Maemo Nokia N900

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I had the opportunity to play a bit with Marco's N900 and I decided to write a little review about it.

First of all, lots of people compare N900 and iPhone and we can read reviews written by Apple fan boys called as this one : "With N900, Nokia is still not close to the iPhone".
In my point of view, this kind of title is stupid because Nokia has never wanted to create an iPhone copy.
The idea of Nokia, if your read their blog, was to create a little Internet device focussing on the community aspect.

Of course there are some similitarities between iPhone and N900 but there are also a lot of differences and I think that these 2 devices aim to address different needs.

iPhone is first of all a phone and more precisely a touchphone. It is also a camera, a music player, an organiser, a tool box, an internet browser and a lot more thanks to the appstore where you can download a huge number of different applications.
But the iPhone is an egocentric device not focussing at all on the community aspect.

N900 is a mini computer with a keyboard and a touchscreen, focussing on communication and sharing over the Internet. It is also a phone, a music player, a GPS, a tool box and a camera. It can also be more thanks to the N900 platform where everybody can write applications for the device.
You can find all the features of the device here : http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/specifications/ but I would like to talk about some features I find very interesting.

1) Size of the device :

I compared the size of both devices, the iPhone and the N900 :
The N900 is the same length and the same width as the iPhone but the N900 is thicker than the iPhone .
You can explain that because the N900 has a keyboard and a removable battery (with N900 you can change the battery which is impossible with an iPhone).

2) How to use the device ?

This device is designed to be used horizontally (another difference with the iPhone which is used vertically). Indeed as a mobile computer, N900 looks more like a little computer if you use it horizontally.

3) Camera :

The N900's camera is a really good camera : 5 megapixel camera (2584 × 1938 pixels) with Carl Zeiss lens.

See in attachment the picture of me that Marco took last weekend with his N900 and that he sent to me by email :


When you take a picture with the N900, you can choose to share it with your friends via Twitter, Facebook or via email. This is a really nice feature.

See more amazing pictures here : http://www.tigert.com/2009/10/18/photojourney-with-n900/

4) Multi desktop

You have 4 independant desktops that you can switch easily between. This gives you the opportunity to run more than one application at the same time, which is impossible with an iPhone.
Indeed, you can open a chat on one desktop, and doing other things at the same time on another desktop, which is totally impossible to do with an iPhone. With an iPhone you have the possibility to chat with some applications such as ebbudy for example, but you have to do that exclusively, which is not useful at all.


5) Design

From a girly point of view, I find that the design of the N900 is pretty good. The machine is black, quite small and elegant.
Another nice design feature is the set of wallpapers. The wallpapers are cut into four parts ; one different part for each desktop. See examples here : http://n900wallpapers.com/

6) Communication features

For each contact, you can choose the way to contact them : by phone, by instant messenging or an internet call (jabber, skype, SIP), by e-mail or by sms.
I think that it is a great idea which can save you a lot of money. Indeed, if you want to talk to one of your contacts and you see that they are online, you can talk to them for free by Internet rather than calling them by phone!
For this part I'll refer to Marco's article : http://blog.barisione.org/2009-10/contacts-on-maemo/



In conclusion, I think that the N900 is a really nice device for sombody who likes to stay in touch with their friends all the time, who wants a permanent Internet connection, who wants a phone, who wants a good little camera all the time in their pocket, who wants everything in one device and who finally is a bit geeky ; )

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