Nokia N900

Introduction Usually when Nokia makes an Nseries announcement the geek world trembles with excitement, expecting to see the next master of the multimedia realm. Nokia N900 didn't make any exception to this rule though it was pitched for its web browsing prowess more than anything else (at least multimedia-wise).

Or at least so it seemed in the beginning, before anyone actually knew how far Nokia has gone with the user experience on the Maemo 5 platform. Soon after it was first demoed, the N900 was quickly deemed a serious peril to most smartphones out there. It even went as far as threatening Nokia's own Symbian platform.

The Nokia N900 has been so universally positive up so far that it easily turned up high on the wishlist of the tech-inclined. Expectations quickly rose quite high matching its top place in the company portfolio lineup.

Now we've got one and while we're working on a full-featured review as we usually do, we decided to post this quick preview covering Nokia N900 key features. And speaking of those, here's a brief recap of what's under its hood.

Nokia N900 at a glance General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1700/2100 MHz, HSDPA 10 Mbps, HSUPA 2Mbps Form factor: Full touch device with a side-sliding hardware QWERTY keyboard Dimensions: 110.9 x 59.8 x 18 mm, 113 cc; 181 g Display: 3.5" 16M-color TFT resistive touchscreen, 800 x 480 pixels WVGA CPU: ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX graphics OS: Maemo 5 Memory: 32 GB storage, 256 MB RAM, microSD card slot Camera: 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with dual-LED flash; WVGA(848 x 480)@25fps video recording Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, USB v2.0 with microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, FM radio, FM transmitter, Infrared port Battery: 1,320 mAh Li-Ion battery Misc: Built-in accelerometer and ambient light sensors, proximity sensor, IR output port for remote control Software: Ovi Maps (voice-guided navigation purchased separately), Mozilla-based browser with Adobe Flash 9.4 support, Facebook and Twitter integration The chubby Nokia N900 certainly isn't a handset to answer mainstream tastes but then again all those features rarely come in much smaller packages. The geeks know that and are willing to live with it if the performance is worth it. So now that we have a final version of the handsets on our hands we can check that out.

Design and construction We can't quite decide what it is with Nokia and the side-sliding QWERTY handsets recently. At the start of the year, the Finnish company didn't have a single mobile phone in this niche form factor and now they have seven of them. Obviously easy texting is high on their priority list.

Don't get us wrong - we are not complaining about anything here - it's just an interesting trend we are pointing out. And frankly we are pretty fond of the N900 hardware QWERTY keyboard as it improves web browsing experience (and messaging of course) greatly. Whether it's an address that needs to be entered or a form to be filled - onscreen keyboards are no match for those regular tactile feedback keys.

Whether or not it's worth the added weight and dimensions in everyday usage, where bookmarks and auto-form filling come into play is a whole other question of course. And it is certainly one that we cannot answer for you.

Usually we are giving phones a hard time when they come with all-plastic bodies but we are willing to let it go this time. No, we didn't get soft and lenient all of a sudden but the plastic used for the Nokia N900 is both sleek-looking and nice to touch. Besides standing at 181 grams now we wouldn't even dare to think how much an N900 with metal-finish would have weighed.

As far as dimensions go, this smartphone/tablet surely is on the larger side of devices we have seen. It doesn't slide as much as, say, the Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO and that makes it look less scary when opened but holding it in hand reveals the truth. In almost every case one-handed usage is a no-go with the Nokia N900.

The 3.5" touchscreen display of Nokia N900 takes most of the front panel of the handset. It's the first one from the Finnish company to feature WVGA resolution (800 x 480 pixels), putting it on par with the latest WinMo devices.

As one could have expected from a manufacturer as good at making displays as Nokia the image quality with that kind of specs is splendid. The contrast and vibrancy is making even not so impressive pictures spring to life. The brightness isn't quite as good though.

The sensitivity of the display is decent, but not as good as the best we have seen. It needs a slight push (rather than just a touch) for a click to be registered but that's to be expected with resistive touchscreen. There are some exceptions where you can hardly find a difference but still.

Finally we are really pleased with the sunlight legibility of the display. It's pretty easy to see what's on the display when outside on a sunny day even if the colors get a little washed out.

Nokia chose (or were forced to use depending on how you look at it) a three-row layout which means that virtually every key has two and some have three symbols. So you will need to do a lot of work with the Alt and Shift keys, that's for sure. It's good there is a virtual on-screen dialing pad so you don't have to make your calls using the QWERTY one.

The keys themselves are pretty cool to type on. The tactile feedback and movement are so nicely done that you can achieve pretty great speed. However the limited space means smaller keys will less spacing between them so users with extremely large hands should probably check it out hands-on before handing out the cash.

Maemo user interface The first thing that you'll notice about the Maemo OS is that unlike most other smartphone OSes out there it is only works in landscape mode. The telephony and the Blocks game are the only parts of the UI that can work in portrait mode. The good news is that Nokia are already working on a firmware upgrade that should enable portrait mode throughout the interface. It should be coming to the market before the end of the year and we'll do everything we can to update our review once it becomes available.

Now about the actual user experience. Maemo 5.0 is organized in three levels rather than two. The extra step added between the homescreen and the main menu is reserved for the task manager and it's skipped if there are no applications running in background. What that means is the only way to open the main menu from the homescreen is to open up the Task manager first and then hit the menu shortcut.

We certainly get the logic behind that solution as you always have your open applications at hand. And it's not only different applications that go there - the browser windows are listed there as well for easy tab switching. Perhaps the developers were afraid that the applications, which always stay open, will fill up the available memory quite soon so they preferred to remind you of them every time you reach for the main menu to start a new application. Yet somehow we feel that giving the user the options for opening the main menu and the task manager separately would have been quite wiser - it certainly makes more sense for the advanced user.

The homescreen consists of four side-scrollable screens that are at your disposal to be filled with widgets. Tapping at the top right corner brings up the set-up key and upon pressing it you get to rearrange the widgets and add new ones as you please. You can even disable some of the screens to make the rotation quicker.

Web browser in the focus The web browser of Nokia N900 is certainly the best part of its software equipment. The Mozilla-based application gives a new meaning to the term desktop-like browsing. It sports the same rendering algorithm as what seems to be the favorite desktop browser around the office so the fact that every website renders perfectly goes without saying.