Just like a friendship that has gone for a long time, you start to notice the idiosynchracies of your friend and after a while those interesting features become downright annoying. For many of you, the LAFS you had with the N9 is starting to turn to a blog post like this one where we list 9 things that immediately come to mind about the N9 that we wish were not... here they are and feel free to join in on the comments
- Accidentally pressing the volume to zero
- Not being able to move the cursor easily through a series of words in a sentence
- Trying to move the slider in the music / video player
- Flaky internet connection / Refusing to connect to a call
- Camera that could have been an auto-focus rather than a full focus
- Not enough apps
- Dialler cannot find contacts in the address book
- No easy way of connecting to Ovi Suite
- Maps / Drive has been two steps back from our Symbian days
Forgot to add one more thing which has really driven me nuts recently - needing to enter my passwords in for all of my "accounts" every time I turn off the phone! So what things would you like to see gone in your N9?
Last I checked, the N9 had an auto-focus camera (checks again.. yep, still AF).
ReplyDeleteThe only things I have experienced that drive me crazy are:
1) Lack of quality apps
2)Nokia Drive is flakey.. Keeps jumping me around the map and getting me lost..
3) The WLAN interface is really bad. I can't even seem to stream 256kb music on an awesome Internet pipe. My iPhone has no issues what so ever with these streams
4) Battery is inconsistent. I'm a pretty consistent phone user (Email, SMS's, calls, light browsing, heavy Twitter usage). Some days battery seems to go for ever, other days it's nearly dead by noon. Issue with the idle battery life.
5) No voice dial. I find it handy while driving to hold a button and say "Call such and such". Instead, I have to swipe, unlock, hit phone and find a contact which makes dialling while driving too dangerous.
Other than the, the N9 is a pretty solid beast for me. I also own an iPhone 4 and often find myself switching back and forth as there just are some apps on the iPhone I really like (Digital Import Radio, 1Password, Facebook, etc)
I've fully dropped my Android after the N9. I used the Android for DME (company thing) and nothing else. Waiting for Myriad Alien Dalvik to be released to the public...
ReplyDeleteI have the battery issue and with the devel-tool installed I can see that some of the background apps use 20-40% CPU for long periods of time and I think it is a design bug in how Meego/Harmattan handles the contacts and phone "appliance" as it looks like deamons that are just prepping to be ready for use.
The camera sometimes freezes on me, especially the video part, but other than that then it is only small GUI issues that I have such as apps "freezing" for a few seconds not seeming to do anything what so ever and then springing to life and scrolling like a mad man afterwards really fast... especially the FB app and the browser seems to do this alot.
Network wise it is really stable and makes my Android look like a WAP browsing experience on the Nokia 6310i on 3G/mobile networks. On WiFi the browser is really slow.
I cannot state anything to the GPS things suchs a s Maps etc as I have a perfect brain and still prefer to get my destination memorized and not "told to me on the fly" like my mother (whom cannot find the correct end of a street even when the sun is out and shining in her face for directions aka "drive towards the sun and you'll get there in 2 minutes", she needs the GPS for that).
I don't use the Nokia OVI Suite - I found this http://blog.makesyouhappy.org/?p=202 and with NaviFirm then firemware updates are a 2 minutes process.
I've yet to get to the bottom of the Meego/Hartmattan platform for SMS/MMS backups, everything else is in the cloud (mail) or easily backed up with 'scp' to my Desktop at work.
All in all then the N9 is what I expected from Android in the early days but it was never able to deliver on the goods it promised, so my return to Android is not likely.
I prefer the quirks of the N9 to the freedom it gives me, even if I have to think a bit about "excessive" use in regards to the battery, but if it is a CPU usage problem from some of the core phone deamons then it is most likely a problem that Nokia will be able to fix in a later firmware. I haven't reported this to them as of yet, still getting to know the deivce, and loving it more and more every day :-)
''2) Not being able to move the cursor easily through a series of words in a sentence''.
ReplyDeleteLong press on the sentence and a magnified view will appear making it easy to move letter by letter. (only discovered this recently).
''5) Camera that could have been an auto-focus rather than a full focus ''
It's an autofocus camera, press the shutter button and wait till it focusses on your subject (turning blue) and release.
An annoying thing I would like to add is the WLAN connection. I had a battery drain some time ago and couldn't find what caused it.
In the end I realised that the N9 has trouble with certain type of WLAN connections. I disconnected from the WLAN at work and now it's all fine. WLAN at home doesn't cause any problem.
Another thing I don't like is the sensitivity of the feeds on the home screen. When I'm scrolling through the feeds and twitter message, the N9 opens op twitter or the RSS reader all the time.
Otherwise a great phone!
I can just compare it to my N900.. so noticed some stuff that was better on the N900.
ReplyDeleteStatements for N9:
- volume changing steps are too big, music is to quiet, press louder, music is too loud..
- in the default music player if you opened the album from the shown covers on front page, it doesn't seem possible to go to that playlist easily without searching that album under Albums again
AND WHAT REALLY ANNOYS ME:
The vibration is not strong enough! And if I listen to music, sometimes I can't hear when a new message is coming and can't feel the vibration.. so I check my phone reeeeeally often, if I got a message.
But I love the phone, non of theses issues couldn't be fixed. I don't want any other phone.
MAN! u are in heaven??? My android killing me huh :(
ReplyDeleteYeah W-A but it takes quite a while for the cursor to show up in the location bar and some other text bars this does not work
ReplyDeleteBattery life is waaay too short. Even if I turn power save mode on the battery lasts less than a day (with only occasional emails and fb). Disappointment!
ReplyDeleteI've had a few issues, but in response to your nine:
ReplyDelete1) Accidentally pressing the volume to zero
I'm not sure how this is happening, it's never been an issue for me.
2) Not being able to move the cursor easily through a series of words in a sentence
I can agree with this, but it is much better with the new firmware as the magnifier is available in pretty much every text input field it is needed, although I would prefer the terminal keyboard with the arrow and other keys as the default keyboard
3) Trying to move the slider in the music / video player
Has not been an issue for me
4) Flaky internet connection / Refusing to connect to a call
also not an issue, although it has been flaky with some hot spot connections with browser log ins and especially with weak signal (sometimes it has full bars on a network my laptop has less than full bars, and vice versa)
5) Camera that could have been an auto-focus rather than a full focus
Camera is auto-focus, just need a zoom option, but you just posted a fix for this, so that solves that issue.
6) Not enough apps
Agree and disagree, more than enough apps, not enough of the branded apps for TV channels and other non-cell phone products.
7) Dialler cannot find contacts in the address book
Never experienced this
8) No easy way of connecting to Ovi Suite
This is an issue, hopefully fixed soon
9) Maps / Drive has been two steps back from our Symbian days
Agreed, works fine though, needs time to destination and distance to destination, also needs maps of Israel, I had to download CloudGPS, but it's a battery hog compared to Maps/Drive (considering the Waze community port). Maps has always, even on Symbian, lacked a visual list of the turn by turn directions so you can look up the next instruction in advance. On a regular GPS I always check this before following the directions.
Issues I am experiencing/comments:
1) Inconsistent Facebook login and availability. Skype works great, pretty much always logged in, but FB is usually not logged in, it continuously says incorrect password, even with the correct password, it doesn't consistently ask for my password, and when it does it usually takes a minimum of 3 attempts (with the same password), sometims up to 10 attempts, when it does ask for my password, before it will successfully log in. The FB app seems to be independent of the FB availability/chat. Maybe this is the same as the Twitter issue, but I don't use Twitter, so I wouldn't know. Also independent of Wifi or Cellular data.
2) New FB app with the new F/W is MUCH better than the old one, but sometimes doesn't respond and is slow. Typically I am using touch.facebook.com (bookmarked and on my apps list) for most functions, also have fmobi (full version) installed, but rarely use it.
3)Inconsistent battery, same as everyone else.
4) Lack of maps for Israel (here for 5 months, sorely missed)
5) Overall lack of consistency, such as the weather randomly not updating even when connected, when I had feeds enabled, usually had to manually sync to update.
5) Inconsistent email sync seems to be gone with the F/W update, although it doesn't always notify me of a new message
6) Lack of voice recognition is an issue, even Symbian has this.
7) Visual Voicemail would be nice.
8) Hopefully Alien Dalvik is out soon so I can download Android apps. Why can't the mobile industry standardize on one app development environment and framework such as Qt/C++ or other programming language of choice, doesn't have to be Qt, but it is, based on what I have heared, the best dev environment and framework out there, plus it will work on Android, Iphone, WP, and BBOS, just need a small download to support Qt on platforms other than MeeGo and Symbian.
9) Micro USB port door has broken off, anyone else have this happen?
I love this phone, it truly is a flagshop phone, it's unique, and well pollished. It causes people to ask about it and are in awe of the phone once I show off a few minor things.
To me, the biggest problem is all of a sudden, I "need to enter my passwords in for all of my "accounts" every time I turn off the phone". It wasn't like that before, but all of a sudden, don't know what I did wrong, every time I have to enter the passwords for all my email, facebook, gtalk, ... accounts. Anyone know how to fix this? I tried "reset", "hard-reset", ... but no luck :(
ReplyDelete1. I like the fact that you do not need buttons
ReplyDelete2. I like the fact that it feels like I have been working this way all my life
3. I love the fact that the applications are from the community and only imagination is the limit.
1. I hate that the feed does not remember where I was when I go to it
2. I hate the fact that the fate of Meego is in the hands of the devil
3. I hate the thought that there will not be another Nokia this great
Like:
ReplyDelete1. Swipe
2. User friendly (Forgot how my N8 works,
3. Reliable OS (Hardly crashes)
Dislike
1. No easy way to find contacts.
2. No radio transmitter/receiver.
3. Limited apps.
lake of apps i want to download watsapp and viber but I couldn't :(
ReplyDeleteIf your device is asking for your password every startup, delete these 3 folders:
ReplyDelete/home/user/.accounts/
/home/user/.activesync/
/home/.aegis
Reboot.
I had this problem also