N900 tips & tricks: Enable portrait mode in the browser

Posted on Thursday, Jan 14, 2010 by Matthew Miller

11 Comments » File Under:linux, Maemo, News, Nseries, T-Mobile, Tips & Tricks;

So far my N900 seems to be a lot zippier with the latest firmware and I have heard reports that battery life should also be improved significantly so will keep an eye on this too. I just read a great tip from Mark over at The Nokia Blog where you can actually switch to portrait mode in the default web browser with a bit of finger gymnastics. Mark created a video to show how this works. You will need the latest firmware to enable this capability.

I didn’t watch the video at first and just read that you need to press Ctrl-Shift-O to enable portrait mode and after doing this over and over I saw now switch at all. I then watched the video and discovered you enter this three-finger press and then close the keyboard to see the browser in portrait mode. You can then open and close the keyboard to toggle back and forth. To turn off this functionality you can do the three-finger toggle again. To me, this is actually a very slick default to have since I always browse with the keyboard open in landscape anyways. Google Reader’s iPhone formatted page looks and works great in portrait mode and is something I use all the time. FYI, text input fields do NOT appear to work in portrait mode so this orientation is just a good way for single hand browsing where you can scroll with your thumb and is not for power surfing.

David
January 14, 2010

Matt, how big was your update? I’ve read some UK guys are getting 2.2009.51-1 that’s 89.5mb but I got 2.2009.51-1002 and its 90mb. Maybe regional differences?

Lee
January 14, 2010

Matt

Any chance Nokia will come out with a 3g version of the N900 that will work on AT&T? This is the only device I want but cannot leave AT&T for it. What a shame. Happy New Year!

Kitkat
January 14, 2010

I’m glad Nokia actually update n900 firmware with portrait mode web browsing. But is there a portrait mode for normal navigation and how about the battery life, improved?

Kamishly
January 15, 2010

Nice update! I’m not able to go back and forth switching between websites in portrait mode, I have to go into the landscape mode in order to open another window. Basically I can only scroll side ways and up and down also zoom.. Any suggestion, please?

Fmohod
January 16, 2010

FYI, my update is 165mb

timeless
January 16, 2010

kitkat: 51-1 doesn’t include portrait mode for navigation. It doesn’t even officially include it for Browser. But yes Nokia is aware that adding portrait mode would be a good idea for a number of applications. Given that Nokia Maps is built around the Browser application, it was somewhat important for the Browser to be able to support Portrait before derivatives (like Maps) tried to add it.

FWIW, Maps did get a thinner UI with 51-1, so there is evidence of them improving too….