Oddly, it doesn't include Nokia's most powerful, 1500mAh battery, using a 1320mAh battery instead. But "go compact" was evidently the order of the day, so perhaps there wasn't the room.
The N900 has made a radical break, not just with earlier versions of the tablet UI (Series 90/Hildon), but also S60. The Finns demonstrate it below, but a few subtleties aren't immediately obvious.
In stark comparison to the short-lived S90 series and Nokia's first Linux tablets, which sprouted all kinds of buttons, the N900 offers a blanket slate. A 'tablet rasa', if you like. There are no call and end keys to indicate that it's a mobile phone.
I offer this diagram from the Nokia 7710 manual as a comparison:
Menu key, Desk key, Escape key, Switch key, Zoom key... oh, sod this.
In the landscape mode, the N900 has standard phone camera controls across the top, a pin-sized (but perfectly usable) power button, and a lock slider. And that's it.
The N900 UI dispenses with the pull-down menus of its predecessor, with an emphasis on switching applications quickly. You do so with an Android or Pré-style flick. There is just one menu bar, although this isn't really obvious, and this simply brings up a settings menu. So the natural state of the device "at rest", if you like, is this view of miniatures of applications.
The old "home" screen, with its shortcuts for contacts or applications, has been spruced up a bit. And the old applications folder is still there.
Spec-wise it builds on its predecessors, keeping GPS and adding a 5Mp camera and an FM transmitter. The no-frills keyboard is adequate, and better than the awful N97 and (worse) N97 Mini keyboards, but nowhere near the BlackBerry Bold.
COMMENTS
compared to E90.....
I've been using an E90 on Vodafone UK for the past 18 months and will never leave a full Qwerty keyboard. Brilliant phone for work and play; Mail for Exchange works brilliantly as well as POP3 and IMAP. Shame there's no dedicated numeric keys. And same that they haven't adopted the lovely very responsive E90 keys. Thankfully it has a stylus so fat fingers can cope. I don't know enough about Maemo OS but I'm a little worried that the application source will be limited to a few, whereas S60/3rdEd is more widespread, especially due to the many Java app databases out there for S60. Can anybody help with that? Is Maemo5 big enough to be developed enough to combat S60 handsets? Charging via USB....so I don't have a choice about creating a data connection to a PC? Or is it a mains charger?
yes it does have a vibe
"Virbrating alert (internal)" says http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/specifications/
(of couse that page also says "Full QWERTY tactile keyboard" which is a joke.
It will be interesting to see ...
... how this fares. Seems that the success of the Apple iPhone delivered Nokia a desperately needed kick in the nuts about the importance software in their business ... then again reading the T&Cs at Forum Nokia (the acceptance of which is somewhat stealthily made a pre-condtion for obtaing the development tools) makes one wonder whether they in fact want to attract or repel 3rd party developers.
Slow loading 3GS vs N900
>while you really need a heavy site to slow down the 3GS, but my dusty personal archive took about 20 seconds to load on the N900, which felt like ages.
I have tested it on my device, and N900 load that archive for ~7sec (3G connection), iPhone 3GS ~13sec (wlan).
Oops
OK, so I had a blind spot and read 95 hence my confusion.
How's the camera and video by the way. I pretty much got my 95 based on them since I had twin nieces on the way and wanted all in one for easy flights.
I'm assuming cam quality is about the same but is it any faster and have they stuck with the 640x480 30 frames?
