Products & Services
Nokia N900 designed to get better the more you use it
By Mike on 19 October 2009
GLOBAL – The honeymoon period you experience when you first get hold of a new device can often be filled with mini epiphanies and moments of adventurer’s delight (or in few cases, knuckle-biting despair), and in the case of the Nokia N900 the former is most certainly proving to be the case. It would seem I’m currently caught on a journey similar to that of Matthew Miller from NokiaExperts.com, who quite simply reports “the more I play with the device the more impressed I get”. I concur. Now, there’s a lovely logic about this, as one of the main things that’s most exciting about the upcoming N900 is the community aspect and vast scope of possibilities that an open source Maemo platform offers, both in terms of rapid distribution of innovative developments and the noble eagerness associated with sharing fresh treasures of information to help your fellow peer. It’s fair to say the N900 is designed to get better the more you use it.
With that in mind, Matthew recently highlighted a number of smart keyboard tips and lesser-known tricks, brought to our attention via the ever-quick-to-share Guru at Maemo-Guru.com, even prior to its launch. A great sign of things to come no doubt. So in the spirit of this fledgling community, read on to find out more about the N900’s QWERTY keyboard shortcuts, and to share your thoughts on what it might mean to how you might behave with the N900.
QWERTY keyboard shortcuts are typically the territory of power users when it comes to laptops and desktop computing, but in the realm of mobile phones it perhaps makes even more sense to become familiar with these ’secret’ fast navigation methods, no? The N900 has a heap of handy time-saving shortcuts, and here’s the list as pulled together and posted on NokiaExperts.com and how to use them.
General
- Ctrl + Backspace: From within an application this will take you back out to the visual task manager. (Thanks to Chanse for that one.)
- Ctrl + C: Copy text
- Ctrl + V: Paste text
- Ctrl + X: Cut text
- Ctrl + A: Select all
- Ctrl + O: Open (if available)
- Ctrl + N: Create a new item (if available)
- Ctrl + S: Save (if available)
- Ctrl + Z: Undo (if available)
- Ctrl + Y: Redo (if available)
- Ctrl + F: Open search bar (if available)
- Ctrl + Right arrow: Move the insertion point to the end of the word
- Ctrl + Left arrow: Move the insertion point to the beginning of the word
These are all great Matt, but how the heck do I select text in the first place? You can use the shift key (far left) and the directional arrows on the keyboard to select text. Or you can use the stylus and double tap for a word or triple tap for all words in a document to select.
Web browser
- Ctrl + N: Open a new window
- Ctrl + R: Reload the current page
- Ctrl + B: Open a bookmark
- Ctrl + D: Add a bookmark
- Ctrl + Enter: Send a message
- Ctrl + R: Reply to a message
RSS Reader
- Ctrl + R: Refresh the feed
- Screenshots
- Ctrl + Shift + P: Capture a screenshot. Warm up those fingers first to try this out. (Thanks Nokia Experts reader Matti for the tip.)
If you’re a big shortcut fan, you’ll notice that another top thing about this list of shortcuts are extremely familiar if you use a PC or Mac – you don’t have to go about learning an entire new set if you want to get more from your N900.
A number of additional helpful tips were raised in Matthew’s article, plus a few of these were highlighted in a recent video we posted – watch it here…
If you missed our getting started with the Nokia N900 video, see it in full here…
As always let us know what you think in the comments section below.
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October 19th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
any news about N900 being use in Portrait Mode at least for SMS? if not then there is nothing to be excited about
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October 19th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
When i launch in ASIA ? hehehe
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October 19th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
“any news about N900 being use in Portrait Mode at least for SMS? if not then there is nothing to be excited about”
Because everyone wants to use a qwerty keyboard sideways when typing a SMS. Or better yet use screen real-estate instead of the provided hardware keyboard.
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Eddie Reply:
October 19th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
i must agree tho. sms is the absolute pinnacle of technology. without it phones are nothing to be excited about
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October 19th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
SMS is the pinnacle of technology? LOL Maybe in 1998.
It’s the first few useless bits of data before every phone call. If you think putting a few text characters into the useless areas of data transmission is the pinnacle of technology I’d say you need to do A LOT of reading about technology.
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dave Reply:
October 19th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
@mike haha. you can’t see the sarcasm there?!?
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October 19th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
He was JOKING Mikee … it was ’sarcasm’.
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October 19th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Forgive my nokia/n900 newbieness, please, but I find it a little strange that Nokia on the one hand clearly want to reap both the PR and actual benefits of openness, but (apparently) close off some of the most important pieces of software for the device.
Case in point: it seems bizarre to me that you would manufacture a 500-700-currency-unit phone and not include the ability to configure different ring tones depending on the caller. This appears to be the case with the N900. Ok, so at some point a decision was made that this functionality was less important than some other aspect of the software. Unfortunate, but there you go, programmers only have so many work-hours in the day.
However, this sort of situation is *exactly* where open source can win massively – all it needs is someone to delve into the phone application source and add the feature, then make it available as a patch / upgrade / alternative via the package manager. With hordes of talented and interested programmers out there, it’s a cinch that this would happen quickly. Nokia win because they have spent their programmer hours where they wanted to, the programming community win because they get to enhance the device, and the users win because they get better functionality.
Sounds great, but as far as I understand it (and I really do apologies most deeply if I’ve got this wrong) the telephone app is not in fact open, so this kind of user patching can’t happen without someone going through all the hard work of creating an equivalent application but with the required feature.
Nokia are obviously aware of this type of benefit as can be seen from the help they do give to their device commnuities, I think that suffices to show they’re not just dabbling in nominal open source for PR purposes.
So what’s stopping them from opening up core applications like the telephone app when their in-house programmer resource is manifestly limited and there are such huge gains to be had for free? (I’m sure everyone will understand I’m not just talking about the trivial per-caller ringtone issue, but about the whole class of I guess hundreds of similar cases).
Just to be clear, I’m not at all saying Nokia programmers are slow or inadequate, I do recognise that hard decisions have to be made about where to concentrate effort in order to deliver a solid functional product before deadlines!
The question above is a real one – I’m really curious what the perceived downside of more openness is from Nokia’s perspective when the advantages seem so predominant to me. Can anyone explain?
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October 19th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
i really like the ui of the fone…but i want 2 know whether it will hav all the advantage of symbian os………..
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Dave Reply:
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:11 am
Wait, Symbian OS has advantages? Really?
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Matthew Reply:
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
LOL! Could not have said it any better myself!
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suhail Reply:
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:41 am
it supports a million f apps. it is simple. it is wel connectd.n i am havin it 4 a long time…
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October 19th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
I blogged some questions on the N900 manual some time ago that I’d be interested in getting some feedback on – especially the one about whether the N900’s offline mode is really a flight mode or not.
Any thoughts ?
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October 20th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Good to see the N900 will be comparable to PC based functionality.
I think there are some serious learnings here:
1) no SMS from portrait mode/main screen….this will become a big sales stopper if Nokia don’t sort it out. Even with high end users, SMS is just core functionality used everywhere.
2) release dates slipping….after speaking to a couple of big retailers last weekend they are quite frankly bored with Nokias being delayed from the proposed release date – how many times has this happened before – EVERY big release. Xmas is coming, and while Nokia delays launch (I’m not saying we should accept a buggy release (like the N96 & N97) either), IPhones via Orange and Vodafone will flood the market (and other big releases from Sony and a few others) and this could be where people who aren’t green throughout will head towards if they continue to be disappointed by this release and lack of portrait sms.
I am a project manager and if I implemented projects in this way I’d be out of a job! Nokias marketing department must be going crazy lol.
I understand the need to get it right but also the market won’t sit and wait for this phone.
Silence is deafening.
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October 20th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
This is not just about Nokia, but the future.
While the internet chatterati engages in endless debates & comparisons: Android vs Iphone Vs Palm Pre vs Maemo and so on, the absolute emperor of the software world is posied for an encore. I mean, look at the number of new alliances Microsoft is entering into internationally. Its influence is spreading like wild fire in the real growth markets of the world like India. More and more manufacturers and carriers are offering handsets with Windows Mobile. In most cases Symbian is being replaced.
As mobiles acquire computer like capabilities, what will matter most is mass adoption of an OS. The resulting compatibility issues will lead to network externalities, which will eventually lead to a de-facto global standard. Once an OS acquires a majority in the global market the remaining users will inevitably have to follow suit. Remember, in the early 1980s, the most popular OS was the Macintosh from Apple, but within a decade it was consigned to less than 10 percent of the
market by the ubiquitous Windows OS. That is the power of externalities. Microsoft knows all about building externalities and monopolies.
Of late the Android OS from the Open Handset Alliance has been gaining some momentum in America, but if it is to have any chance of becoming the OS of the future, someone has to push the OS in the global market with a marketing power that can match Microsoft. Only Nokia, the global market leader, seems to have that kind of market reach globally.
Nokia’s reputation in the high growth markets like India is built on its ‘fail safe’ & ‘fall safe’ hardware, its excellent battery life, and a good enough software. What needs improvement is its software. For that Nokia seems to be going
solo on its linux based Maemo OS. Since both Maemo and Android are based on the linux kernel, it would be great if Nokia decides to join the larger open alliance of Android. Else, as they say, history looks set to repeat itself.
As Eric Schmidt is reported to have said, whether we would like few terrorists to dictate our future or have a shared future will depend on the choices we make. So, friends, we have a choice to make!
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October 21st, 2009 at 10:29 am
In germany a lot of people are still using and buying the Nokia N97 instead of the Nokia N900.
Is the purchasing in other countrys the same, or do they differ?
The Nokia N900 is real cool, but maybe at the moment too expensive. I really like the shortcut-function to cut, copy, and paste.
Best regard from germany. Roger
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October 21st, 2009 at 6:23 pm
hi, when does the n900 actually be released in the uk? any ideas? thanks
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October 22nd, 2009 at 2:55 am
Correction! Hey!!!! what it´s the date of release of the Nokia N900 in USA!!!! i pre-ordered 2 devices in USA and i want to know the date of release official Please i´m very ungry!!!! please anyone response me!!!!!
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October 22nd, 2009 at 2:58 am
realy i´m very very ungry because the rumors of the dalayed the released of the N900 on november or december when officilaly the Nokia Anounce the N900 to october or end of october please i need a answer to my question!!!!! please send me a e-mail or something!!!!!
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October 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 am
I think I speak for all gadget-conscious Australians when I say the following…
Please please please please announce something about the Asia-Pacific launch. Just something. Anything! A suggestive nod, perhaps. I’ll settle even for a casual raising of the eyebrows if it’s done in a room containing a N900 and a world map. We all understand the need to hammer out some details first, but the silence is deafening!
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October 22nd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Aging parents, children leaving home, or the serious illness of someone you love often add stress during this time. ,
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October 23rd, 2009 at 7:06 am
hii i love nokia N900 but there is one mistake
why the keyboard its just 3 line and not 4 ??
you guys have alot of space to put even 5 lined, 3 lines its very uncomfortable specially when have alot of space under the screen
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October 27th, 2009 at 5:10 am
Somethings I’d love to see on the device…
1)Java support (this is supposed to be a handheld computer, not a mobile phone. It would be awesome to see some Java love on this, if only for compatibility with existing applications out there)
2)Out of the box bluetooth keyboard support. As of right now we need to modify something within the os, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’m sensing that more than one person out there who’s going to try to use this with a bluetooth keyboard in lectures/labs, like a netbook.
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October 29th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I’ve just been given a 9th Nov release date and my preorder confirmed
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