Nokia N900

[sk@tta]

Maemo 5 Hhmmm...........Im kinda liking it

[maf3000]

N900 review

When the screen lights up, it is an almost holy moment. The resolution is astonishing. It makes an iPhone look like a GameBoy. I thought the N800's screen was amazing, but the N900's screen has the same resolution, all packed into a much smaller space, making it look as sharp as a chef's knife and as crisp as fresh iceberg lettuce. Like the N810, it is transflective, so I could read the screen easily in direct sunlight, too. I didn't try e-book reading, but the bright, clear text in the browser suggests that it won't be a huge problem.

The next thing you notice about the N900 is the beautiful, efficient interface. There's a learning curve, but once you learn the basics of sweeping through the four desktops filled with your choice of widgets and shortcuts and zooming in and out of the open applications, you get fast at moving around the interface. As you sweep between desktops, the widgets and icons move slightly slower than the background, giving the impression that they are floating over the background. When a dialog pops up, and the application behind it loses focus, it blurs and looks like you're viewing it through frosted glass. A very nice effect. One humourous note; opening and closing apps is accompanied by such human-sounding “whshhht” and “fshhhht” sounds that people look at you, wondering why you're making those funny noises with your mouth.

The most convincing demo of the new device's capabilities is the included game, “Bounce Evolution”. The player rolls and hops a ball around a rich 3D world (with shining, rippling water, trees, butterflies, etc) by tilting and shaking the device. It is amazing to see the gaming potential of OpenGL ES 2 coupled with the accelerometer. I predict some groundbreaking games are going to come out for the N900.

The N900 shines as a media player, especially when it comes to video. There are some sample videos included that show the playback capabilities of the device. There are a couple of high bitrate 720p movie trailers that convincingly demonstrate that transcoding won't be necessary most of the time. The built-in FM transmitter is excellent, too, allowing you to turn any “boombox” or car radio into an amplifier for your music. The built-in speakers are good, nice and loud, but they are, not surprisingly, lacking in bass.

As a camera, the N900 seems very capable for a pinhole-phone-style camera. The pictures are decent and the video is surprisingly good, recording in very high bitrate (approx 3000 kb/s) 848x480. The camera probably won't be replacing your SLR, but it could probably replace your camcorder.

The faster processor seems to dramatically improve the networking speed of the device, as compared to the tablets. It seems to me that download speeds are only limited by the bandwidth of the wireless connection now. That should improve streaming video and other network-intensive apps.

I also didn't have much opportunity to test out the phone side of the N900. But one of the things that really struck me about the phone setup is how Cellular, Skype, Google Talk, and SIP are all on the same dialpad, and your call history has a mixture of all the different kinds of calls you've made. Your contacts have all the different ways of contacting them listed, and it lets you choose how you want to contact them (IM, phone, skype, GT, SIP). It was a bit disconcerting, but very cool, to have the device ring just like any “normal” Nokia phone for a Skype call! While on WiFi, I made a Google Talk call to another N900 that was on 3G, and it sounded like any other mobile call.

I e-mailed myself a basic MS Word document, and then I opened it in DataViz's Word To Go. I could view the document well, but there was no editing ability. So we will probably still need some way to edit office documents. I really hope Fremantle Abiword will appear in the repositories soon.

http://maemo.org/community/council/t...y_perspective/

[crac16]

Nah tell nuh lie, I want da phone yah. Take a look at this display. Read story on symbian-freak.com

Interactive Festival Identity Powered by N900

[Cultus]

1) First thing I must be able to get a local Unlimited Data plan for this device. If not it makes no sense.
2) Will have see what the battery life is like... this device looks like its a power hog...

Otherwise I am loving what I am seeing...Nokia has done it again...Flash 9 Support Sweet...everything else just makes it the perfect netbook replacement... I love it..