Our amateur sleuthing skills tell us there might be a tiny bit of excitement about this
N900 device. With the
Maemo 5 environment already
measured up, it's the turn of the hardware to get exhaustively previewed. The
My Symbian team took a look at a prototype unit and were immediately impressed by the 800 x 480 display and relatively compact dimensions for such a loaded phone. The resistive touchscreen was on par with the N97, though it picked up scratches too easily for their liking ( a screen protector is recommended), while the keyboard was deemed small but still a major improvement over the N97's. Internals rated well, with the 600MHz Cortex-A8 CPU and "superb" video recording grabbing plaudits. Perplexingly, there was only 256MB allocated to application installs (see image after the break), which
can be altered by those with Linux knowhow, but this may draw plenty of ire from mainstream, app-hungry consumers, considering the device is capable of holding 48GB of total memory. On the outside, the camera cover was found to scratch the case around the lens (but not the lens itself like on some N97 units) while sliding, and removing the stylus from its slot revealed some bare electronics, both of which rather undermined the overall feel of a well-built device. They did find connectivity on the device a pretty dreamy and trouble-free affair, but we're still only scratching the surface here -- hit up the read link for the whole enchilada.
[Via
MobileTechWorld]
Update: Nokia has
expressly stated that the retail phones will come with repartitioned memory, which will provide "plenty" of space for app installations and obviate the storage issue noted above. [Thanks, sockatume]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
aoi tsuki @ Oct 1st 2009 10:39AM
The biggest issue i have so far with what i'm reading is the lack of portrait mode options, which includes the lack of an on-screen keyboard. It took me a while to notice that the only screens i saw of the device aside from the dialer were in landscape. It's a small or non-issue for some, but i like using my smartphones with a single hand. i guess these are the Nokia tablet roots of the N900 shining through. i can see the potential redundancy for an on-screen keyboard, particularly in landscape, but having to switch orientations is an annoyance, and via T9 i can quickly tap out an SMS or Google search. A 3.5" screen is large enough for a decent portrait QWERTY keyboard. The community will provide it, but it's just one of those things that seems odd to omit.
Other than that, it looks like a solid device. Software support is already pretty good as there's a good deal of ported Linux apps for previous Maemo OSes and some specifically for Maemo 5. i've checked various sites and it looks like there's a viable alternative to all the major apps i use in Windows Mobile, although a lot of these ported apps remind me of Windows Mobile apps -- suited for styli, not fingers. i just hope Nokia can get enough commercial software support to get the big name apps out with finger-friendly UIs that some of us prefer.
dansus @ Oct 1st 2009 12:05PM
Most of the apps you see now are for Maemo 4, they will no doubt be updated for finger use in Maemo 5.
Douglas @ Oct 1st 2009 2:58PM
Agreed with the lack of portrait support for applications. But I already knew that. What I didn't know is everything he had on his list of what's not hot. Most importantly to me as a user is no audio equalizer, no MMS support, no voice dialing, and you can't create new ringing profiles. VERY disappointing, and I hope all of them make the final production units. I really wish Nokia put some hardware buttons on the face of it for dealing with calls as well as a Home button. All in all, a very nice device. Let's see some of that good stuff on the N900 make it's way onto Symbian devices.
mistermix @ Oct 1st 2009 4:10PM
Despite the excitement about the N900, what I read from this review is that Nokia was right to soft pedal this device. Maemo has a great future, but a couple of years of development is still needed to realize it.
The current Maemo devices are "gee whiz" boxes aimed at a technically savvy crowd. There are some great open source apps for Maemo, but many of them lack the polish of, say, Google Maps, Google Mail or Opera Mini. Most of these apps use the GTK toolkit. Qt is new to Maemo, yet Nokia says the future is Qt. So expect a lot of re-writes and the bugs associated with them. Not to mention the need to have portrait/landscape transitions in every current Maemo app.
Also, it will take a while before apps that are considered standards appear on this device. Google apps, Opera, etc. won't be available for a while because there's no Java environment on Maemo. Also, Nokia apps on the device (e.g., Ovi Maps) will be revision 1.0 and need a lot of revisions.