15 Aug 2010

The amazing Nokia N900

It's been a while since I last wrote about how the Nokia N900 came to my rescue at a conference. I really love this phone. Let me start with the huge (for a mobile)3.5-inch high resolution WVGA transreflective screen - the images are really clear with brilliant colours (65K) even in bright sunlight.

Nokia N900

It comes with a 600 MHz processor and upto 256 MB RAM and 768 MB virtual memory which allows you to open and run several apps at once. I had no problems viewing videos and even make presentations using the TV-out cable which came with the box. Connecting to the net was surprisingly fast as well and the browsers loaded almost instantaneously.

Nokia N900

Nokia N900

Nokia N900

Nokia N900

Nokia N900

The N900 has a resistive touchscreen which may not be as sensitive as the iPhone or my Samsung Glaxy Portal and I found myself using the stylus a lot. For typing, the sliding full QWERTY keyboard comes really handy.

As I mentioned in my last post, the 5 megapixel camera with the Carl Zeiss lens gives excellent results. It has autofocus with 3x digital zoom and dual LED flash. However, I wonder why they didn't put in better quality Xenon flashes.

It also comes with a lot of storage to store your videos, music, apps and photographs - 32GB internal storage which can be extended upto 16 GB of additional storage with an external microSD card.

I didn't make much use of the integrated GPS but it came in handy a few times when I had to use the Ovi maps to find my way.

However, the reason the Nokia N900 has become the "hacker's phone is because of it's operating system - Maemeo 5, which is based on the open source Linux. It's amazing what some people have done with their Nokia N900's. For example, one guy uses it as a remote control to fly a helicopter.

I showed the phone to several friends and the first comment they usually made is that it looked bulky - It is a bulky phone (110.9 x 59.8 x 18mm) but it fits really well into my palm and was not as heavy as it looks.

Overall an amazing phone. Sad I have to give it back. Thanks to the guys at WOM World/ Nokia for letting me try out this phone.

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