The snap judgement
Now that Linux, rather than Symbian, is Nokia's focus for expensive prestige devices, I'm more confident about improvements. Nokia's tie-up with Intel suggests larger, faster and more powerful Maemo devices. Nokia's partnership with Microsoft should slow these right back down again. Just kidding.
The N900 excels at task switching, the communication apps are good enough, and music playback and photo browsing are better than on any previous Nokia.
Maemo 5: now more important that Symbian?
Nokia has been plugging away with its tablet for five years, and finally has something people might actually want. The always-on data capability ensures that. A few may opt for the N900 as a primary phone - perhaps people who don't make too many phone calls. Many more may be tempted by the prospect of keeping a small lightweight phone (for phone calls) and dumping the data duties onto a separate device.
I envisage two major obstacles. At €500, the cost is higher than any of its predecessors, comparable to a pay-as-you-go iPhone, and twice that of an Asus Eee PC. Cheaper Android phones will offer the speed and slickness, with mobile operator subsidies. That'll be a tough battle.
The challenge, and it's one for almost everyone, is that punters with disposal income, who are looking for a bling gadget, either want the iPhone and iPod Touch - or already have one. That's despite the fact that Apple's finest don't really excel at any one thing except music sync.
iPod rival?
But even though the N900 is not an essential purchase, Nokia deserves credit for plugging away, and appreciating that a completely fresh approach was needed. ®
Hands on with the Nokia N900
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?
