@greg: 90% or more of US GSM phones have 850 and 1900 GSM. tri-band or even quad-band are normal for the GSM radio, just not UMTS.

Yeah, I'm pretty much loving it. The back-to-back flipping and input on each screen (wacom/touch) seals it. The price is a little more than I'd like to pay, but I think it'd be worth it.


The bezel seems awkward at first, but some of that is used with hardware keys (which are _very_ welcome; I hate all-touch devices), and the margin is good for gripping it with one hand while leaving it clear, and especially (on the e-ink side) to rest your hand on when writing.

I assume you're contrasting it with the state of affairs on the iPhone, since that's the most noticeably strict competitor.

But I'm compelled to point out that we really don't know whether Apple would permit an app that hangs up when you close the keyboard, because Apple has not seen fit to release a phone with a keyboard...

(And yes, that's meant facetiously; obviously it's technically impossible to implement without multi-tasking, and thus forever banned from the app store.)

From the review, it's apparently as big as a shovel.

Particles that travel through time? Pshhhtt, I've got a canoe that travels through time.

(And I just traveled here from the year 1984 to say that!)

But seriously, the statements "tachyons are permitted under relativity" and "There are particles that go faster than light" are _not_the_same_ at all. We've no empirical evidence for or against the actual presence of tachyons, so please don't go about claiming they exist.

Well, both. It has accelerometers, but the only built-in app that handles portrait is the phone interface. 3rd-party apps can support both as well, but Nokia sees most non-phone interaction as landscape.

Well, when the iPhone (the original, EDGE-only one) came out, lots of folks plunked down $599 for the 8GB version.

Then again, a lot of people are rather hard up for cash these days. Even with an RDF, a $600 phone would probably be a tough sell. But the rumors say Tmo has it subsidized in early '10, so shouldn't be an issue; expect $199 or maybe $249.

Well, they use essentially the same CPU, so I'd say about tied. (Technically, the Pandora's is a less-efficient version that burns more power to hit the same performance; it was available from TI earlier, which would have been why they'd have beaten the N900 to market if they hadn't had endless unexpected delays...)

There's much more difference on the input side; on one hand, the N900 hasn't so much as a single phone-style d-pad, so it needs a Wiimote, USB gamepad, or similar for hardcore classic gaming, but OTOH, the Pandora lacks accelerometers and direct 3G access.

In fairness, that SNES emulator was developed on the N800, which came out back in January '07. So they're not _quite_ as far behind as they seem -- the N900 can surely do things that would bring your iPaq (or my Axim) to it's knees.

OTOH, the N800 and N810 essentially _were_ modern-day PDAs running Linux, so even if the N900 is well ahead of PDAs, it still is one of the first to really come out ahead. I agree that it's coming late, but at least it's here now.

Rockbox FTW! (Actually, of course, it only shows the output in dB FS; you'd still need a way to calibrate SPL from drive voltage every time you change cans.)

Anyway, I hate seeing evil-bit solutions like this, but at least they're not going all FCC and mandating non-standard plugs to keep you from attaching high-gain earphones.