Nokia Delivers Maemo Mobile Phone N900
Nov 13, 2009
Nokia has begun its delivery of the Linux-based N900 mobile phone. The devices with the Maemo 5 operating system will compete with the iPhone and Android.
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.
(Kristian Kissling)
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Comments
Sadly, this device will fail due to pricing
JohnP Nov 14, 2009 9:28pm GMT
I love my Nokia N800. LOVE IT! The best part is that no data plan is needed and it was around $230.$650 isn't gonna work on the price. There are simply too many other options. A small number of cost-insensitive buyers will still purchase one.
I'm in the market for a new phone and an update for the N800. The features of this new device are too long to attempt to list. Nobody would read the entire list / article. A few months ago, I found an N900 review with about 16 full pages of detailed content. Even I, couldn't be bothered to read beyond the 6th page.
I'll probably retain the N800 and continue to tether it with a $20 bluetooth cellphone for emergency-only use. Or perhaps I'm not the target customer?