Nokia N900 vs. HTC Desire Z

So it happened - after almost a year spent with Nokia N900 as a default phone, I have now switched to Android in the form of HTC Desire Z. Being long-standing user and fan of Maemo (since N8x0), immediate switch to whole new platform naturally brings incentive for direct comparison, so here it is.

Santa came early this year...

...and brought me a brand new, unlocked, SIM-free HTC Desire Z today. Yay! Seems like Santa was taking very close look to my rant about Android vs. N900/Maemo I wrote less than two months ago - thanks Santa! Anyway, I am going to use Desire Z as a primary phone from now on, yet I'm not letting my beloved N900 anywhere either and let's say I'm putting it in "standby" mode as a secondary phone. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how these two devices directly compare and what I'll specifically miss from Maemo world in Android.

Android makes me cry

I have been using Nokia N900 as a primary mobile phone for nearly a year now and I am quite happy with it. However, quite recently I've also bought the best value-for-money Android 2.1 device you can currenly get, which is Orange San Francisco aka ZTE Blade. I won't go in too much details about the phone itself, as anyone could easily look it up, but if you're after joining Android world cheaply, yet without much (any?) compromise in hardware area, then ZTE Blade is definitely way to go. Anyway, I have never intended new phone to replace my N900 because of lack of hardware qwerty keyboard which I'm very addicted to, nonetheless I gave it a shot and put my main SIM card into it for few days. That experience made me cry and I'm just about to tell you why...

Quick review of cheap, dedicated car holder for N900

When I've got myself a Nokia N810 couple of years ago, I was nicely surprised by very good quality car holder that came inside the retail box as standard. When I've got myself a Nokia N900 last December, there was no car holder inside the box. Even worse - Nokia didn't seem to care providing one as an optional accessory to buy later. They still don't seem to care, anyway.

Getting started with QtWRT

Recently announced Qt Web Runtime (QtWRT) is a perfect opportunity to energize masses of people out there in the wild with at least bare html/css/javascript awareness to become application developers for their Maemo and probably future MeeGo devices. However, since QtWRT is still pretty much in pre-alpha stage, it has been thrown at us with no proper documentation (not counting few external W3C references), so early adopters might scratch their head upon simple "Hello World" tutorial that would kick-start the general idea behind Web Runtime.

Disabling smiley icons in Conversations (PR1.2)

If you're one of those old-school geeks who simply can't stand these quasi-cool, graphical equivalents of good old, ascii-based smileys (aka emoticons like ":-)" or ";)"), this tip is going to make your day. Conversations app which manages all sorts of text and IM messages in your N900 is using graphical smileys by default, yet the new and shiny PR1.2 release brings much anticipated ability to hack those weird icons and bring some old ascii love back to N900 near you.

Saving N900 battery power with simple shell script

It's not a secret that Nokia N900 is a real power sucker and needs quite frequent contact with battery charger, especially when all those fancy always-online features are enabled and in constant use. I keep my N900 in such mode nearly all the time myself, yet there are times (overnight, while at work, hospital etc.) where I'd like to sacrifice being online 24/7 in order to spare battery an extra breath. Offline mode is not an option, as I'd like to preserve ability to actually make voice calls and send text messages. You know, old-school.

PUSH your imagination to the limit

Last night I came back from PUSHN900 event in London. Once I've received an invitation few days ago, frankly I didn't exactly know what to expect, so I went there with pretty much clear mind about this. However, what I've seen there was absolutely amazing and I was stunned by the ideas that people in teams from around the world have put up together.

Fixing VMware Player crash upon start in Fedora 12

When your VMware Player crashes unexpectedly upon start (ie. UI opens up for 1-2 seconds then disappears), fear not. Magix fix is (as root):

cd /usr/lib/vmware/lib
mv libcurl.so.4 libcurl.so.4.old

That's it, really. :)

Credits:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1444574#1444574

Playing divx/xvid movies with subtitles on N900

We all know N900's outstanding multimedia capabilities, right? Built-in media player can chew full-blown divx movies without hesitation. However, it doesn't support subtitles useful to foreign-language-impaired people. Fear not, solution is there.

Sorry Sir, you can't port your number out, "honest"!

Someday last October I made the decision to get N900 on contract, however I also wanted to keep my current mobile number that I've had with T-Mobile for several years. The trick was that an online retailer where I pre-ordered the device didn't offer upgrades on T-Mobile - only new contracts. For some weird and wonderful reason, T-Mobile also isn't able to cancel existing connection, free of fixed-term contract and migrate my number to the new 18-month contract. Anyhow, there is a workaround - get a new T-Mobile contract with new number, port my current number out to different network's prepaid service and once that's done (ie. within 2-3 working days), port it back from there to that new T-Mobile contract I've got with N900. Simples.