Nokia N900 Review- A Cool Hand Held Computer

By Author: Jerry Smith
Total Articles: 224
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If you are a gadget savvy person, who cannot forgo the high profile mobile phones, then you will die for the Nokia N900. It is not just another N series phone because it is a tablet and phone. The Nokia N900 is a thin mobile phone with dimensions of 110.9 x 59.8 x 18mm and weight of 81g as well as a slide full QWERTY keyboard mobile phone. The Li-Ion 1320 mAh battery provides a standby time of 278 hours for 2G and 250 hours for 3G, talk time of 6 hours 30 minutes for 2G and 4 hours 30 minutes for 3G and an unbelievable music play time of 24 hours 30 minutes.

The huge 3.5 inches resistive WVGA touch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels is definitely a winner. This is the second widest smart phone display, next only to Samsung 360 H1. supreme image quality and splendid sunlight legibility makes the Nokia N900 the best in its class. The sensitivity of the screen is quite good and all you need is a gentle press to get the work done.

The slide out full QWERTY keyboard is another winner for the Nokia N900. The three row ...
... layout however requires you to use the shift and alt keys quite extensively to use the characters. There is also an onscreen numeric keypad for dialing the numbers. If you want to send messages using the touch screen, there is an additional virtual keyboard to assist you.

The music player is quite basic and has no any adanced features. The FM transmitter is a good addition to share music with others. Video watching experience is good with large screen and DivX support. A 5MP Carl Zeiss camera is not much of an impresser for both still images and video even with dual LED flash.

With the release of the Nokia N900, the Maemo Linux based platform started to be considered as a platform for smart phones. To be honest, it is much better than the S60 Symbian OS, for it is quite consistent, while the OS only works in the landscape mode which disappoints some mobile phone users. So, Nokia has plans to introduce firmware upgrade to make the OS work in the portrait mode too. The cool feature of the Maemo OS is that you have to hit the task manager first to open the main menu if there are applications running. This task manager lists the browser tabs too so that you can switch easily.

The home screen is neat and simple with a limited number of widgets, but you can download new ones. Kinetic scrolling is enabled with most of the applications, but organizing the main menu is not quite easy. Regular PC shortcuts for commands like copy, paste, undo are all made available with the Nokia N900.

The phone book of the Nokia N900 is pretty basic and nothing much to talk about it. A dedicated call log is removed and you can view recent communications with the contact in the phone app. The telephony of Nokia N900 as good as expected, the only deficiency to be mentioned is that smart and voice dialing is not supported. You can send SMS and emails using the Nokia N900, but not MMS and audio messages. It is a little disappointing that there is no handwriting recognition.

The Nokia N900 presents the best connectivity options with support for USB, Bluetooth, infrared, and Wi-Fi. Networks such as GPRS, EDGE and HSPA are supported to provide fast access to internet. Mozilla based browser operates excellently and the organizer is complete except that its mobile office is a trail version. The built-in GPS receiver with Ovi Maps is great for navigation purpose. The Nokia N900 allows use of third party applocations since its Maemo platform is not fully developed.
Jerry Smith, the editor of http://www.mobilephoneonly.co.uk. An expert on mobile phone and an observer of UK telecommunication market. He writes reviews on latest mobile phones, and also suggests promotional deals and special offers from mobile phone retailers in UK.