I just released sources of my Protracker module player. What this application is and what it can do you can read in one of my older posts: I wrote module player in Qt.
What are features:
UI created with Qt Designer (so it is easy to change if you want)
separate UI for desktop and other for Maemo5 (automatically selectable during build)
Maemo5 uses 3 stacked windows just like UI Style Guide requires
uses Phonon to play (with GStreamer modplug plugin underneath)
As I have my Nokia N900 from DDP I have just one week to test does everything works properly — after that I am on my own.
So far I checked:
microphone by doing some GSM calls. This also shown that GSM modem works for voice.
GPRS data connections — from EDGE to HSDPA (did not checked speed)
WiFi connections
Bluetooth connections — synced PIM data from my Nokia E66 phone, used headset for calls
FM transmitter — played some children songs today during driving with my daughter
FM receiver — “FM Radio” application from repository works and plays (app still need work)
TV-Out — playing movies on CRT and LCD television sets
screen — to bad that I found bad pixels… but good that they are now not later
headphones — just included ones
USB charging and storage access modes
normal charging (included charger and standard Nokia one)
keyboard — works, things could be better
SIM slot — my card works but slot itself feels cheap and reminds me one from Openmoko phones. I hope that they will get rid of it in next devices — my E66 has better one.
microSD slot — works with 8GB card but mechanically it is disaster. Prefer to not use it too often as it can break.
main camera — nice photos
front camera — complete disaster… Now I know why there is no video calls. hint: install “Mirror” application
internal storage
My feelings after first days? Hardware is nice and (as usual) there is a space for improvements:
SIM slot should be changed to sliding one — current one can break too easily
microSD slot also should be sliding one — look at Nokia E66 for example
give fullscreen button back
battery cover should be thicker so device will not bounce on camera when left on table
move microusb to right and headphones to left side of device
move lock slider to left side (so it will be top when one hand operated)
I hope that I did not missed anything on list of things to check. I excluded Irda from it because I do not know is it supported at all.
But I am not abandoning that platform. It is just because my N900 has few dead pixels on screen. They are grouped in area of “task switcher” button so were harder to notice.
Bad pixels
Are those bad pixels or just dust? No difference for me as in both situations they are visible.
I plan to write blog post on each working day about my experiences with N900 device. Today I planned to concentrate on PIM applications but decided to write about other things.
Brainstorm
Brainstorm — the person which invented that was genius. In normal projects if someone wants to request enhancement then bug tracker is used. Bugzilla even has such value in severity field. What is a result?
Bug like this, this or that got “moved” to brilliant Brainstorm area of Maemo website. Ok, you can add idea of solution there or vote for (or against) that. But you can not comment on solutions or ideas. For some entries in brainstorm there were comments with “discuss that idea in this forum thread” but seriously — how many developers like to use forums? I do not like — prefer to get email notifications from bug trackers where I can comment on bug and vote for it. I can quickly search for all entries where I commented etc. Brainstorm does not give me that. But I do not know, maybe the idea was to make users shut up and be happy with software which they got.
UI
Maemo5 UI is slick, nice and finger friendly. Last thing also means that most of screen resolution is used for paddings, margins and frames. Basically do not expect more then 6 lines on list widgets.
Application manager
Kinetic scrolling of course is present but also scrollbars are hidden so most of time it is hard to notice how many entries are available. Problem is even bigger when layout object is scrollable — it took me some time to find out where I can change ringtones to the ones which I used on previous phones (I use same ones for over two years). The problem was this screen:
Settings/Profile
There are options under them… but no visible mark that user should scroll ;( It was discussed in bug 5750 and bug 5426 but for me it looks like it will not be fixed.
Portrait mode would improve things a lot but is not available and looks like will not done for Maemo5 (except few applications). Contacts list in phone dialer (the only one portrait enabled app) contains 10 entries. Kinetic scrolling works much better in that orientation and user got also alphanumeric shortcuts to scroll list even faster (due to lack of keyboard in portrait).
To summarize: UI is nice, but some work should be done to make it more useful.
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).
Nokia N900 with my other Nokia devices
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 ;(
Contacts with IM statuses
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.
Email application
Software launcher is changed — no longer editable menu with categories but just set of icons sorted randomly(?).
Launcher screenshot
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!
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
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…
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…
Current UI
For readers: what is a real name of Lord Performer? :D
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).
