Review: Nokia N900 - A computer that can be used for calls
By Nenivraj, 12th Aug 2010 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutReviewsTechnologyMobile Phones
Whenever a new phone is released and the manufactures brags about the hundreds of functions and advanced technology there is always at least one journalist who thinks he is funny and asks "Can you use it to call?". With the Nokia N900, it was actually justified.
The Nokia N900
The Nokia N900 is commonly spoken of as if it were a phone. It can be found in the phone-section in all electronic stores and telecom-giants sells it along with long and expensive subscriptions. What most people don't know is that the N900 is the fourth out of five steps in a series of internet-tablets. It's older brother N800 could not be used to make calls but the function was added to the N900.
The Nokia N900 was released in late 2009. It was, and is still, one of the most expensive phones that can be found in your local electronics-store. The price today is still around 600€.
Design
The N900 is delivered in a good-looking box which tells you that is quite an exclusive phone you have bought. Once you got through the packaging you get to pick up a quite large and heavy piece of technology with a large touch-screen. By sliding it out you get access to the QWERTY-keypad. Nokia has done some improvement here for the Scandinavian market and released with the special characters Å, Ä and Ö that is common in both the Swedish and Finnish language.
The phone feels solid. You can pretty much feel that it is packed with electronics. While the front is nice and shiny, the back is satin black. On the back-side you have a small support-leg that you can flip out whenever you want to show pictures or videos to your friends and family.
Functions
The phone is packed with functions. Touchscreen, bluetooth, radio, usb-input, video and audio-out and on top of that you got tons of applications to get through the download-manager. Everything from battery-graphs to NES-emulators and conversions of old PC-games. The operating-system on the phone is actually a version of Linux known as Maemo5.
Now, this makes it all a bit more interesting. By having a Linux-platform you gain access to tons of applications made by Linux-fans all over the world. I actually have a (still not completed) playstation-emulator on my phone, along with emulators for NES, SNES, GB, GBA and a lot more. In fact, the different respetories that can be added to your download-manager you can get emulators for pretty much everything. You don't ever have to worry about not have anything to do with your phone.
Nokia has decided to stick with their 5-megapixel camera that earlier has been used in phones like N95 and N96. The camera has a cover for its lens, something that is not available on all phones. It is a question of having room for a larger battery. As an example, Nokia decided to remove the lens-cover on the 8GB version of the N95 in order to extend the battery-time.
Speaking of which, you get a stunning 32GB of fast built-in disk-space. Yes, thats great. Whenever I am heading over to watch a new movie and want to download it (legally of course ;)) I just open my torrent-software on the N900, press download, and when it is done (Which is fast, thanks to the ability to connect to my wireless network at home) I can walk over to my friends and just plug it into the TV and start watching. I am also able to keep a few movies and tons of music and images without worrying about the disk-space, which is great. Finally you can start watch full movies with good quality when your on the road!
The phone has it all! I use it as my remote control, my gaming console, my media-library, my alarm-clock and my new-paper.
Browsing the web
Browsing the web is as good as it can get on a phone. The web-browser that is standard works fine and for those who want, FireFox is available. The phone connects with wireless networks with slightest reception, and the 3.5G antenna does its job aswell. I have done various speed-tests with the phone and managed to get up to speeds around 700 kb/s. This is not all thanks to Nokia though, but for Swedish Tele2 who delivers a great mobile internet connection
Summary
For me, the Nokia N900 is the perfect combination. A cell-phone that can serve as a mini-PC when I am on the road. Usually, I sit at least two hours a day on my way to work. The N900 is perfect entertainment for these moments. I usually spend my time browsing the internet, but also writing texts and doing calculations that I maybee wouldn't have time to do on my spare-time. It pretty much enhances my day by at least two hours.
+
- Big capacity, both in performance and storage possibilities
- The camera, while it is not updated it works perfectly well. No need to carry a camera around
- The enormous possibilities that the Maemo5-interface gives you
-
- The battery-time could have been better
- The price is high
- It is not friendly to the average person
For geeks like me this is the perfect phone. 9/10
Note: As I use my N900 as my camera, I can't take pictures of it. The article will be updated with photos as soon as I can borrow one.
Comments
10th Nov 2010 (#)
Excellent
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