Why The Nokia N900 Doesn't Invade My Fancy

It's inevitable, Nokia's superphone, the N900, is on its way and the techies in the mobilephone world have already took a strike to its glorious capability in rampaging strength totting everything upside down and building commotion and interest from all fronts. Its been a huge story way back then when the Nokia loans 100's of devices to developers and bloggers during the Meamo Summit in Amsterdam, now, the device have been all over the net, tested, praise and highly acclaimed.

So whats with the N900 this time and why it has induce a major hype to the smartphone world even to the over-plugged iPhone? I would say its everything, perfect combination and pitch at the right time and place when the world have run tired of the hype that they needed something new to acquaint with. It could also be due to over spec expensive phone release by companies yet cannot be fully utilize due to its limited User Interface or consumers realizing that touchscreen phones with no mechanical keypad is not suited for heavy messaging, or to the introduction of a laptop like interface with Firefox web browsing running on the screen, or the possibility of being able to do real time multitasking with multiple screens among others. Its a huge convergence of everything new and exciting that is.

N900 offers everything that a techy want on a phone but can it capture the attention of the bigger chunk of the mobilephone market whom I call the normal consumers like what iPhone does? Yes at a glance but ones they get into the details of the phone, I'm 200% sure that it wont.

I used to fancy this phone when it came out having a super cool video introduction and drooling spec sheets but after a knowing the phone more, it lost its banter on me bringing a self awakening that it wasn't my ideal phone. Biggest deal breaker for me is the absence of Portrait Mode in all its applications except Call eliminating the one hand phone usage option. I call this Nokia's Biggest Joke in the history of mobilephone and Nokia playing the Annoying card. How in the world did they missed this feature when the world is not created in landscape alone and there's a gazillion of situations when you need to do things using only one hand on portrait mode rather than the fiddly landscape.

To mention one, let say your walking on the street with a briefcase on one hand, then your phone rings and upon checking it out using the other hand, you found out that it was an SMS and it needs onset reply... normally, what you do is, reply on portrait mode and continue walking, but with N900, after grabbing the phone, you need to drop your suitcase, position the phone on landscape, slide the QWERTY keyboard and write your reply, isn't this annoying? Some people might say, why not call the person who text you, will isn't making a call more expensive than sending SMS, what if you don't have enough load or the person who send you SMS is deaf, can he/she hear you?

What if you where standing on the a fully packed train and one of your hand is on the safety handle, replying to an SMS is impossible to do in one hand... what if your involve on an accident and you broke one of your hand and the only and the way for you to communicate is by texting, this would mean the end of your life because Nokia missed out on the portrait feature. Very annoying isn't it, for Nokia to miss this out is like the end of the world, its absurd, ridiculous, unbelievable, crazy!

And knowing Nokia, they would probably correct this like in 6 months or so, when the phone have dug its own grave and sales walloping down further, when will they learn?

I really cant believe that Nokia miss this one on a flagship phone, yes, there have been actions and developments done to include the portrait mode on the UI but when I strongly believe that this would take months or even years before its fruition unless we the consumers would induce pressure to Nokia and its engineers. Nokia must correct this one before its to late.

I'm not very optimistic on the sales performance on the N900 because I'm pretty sure there will also be tons of consumers who feels the same way like I do, disappointed and whether if I'm still interested in buying the phone when it comes out, a big NO of course unless miracles happen and Nokia announcing the Portrait Mode before the phone comes out, as for now, I'll be holding on to my beloved phones, they were the best of its own class.