5+1 Reasons: Why Nokia N900 is not up to the mark
Nokia, once an industry leader in smartphones, is lagging behind the competition. They seem to be one of those companies who have not been able to get their arms around good user experience and software. With the N900 powered by the Maemo 5 OS they attempted to break the stranglehold, here are the reasons why it is a failure:
1. Screen orientation is limited to landscape except when in phone mode – the N900 retails for $549 at the US Site – for that they could have done a better job making use of the onboard accelerometer
2. Touch Screen Navigation is challenging. Scrolling with fingers on the menu/program screen leads to launching of apps inadvertently – this happened to me enough where I have to keep the stylus in my hand while trying to hold the phone with both hands. Of course – NO multi-touch interactivity!
3. Application Discovery is a pain for the average consumer. The application manager will search catalogs (or repositories) and the catalogs are provided by multiple parties. You have to set this up and that implies first finding out about them!
4. My search on the default application catalogs failed to produce popular applications for Twitter, FourSquare, Pandora and so on.
5. Future of App Ecosystem is murky. Nokia is merging Maemo with Intel’s Moblin effort into something known as MeeGo.
And the bonus reason – the device does not seem to be stable. Three months into it – it simply stopped powering on! I had to send it in (fortunately it was in warranty period!). I got it back yesterday – the reason cited, and I quote from the later that was sent to me:
All Things CC: 
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