Nokia N900 orHTC Desire? Can't make up my mind!

wireless101

I need a push in one direction or the other.

I have a few questions:

- Which has the better battery life?
- Is the n900 annoyingly chunky in your pocket?
- How is the n900's keyboard
- How accurate/sensitive is the Desire's on-screen keyboard? Easy to text?
- Which has more potential for apps?
- Which has the better camera?

not_xanthor

wireless101 wrote: »

I need a push in one direction or the other.

I have a few questions:

- Which has the better battery life?
1- Is the n900 annoyingly chunky in your pocket?
2- How is the n900's keyboard
3- Which has more potential for apps?

1 Annoying is subjective... but the weight is a little hard to miss.
2 Pretty good - although a thumbpad is the one thing i do miss from my n97
3 Probably the Desire.

wireless101

To ask another question, are there any other similar phones that rival these? Apart from the nexus one.

edanto

I can only speak about the N900. Lots of it is great, the browser is superb (although they aren't supporting Flash 10, so site like myspace which used to work aren't working any more). If you are any competent in Linux, you will love the N900, there is terminal access and people seem to be very excited about that.

For me, it's a frustrating phone. The email client is atrocious, at least with the way I want to use it. You can read a detailed thread here http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37225

I want to have IMAP access to a Google Apps account, but it's incredibly slow. It can take 20 seconds to read an email because it seems to be re-syncing the entire folder each time instead of just downloading the new ones.

I can't forward a message on to someone because the message gets wrapped up in an odd type of attachment.

There doesn't seem to be functional sync with Google Calendars, although there is one in development on the maemo forums. I had gotten used to very slick sync between gCal and iphone calendar.

There is a great post by Tom Dunne here describing all the positive features of the N900 http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=66567533&postcount=3

It's all down to the old "what do you want from your phone". It's a geeks phone, simple as. It is full-featured, GPS, touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, 32Gb storage (expandable to 48Gb with micro-SD cards), tv-out cable supplied, FM transmitter, integrated Skype, GoogleTalk regular GSM, and so on. Oh, and did I mention the Linux x-terminal that comes with it?

The camera is fantastic, the FM transmitter gets used a lot in friends cars (the fm-boost app improves the signal a lot) and the phone does feel like it will get there....eventually.

I wish I was techy enough to make the most of it, but it's been a slow learning experience and now I just want to go back to 'simple-phone-land' where things work.

If someone could do a similar review of the HTC Desire, I'd find that helpful.

wireless101

edanto wrote: »

I can only speak about the N900. Lots of it is great, the browser is superb (although they aren't supporting Flash 10, so site like myspace which used to work aren't working any more). If you are any competent in Linux, you will love the N900, there is terminal access and people seem to be very excited about that.

For me, it's a frustrating phone. The email client is atrocious, at least with the way I want to use it. You can read a detailed thread here http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37225

I want to have IMAP access to a Google Apps account, but it's incredibly slow. It can take 20 seconds to read an email because it seems to be re-syncing the entire folder each time instead of just downloading the new ones.

I can't forward a message on to someone because the message gets wrapped up in an odd type of attachment.

There doesn't seem to be functional sync with Google Calendars, although there is one in development on the maemo forums. I had gotten used to very slick sync between gCal and iphone calendar.

There is a great post by Tom Dunne here describing all the positive features of the N900 http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=66567533&postcount=3



The camera is fantastic, the FM transmitter gets used a lot in friends cars (the fm-boost app improves the signal a lot) and the phone does feel like it will get there....eventually.

I wish I was techy enough to make the most of it, but it's been a slow learning experience and now I just want to go back to 'simple-phone-land' where things work.

If someone could do a similar review of the HTC Desire, I'd find that helpful.

I think you have summed up why I will be getting the desire; I'm just not a big enough nerd to be able to, or to want to maximise the n900's potential!

Alanstrainor

Another N900 user here. I love the phone, think it's simply fantastic and love what it's capable of doing. However, i've had a fair amout of trouble with it, most of it was caused by the famous "Error 30" error (That's the error that sits 30cms away from the keyboard!). I've done a lot of messing around with things that can make a mess of the phone, hence the trouble i've been having.
In short, if you're a bit of a techy, go for the N900, if not, the desire may be a better choice.

Black Eye Guy

I've got the Desire, so can only comment on that, and I've only held the N900, but found it very bulky!

Battery on the Desire is alright you'll get the day out of it, mine lasts about a day and a half, with Wifi, GPRS and bluetooth turned on only when I need them, I have the syncing for Facebook and Twitter on all the time and emails set to check every hour - so I think with all that, a day and a half of battery is pretty good, seeing as how you could turn off the syncing and put the emails back to a longer time between checking.

The Desires Keyboard is 100%, it's absolutely brilliant, when you start the phone it has you type a message to gether info on how big your fingers are so it can make it as accurate as possible plus it has 3 different types of keyboard, a full one, the one thats on normal phones (3 letters per number) and one thats a mix of both (2 letters per number).

I think Android will have better potential for Apps the full App store isn't available over here, but the Free one has loads in it, and most of the cool apps are available in it at the moment, so that means it can only get better when the full store gets added
Plus with more Android phones selling then iPhones in the last few months (this was before the iPhone 4) developers will have to take note that Android is a market they can't avoid, so I'd say there will be a huge growth in the Android Market place over the next year.

The only issues I've had with the Desire, was the GPS wouldn't work for half an hour one night, not sure why, but it came back after 30 mins!
And the FM radio isn't the best, I had trouble getting stations clear on it.

edanto

@ Black Eye Guy

Have you found a way to allow tethering with the HTC desire? It's possible with the N900, I can use bluetooth to do it with my Ubuntu laptop. It's a nice extra, but I can't see anything online about that option with the HTC desire.

Also, is there a good mapping app, that gives driving directions? There is one on the N900, but you have to buy it, it's about €40, which is a bit much for me. The native maps programme on the N900 is an old version of Ovi maps and it's rather useless. Boo!!

Idleater

Tethering is possible on the desire settings -> internet sharing. Best part is the tethered device doesn't appear like a different device to the operator (unlike the iPhone) so no tethering charges. Picked up my on my laptop the second I enabled it.

Google Maps now has free navigation, so you only pay data rate.

There are offline maps applications if constantly using your data doesn't appeal - but not sure on navigation.

Black Eye Guy

Yeah like nereid said tethering is available, but I haven't tried it, but it has given me the option every time I plug in my phone to a computer, and with the new update to Android, Froyo, it will add wireless tethering. (That update hasn't come out yet for the Desire yet, but apparently it is)

And the Google maps navigation is bang on, I've used it a few times and it's been awesome, and it's free!