Another great feature introduced with the PR1.2 update for the N900 is Facebook Chat. A lot of people seem to have a bit of trouble login into the service due to the username. The service asks for your username in the form of x@chat.facebook.com. The problems comes from the fact that many think your suppose to use the email that you used to sign up with Facebook.

To get this to work, you should login into Facebook on your desktop and  go to Account>Account Settings>Username. The username given here is the one to be used to log into Facebook Chat on the N900 and NOT your email.

One of the new features of the PR1.2 update is the Email Widget. This widget is supposed to display an overview of your unread emails for all of your email accounts, including Nokia Messaging, making for a very useful addition to the N900. (Here you can find how to setup Nokia Messaging).

But as it turns out, there’s a bug with the Email Widget that prevents it from working properly with Nokia Messaging, Nokia’s star email service and quite a few people are affected by this bug. The widget  does work well when you manually configure your email accounts, but completely ignores and in some cases even prevents your from configuring by pressing the small “wrench.”We really hope that the Nokia gets a fix out soon, as this widget in combination with Nokia Messaging would be a great feature on top of the other cool updates that PR1.2 brings.

Are affected by this bug? Let us know!

Skype Video calling is perhaps one of the coolest features of the N900 and is currently the only smartphone that can do this. This feature was introduced with the PR1.2 update. Here’s how to do it.

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Progress is good, but sometimes not for all people and in this case, not all apps. A good example of this are both Petrovich and USSD-widget, as the PR1.2 update makes them both obsolete.

We talked about the USS-Widget a few days ago here, as it brought USSD functionality, a feature that the N900 lacked on PR1.1 and earlier. It has now been confirmed that the PR1.2 will make dialing of USSD Codes possible.

Petrovich allows for the sending of arbitrary files over Bluetooth, E-mail, or a "Sharing service." With the PR1.2 update, File Manager is now able to share any file and/or folder.

Is safe to say that you can now uninstall both of these apps. Will the PR1.2 update make any of your useful apps obsolete? Let us know.

It’s that time again! You lucky folks in the UK should now be getting that orange notification icon, signaling that PR1.2 is FINALLY here. The rest of the world should follow on Wednesday, but were not sure yet whether it will slow release throughout the week or if every other region will get it immediately. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

If you don’t want to wait till tomorrow, you can always grab the update here and follow the steps in our How To Hard Reset the N900 guide.

Not sure what to expect from this update? Head on over to the Maemo 5/PR1.2 Wiki to get all the details.

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A Recent change at Facebook is now pushing the N900’s browser directly to the mobile page. While you could always scroll all the way down and choose “Touch Site”  and when that page loads scroll all the way down again and choose “Full Site.” These settings won’t saved and you will have to do this each time.

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The juicy details are coming in. The product manager for Documents To Go for Maemo is sharing a few details with us about the upcoming Premium Edition that’s set to release shortly after the PR 1.2 update becomes available for the N900.

According to the product manager: “We’re developing with the intention of being as prepared as possible for Maemo 6/MeeGo, so we are going to require the 1.2 update.  We hope to have something available shortly after the 1.2 release.”

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Documents To Go for Maemo, is by far the best document viewer for Maemo 5, but currently only allows the viewing of documents, not editing. We’ve gotten word from Dataviz, that an editing version should follow as soon as PR 1.2 comes out. In the mean time, you can still get the editing version at $19.99.

Currently the N900 does not accept USSD starting with: *# (Star/Pound). This might be very crucial for some. My operator for example requires me to enter #191# to check my minutes. From what we’re hearing this functionality is supposed to be integrated in the PR 1.2 update for the N900 and is a documented missing feature in bug 5357.

While we wait for PR1.2, there’s a cool little widget that adds this functionality called ussd-widget. It’s a small little widget that allows you to enter your codes and by simple press you can get this functionality.

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You’ve probably heard about the Graphics Processor (GPU), a dedicated processor that offloads 3D or 2D graphics rendering from the central CPU. In the case if the N900 there’s a single ARM Cortex-A8 CPU that handles general tasks, while the PowerVR SGX (GPU) offloads 3D and 2D graphics.

Will future version of the N900 need a phone accelerator?

The N900 handless multi-tasking like a champ, being capable of running several application at the same time, without even breaking  a sweat. This multi-tasking power does seem to come at a cost. In certain situations there’s the need to quickly dial a number, while keeping programs running in the background. You can also imagine  receiving a phone call right in the middle of heavy multi-tasking. In these cases all of those background apps seem to take all of the processing power, leaving little or no juice to quickly open the phone dialer or handle incoming calls. The result? Both of these slow down to a crawl, sometimes requiring a few seconds before they react to button presses. The same thing can be said about the screen orientation: as it quickly needs to re-orient the screen, with little processing power left, it takes a while before it “settles” in the right position.

A dedicated processor, with the sole purpose of handling these “phone” features like outgoing, incoming calls, SMS and even the turning controls would do the trick. It wouldn’t add much to the overall price and won’t require much power, as it would require just a fraction of the processing power of the main CPU. There reason is simple: its only task would be to accelerate the phone features.

Another way to accomplish this, is by always leaving a certain percentage of the central CPU free for these kind of tasks.

We already have a GPU, CPU and even DSP, is there room for a phone processor? What do you think?