Nokia Delivers Maemo Mobile Phone N900

The N900 has all the standard features of the iPhone and Android, but, unlike the iPhone, has a virtual keypad as well as its own version of a side-slide keyboard. It's for phoning, but the main focus is its Internet capabilities. The Nokia website has a full list of its features and applications, of which we're only presenting a selection. An experimental KDE port is also available.

With a 600-MHz processor and up to 1 GByte of working memory, the Maemo device can run some of the more sophisticated applications fluidly. The 32-GByte internal storage and a slot for microSD cards provides enough space for many more applications, some of them available to users from Maemo.org. The device has a 3.5" touchscreen with 800 x 480 pixel resolution, as well as the slide-slide keyboard. In the usual Linux desktop style, users can choose from four personalized views, in landscape and portrait modes.

The mobile phone comes with a 5-megapixel camera in JPG with EXIF image formats, and has two video cameras that support codecs and streaming in the H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV and H.263 formats. The front video camera is a VGA webcam, while the "main" camera affords up to 800 x 480 wide screen resolution. The device supports 3D graphics acceleration on OpenGL ES 2.0. The supported audio formats include MP3, WMA, AAC, M4A and Wav -- but not Ogg. Music playback supports reading ID3 tabs and album art.

The N900 transfers network data over GPRS, HSPA, EDGE, WCDMA, WLAN (802.11b/g with WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption) and as data modem via USB. It supports quadband mobile phone networks for EGSM and UMTS. Connectivity by Bluetooth 2.1 is also provided, as well as navigation via A-GPS with pre-installed Ovi maps. The N900 can be pre-ordered from Nokia for $649.