs. It may be the best OS for such mobile devices, but I can’t see a single reason why you would want to run S60 apps on Maemo via an emulator. Particularly not as compilers will be available to allow porting or development of native Maemo versions of any S60 apps.
In fact I would be concerned that if such an emulator was available it would become an excuse NOT to port s60 apps to Maemo and there would be a risk native apps would not become available.
So I for one hope such an emulator is never available!
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Charlie Reply:
January 24th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
Very valid point you make – but shazam still isn’t available on my N900
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October 14th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
The vote results were spot on! How many of these suggestions Nokia will heed and..implement, only they know!
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October 14th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I think, these reader polls, should have something to do with Nokia’s developers! When that much of interest is in “portrait mode for every thing”, then nokia have to do something about it, because we want that! and about emulators, please nokia, put that lovely mario world game and related emulator on N900. I really love that game, to see and play. Because it’s the most loved experiences in my childhood.
Thanks.
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October 14th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
When you add it a +/- margin of error pretty much everything on here seems to be important.
For me, running S60 apps and expanding network coverage (in the US – not just T-Mobile) would mean this is the killer phone in the market today.
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October 14th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
It’s quite astonishing that Nokia doesn’t have a Pakistan-specific official website in the Asia Pacific section of http://www.nokia.com, even though Nokia’s cell phones are a hit in the booming mobile phone industry of the country. It gets more shocking when we realize that Pakistan is the 6th largest nation in the world with people with jobs and doing some good businesses (the country is moving forward a little less than impressively though…still moving at a nice decent pace). It’s glad to see Bangladesh listed in the Asia Pacific section as Bangladesh is the 7th largest nation in the world. I think Nokia should initiate a Pakistan-specific website as well ASAP so that Nokia cell phone buyers can have the facility of registering their original Nokia products with Nokia Pakistan.
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October 14th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
randr will rotate the screen, someone just needs to enable an app on the phone to use the accelerometer. I used to have the power button rotate my screen on my n810, it worked for most well written apps some apps though would not work in portrait but I could live with that the question is how does their new ui handle the change since it no longer has the hardware app switcher button it is reliant on the software button
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October 14th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Nokia, this is your chance to redeem yourselves after the shortcomings of the N97!
You have asked your audience what they want in the N900 and the message is clear, MMS and portrait mode are a necessity if this device is to succeed among this masses.
Add this much needed functionality and you will have a handset worthy of competing with the competition!
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October 15th, 2009 at 3:02 am
I wish I would have had this in my head earlier, but it would have been nice to see the N900, and the Maemo5 platform as a whole, push the NFC envelope a good bit more. I think that native support for some/all of those protocols would do wonders for adoption and the use of open source development/tools within areas like finance, transportation, and infrastructure.
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October 15th, 2009 at 3:13 am
Seriously yo! My family sends MMS postcards to everyone when they’re on vacation. Not like I’m canceling my pre-order but this is I think the first Nokia GSM device without MMS….BOOO
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Kevin Reply:
October 20th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I read in one of the reviews that Nokia plans to impliment MMS in a couple of months and issue it as an update.
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October 15th, 2009 at 3:24 am
I would like to see portrait mode at least for the menu, the web browser and the music player.
Portrait mode CAN’T be that hard to made on those things, and if it is, then please kick the one who made a OS so great with that BIG failure.
Also, Maemo 6 has been announced for the next year and they havent told us yet if this phone will be compatible with maemo 6…so…they really leave too much space for speculating.
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October 15th, 2009 at 5:30 am
‘Now, we never imagined quite so many of you would be so keen to get involved, but the response has been amazing’ The response to this un-released phone should send alarm bells to Nokia. This is what every Nokia user has been hoping for and I suspect a large number of other brand users are also looking at this. If Nokia dont get it right the negative response to the phone and brand will be just as strong. Fingers crossed. No word on when it will be in Australia but I cant wait
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October 15th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Not sure what “Wi-Fi music streaming and sync” means – but the inbuilt Media Player of the N900 will show your NAS and you can access Music and Videos from it.
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Chris P Reply:
October 15th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
The ability to sync your music (and possibly your videos) over wifi instead of plugging in the cable to sync.
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Alex Whiteside Reply:
October 15th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Wireless syncing of this kind is ostensibly already part of the Symbian platform via the “Home Media” app, although it has never worked for me. (Whether due to my configuration or a bug is anyone’s guess. I can’t find any evidence that anyone other than me has ever actually tried it.) So it would be nice to see it ported.
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October 15th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
The poll results were pretty good, would be fantastic if they were implemented/looked at by Nokia.:)
The most exciting would be the photo tagging feature – tagging photos as contacts – would be a ‘cool’ feature that would show off the N900 to other users, and seemingly relatively easy to implement Id guess?
Also syncing over wifi could be another non essential but ‘cool’ feature.
Its these details that endear people to new gadgets.. (my opinion anyway!)
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October 16th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Digital Compass is a must. And Torch for use at night or in an emergency situation. Harden screen glass or screen protector is a must have one. Else it will be s.HIT… Scratch it in 2 days without the screen protector
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October 18th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I’d say people want to operate in portrait mode, or use MMS, just because they want to see the N900 as a device they can use as a cool new mobile phone (which of course we know has nowadays come to mean a lot of things). And it also means, that they’re not so interested in thinking the N900 is a some kind of experimental tablet computer. Because it seems to be able to do cool things, people just might want to have that as a “phone”.
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October 18th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
i really really want this advantage badly in this great device ,,
so please do that
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October 19th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
The sample method is distorted, because you allowed multiple entries. If Nokia has set up with one entry and one IP address, they would probably find that “12%” for portrait mode is actually about 88%.
I thought you Europeans were science minded?
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October 21st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I would love to see the issue of the FM radio been sorted, common, what phone today does not have an Fm raido.
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October 22nd, 2009 at 12:01 am
When Nokia keeps saying who the “target” market is for the N900, I think they’re off. I have a N95 and want a replacement and have been thinking about the iphone, but I like the openness of other phones and want to use the phone internationally with local sim cards. So, I’ve been looking for something else, but #1, I want a top of the line phone with all extras. So I want portrait operation for almost everything and I want MMS and I want custom ring tones for different people. Everything and more that the best phone offers should be present in what I’m going to buy… I just about ready to N900 yesterday and came across comments about the N900 not offering customized ring tones per contact, no MMS and messaging in landscape only. Bzzzzzt! After reading some more, it became clear that the phone functionality of the N900 wasn’t given enough priority. Maybe I’m not in the target market, maybe I am, but flexibility is going to sell more products than not. Oh well, the quest for another phone will continue.
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October 23rd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Does anyone know if n900 has hardware encryption?
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October 27th, 2009 at 3:46 am
What do you think about to run java app? There are a lot of app for java, but not for maemo.
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November 5th, 2009 at 5:00 am
The Nokia N900.. Is F***ing Awesome. Thank You. Good Bye.
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November 25th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Hi, does anyone know at this time, if we are going to be able to update Maemo 5 to Maemo 6 , of course when Maemo 6 comes next year?
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November 27th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
no nokia you had it right with landscape. I dont know what all these folks are talking about. if you want portrait go get a flip phone. geezus. but MMS is a must just because your friends and family cannot afford an awesome phone and they like to communicate with MMS. I had nokias when phones came ou, and then dumped it for my sidekick, i think its time to go back and buy a nokia again!!
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November 30th, 2009 at 4:50 am
pl introduce car finding sensor in all cell phones so that owners or drivers can easily locate car parked away from big shopping malls etc.,
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December 14th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
My top 3 would be
1-Potrait Mode
2-MMS
3-Radio FM
N900 is for sure a great device.
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December 24th, 2009 at 4:01 am
People totally missed the point here. Sure portrait mode is nice, but there’s nothing like a good quantity of good apps easily available. Hopefully Nokia will make the OVI Store experience as seamless as Apple’s. I’m not buying anything if I have to depend on amateur developers, complicated installing or compiling apps myself.
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January 31st, 2010 at 10:51 pm
how do you send music VIA blutooth on the N900
pls need to find out
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February 4th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
I have a n900, and i luke the phone very much, but i’m woried about the mms function, and the dmtf calls, like *555# in my network to see the money in the sim card, and in this phone that doesn’t work…
I’m very woried about that…
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