Photo gallery: Nokia N900First impressions
If you read our review of Nokia's flagship Symbian product for 2009, the N97, you'd know we were a tad concerned that Nokia's operating platform was lagging before the competition. The Series 60 platform has been a winner on Nokia's phones for years, but the rise of touchscreen devices has recently revealed the platform's limitations. This is where the newly announced N900 could be just what the Finnish mobile giant needs to stay in the game.
If you check out the images of the N900 you'll notice an interface you're probably not familiar with. This is Maemo 5, a mostly open-source platform developed within Nokia and based on Linux, which we haven't seen since the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. However, unlike the N810, the N900 is also a phone.
This means the N900 is also considerably smaller than the previous N-Series internet tablets. Measuring 111mm in length, 60mm in width and 19.5mm at its deepest point. Its 3.5-inch display sports a WVGA (800x480 pixels) resolution, which should make it a very capable web browser and multimedia player — the latter is assisted by excellent media file recognition, including XviD video playback.
The rest of the N900's white sheet reads like a tech-head's happy place; 32GB of storage with microSD expansion, a 5-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with flash, a web browser based on Mozilla technology incorporating Flash support up to version 9.4 and AJAX, HSPA data connectivity with 10Mbps downloads and 2Mbps uploads, plus Wi-Fi and A-GPS.
Nokia also includes in the official release an interesting breakdown of battery life we haven't seen other manufacturers use before. The N900 comes bundled with a 1320mAh battery pack, which Nokia estimates is good for five hours talk time. However, instead of throwing in an arbitrary standby time, Nokia suggests the N900 has a two- to four-day "always online" standby life, and an active battery charge cycle of "1+ days". At least it's honest.
The N900 will be revealed to the public during Nokia World from 2 September, with a release to selected markets from October. No word yet on pricing in Australia, but hopefully Nokia will shed more light on these details during its annual trade show next week.
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