Nokia N900

Basically the N900 is a thing of beauty. Ive been using the IPhone 4 lately and Ive purchased this because when I read about it literally seemed full of good promises. Am comparing this to the IPhone 4 due to the fact that the IPhone 4 is the leading smart phone out there. If people want to bash me about not mentioning Android well sorry but I dont know enough about it, and the IPhone is a smart phone before people say otherwise.

[b]Physical Aspects[/b]
The phone itself is rather bulky and will stand out in many, many pockets. It features a QWERTY keyboard, that seems to work very well. Ive heard many complaints about the Space button being on the right hand side, after an hour or two of use I was already used to it. There are no physical call and menu buttons, but that was not really an issue for me. The device has a little stand near the camera lens, to me it seemed a novelty feature as it does not provide extra functionality, maybe if watching a video clip but I doubt it.

The screen it features is a resistive touch screen that works on pressure rather than electrodes, while yes this will not support multi touch as the IPhone 4 does, it does offer a stylus for those that do not like using the screen. There is a slider to protect the camera and its dual LED.

Overall the device is very bulky, it seems far too big to be a phone, more of an internet tablet, but if it wanted to be a tablet the screen lets it down as 3.5inch just isnt enough, the IPad and the Samsung tablets still maintain a large screen size over there Phone counter parts.

[b]Software Aspects[/b]
Maemo almost a full year old now, has been abandoned by Nokia, and no support will be given by THEM, for this Operating system, but in that year the N900 has created a community that is willing to help the user, since this device is an open source device many developers where attracted.

Let me say this once, and make it clear, this device is not for the faint hearted, if you wish to have everything done for you, go buy the IPhone and sleep well at night, if you like fiddling for hours on end and customizing and enjoy the satisfaction of making something work keep reading.

Maemo itself is dead to Nokia and there new OS Meego will not be supported on the N900 even though it can be booted onto it. To start the Home Screens. The phone is LANDSCAPE first and some applications support PORTRAIT. There are usually 4 but more can be added or removed, widgets, contacts and short cuts can be added to the desktop, and transition between the desktops is smooth.

The phone feature itself works fairly well, but many users have been reporting the Phone feature crashes when receiving a call. The calling itself it very good, call quality is very high even in areas were only one bar of signal is available. Other things such as Skype calling have been integrated into the Maemo OS and as there is a front camera available users can use either Wifi or 3G to use this feature. The IPhone has Face time but that only works on Wifi. Unfortunately video calling is not available on this phone, even though on the Nokia website they said they will announce it later. There is no voice dialling or auto answering when using a headset. The contacts book works well and quick, it is in portrait mode. SMS works well using Nokias conversation system, that records all the conversations by one contact through one method of delivery, this conversation application also allows IM services to be connected to the phone. One thing I did not like was that all my MSN contacts appeared in my contacts book, even though I could merge them with the original contacts, I still had a few lying about keeping the place messy. I have been told the email application lets the phone down, as it is lags and does not provide enough features.

Web and flash are something else. Flash does not run at full speed, but it still is flash, and the browsers is the fastest I have used, the MicroB browser, even though there is a Firefox release, it is inferior to the MicroB browsers, even though the MicroB browser is based on a Mozilla browser. Wifi connects within a few minutes of moving into range, and has a very good range, and the 3G is very fast, allowing me to view full web pages, not mobile sized but full web pages quickly.

This really is my final part of the review, open source. Many people claim that the IPhone truly has the biggest application store, but the N900 has Emulators, for both consoles and Linux applications, the phone can run Android, it can be over-clocked, under clocked, memory sticks can be attached to it thanks to the new USB host beta. The camera is not the best especially the front, but there are applications such as Fcam and BlessN900 that utilize the camera to its full potential. HDR images are captured by using 4 snapshots. The Nokia Maps are terrible but the Sygic application is great, when using it the phone might as well be a satnav the way it is set out and the way it works. Many people complain there is no digital compass but there is an application that provides that feature. The phone has an endless amount of games thanks to emulators for many consoles, even Web OS games have been played on the N900. I over-clocked my phone to GHz and it has been running stable since, people may say but thats not out of the box, blah blah blah, but this isnt an IPhone with a great out of box experience, you create your own experience.

Nokia has promised that applications that work on Meego will work on Maemo thanks to QT, but am not 100% sure. This isn't really a phone, and there are many features I have missed out, such as TV-out, there is no device that can match it's multi-tasking abilities. This phone isn't easy work, it's fairly hard work, but it rewards you when you put in the work. Am even using this Phone as a TV remote thanks to a small in-genuis application known as Irreco. The front camera has terrible quality by the way just terrible. Maybe firmware can fix this, but I doubt it. The OVI store is also terrible, which is why you should stick to the Maemo community and forget about Nokia helping you with this device.

If you want the bad things about this Phone just go read another review, they list them, and believe me the list is not small, but am just trying to point out that most of these faults, can be fixed, for example the lack of a FM radio player, well there's an application for that.

This is a smaller tablet that can be carried around.