Nokia N900

The Nokia Internet Tablet series which debuted in 2005 has always been sidelined as a companion and an accessory for accessing the Internet on a large touchscreen handheld. It had a niche target audience and the devices never really hit big time. Things have evolved dramatically in the recent year with smartphones rapidly outfitted with large touch-sensitive displays, putting them in a head-on collision with the Tablets. The upcoming N900 addresses that issue with built-in cellular capabilities as well as pure processing power and a desktop-like experience in a pocket-friendly size, putting it back into the running.
Unlike the earlier Internet Tablets, the N900 packs 3G and HSPA (10Mbps downlink, 2Mbps uplink) wireless radios, so obviously you can make and receive cellular calls with it. Under the hood is an ARM Cortex-A8 600MHz processor, up to 1GB of application memory and an OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics accelerator. The combined benefit delivers an ideal multitasking environment where several applications can run in the background at the same time without slowing down the device's performance. You can see that in a quick demo of the N900 below.

But what's really different this time is the updated Linux-based Maemo 5 software that is supposed to bring a PC-like experience on a mobile device. You can access multiple "desktops" panels by swiping your finger across the 3.5-inch 800 x 480-pixel screen, while the accompanying dashboard lets you switch effortlessly between tasks and applications in the background. The Maemo browser, built with Mozilla technology, has full Adobe Flash 9.4 support and you can use the onscreen mouse pointer to copy-and-paste text, or apply a swirling motion gesture to zoom in and out of a Web page. The latter doesn't seem to work as well compared with double tapping to achieve the same effect, as it seems to "jiggle" the page rather than to accurately zoom in.

Messaging on the N900 is also a deeply integrated function. SMSes are displayed in a threaded format so you can always follow up on past messages. The Messaging window also lets you view your IM chat history and check whether your contacts are available for chats. You can also view their status via the phonebook, and from there select a preferred mode such as Gtalk or Skype to contact someone. The buttons on the slide-out QWERTY appear fairly raised, so hopefully this will provide a good tactile experience even though the layout seems rather crammed.
The N900 captures WVGA 16:9 videos and 5-megapixel images and you can tag (using the new tag cloud) and share content with your friends via Ovi Share, Facebook, Flickr, etc. According to the specifications, the Maemo 5 software currently doesn't support MMS or the underlying WAP technology. For business users, Microsoft Exchange is also supported, so this means you get push-email and synchronization capabilities with Outlook calendars and contacts from the server to the N900. Maemo software as well as application updates can be done over-the-air, so you will not need to be connected to the PC to get software upgrades.
At a glance, it's clear the Maemo user interface is radically different from S60 which we have all become familiar with over the past few years. So how does the enhanced system fit into Nokia's portfolio of devices? We suspect S60 will continue to form the backbone of the mobile operating system for Nokia smartphones for at least the next year. But moving forward, Maemo, which provides the flexibility of an open system, will gradually be pushed into the limelight. That's not to say that S60 will wither away as it will still continue to be developed by members of the Symbian Foundation. What we may see is S60 being used in midrange handsets, with Maemo used to power higher-end devices.
As to how the N900 and the recently launched Booklet 3G Netbook fit into Nokia's portfolio of devices, a Nokia spokesperson said that the latter is an opportunity to bring a fresh perspective into the PC world. More on this topic here.
The N900 is available for preorder in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. According to Nokia, the device will hit the markets from October at 500 euros before tax and subsidies