Hoogland: Android vs Maemo - Hands on Review

The window manager, X server & kernel supported it from the beginning, and
it works automatically when the application sets suitable window hint.
I.e. the platform supports it fine and many 3rd party apps use it[1].

I think that of the pre-installed applications, only phone application
supported portrait mode initially though. In PR1.1 browser and image
viewer had support for portrait mode, but at least former didn't enable it
by default.

I had enabled the Browser portrait mode, but I found it a bit annoying, I
don't really want the display to turn when I happen to rotate the device a
bit, I'd like orientation something I select specifically. The reason is
that most real www-pages work properly only in landscape mode, only mobile
versions of www-sites are narrow enough to be readable/usable in portrait
mode.

[1] If they don't switch off orientation reporting when not visible, this
may affect the battery use-time a bit (wakeups can be noticed e.g. with
strace, if it's not visible in top).