Nokia N900 deals & review

The world leader in mobile phones have long been advertising its flagship smartphones as the new computers of the century starting with the N95. But it’s not until the Nokia N900 that we are starting to see a more palpable and determined convergence that can rightfully describe it as a computer right in the palm of your hands. 

A First with Outstanding Features

This is the first Nokia smartphone using its Linux-derived Maemo OS that started with the N770 internet tablet. Nokia apparently bridges the two device genre into one and gets a SIM-free street price at the £499 price point. 

This is an internet tablet that’s a 3G mobile phone in one. In terms of heft, it sits between a netbook and the largest QWERTY slider smartphone out there. Its QWERTY slider form measures a humongous 110.9 x 59.8 x 18mm weighing 181g which can alienate those who see a mobile phone as anything but. 

• The N900 gets powered by 600 MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor running the Maemo OS. Its graphics display is powered by a separate GPU engine in the PowerVR SGX530 supporting OpenGL ES 2.0. Its camera, audio processing, mobile communications and data transmission is supported by the EMS320C64x running at 430 MHz.
• As an internet tablet, its Mozilla Firefox web browser is seamlessly integrated with the OS providing PC-desktop browsing look and feel. You get a no-wait online experience with its HSDPA speeds at 10 Mbps and HSUPA at 2 Mbps on the dual band UMTS radio riding on the 3G network. It’s also a quad band GSM with class 32 GPRS/EDGE speeds on 2G. You also get WiFi 802/11b/g for hotspot surfing up to 54 Mbps while local data connectivity is supported by its Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0.
• Its display may not be remarkable compared with other larger touchscreen with capacitive multitouch technology, but it holds it own with a 3.5-inch TFT LCD with a cheaper resistive touchscreen with VGA resolution and 65k colors as well as, proximity and accelerometer sensors.
• Its 5 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash and video light uses Carl Zeiss Tessar optics. Images can be geo-tagged with its integrated GPS receiver preloaded with Ovi Maps. Video recording gets 800 × 480 resolution at a movie-grade 30fps.
• Its secondary front facing video call camera also does video recording at VGA resolution at a more modest 15 fps. Multimedia gets a stereo FM radio, the usual media players, 3.5mm headphone jack, TV-out and A2DP support for wireless stereo listening.

The Nokia N900 engine enjoys a 1GB RAM for its OS and application while user phone memory gets 32GB. If that’s not sufficient, you can use the microSD slot for expanding the memory for an additional 16GB. A hefty 1320 mAh li-ion battery allows up to 6.5 hours of talk time on 2G and 278 hours on standby.