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PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

http://www.pcworld.com/article/18191...t_and_not.html

Quote:

Nokia N900: Hot and Not
Jared Newman
Nov 11, 2009 11:47 am

Nokia's N900, the next tablet/smartphone/whatever to bat against Apple's iPhone, ships today. It's a big occasion for Nokia, as the N900 is its most powerful smartphone yet, and the device's Maemo 5 open source operating system is a diversion from Symbian, which Nokia tends to support.

I've been intrigued by the N900 since Nokia announced it in August, but as I look over the features, I can also understand why it fell off the radar, plagued by delays and overshadowed lately by Motorola's Droid. Here's a look at what's promising and potentially disappointing with Nokia's N900:

Hot: Monster Specs

Nokia likes to call the N900 a "mobile computer," and that's partly due to the device's hardware. There's a 600 MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, 1 GB of application memory and a 3D graphics accelerator with OpenGL support. The 3.5-inch display has a resolution of 800 x 480, and there's a 5-megapixel camera with flash and autofocus for photos and video. Best of all, 32 GB of storage is on-board storage, expandable to 48 GB with a MicroSD card.

Not: Limited Portrait Mode

Most of the N900's functionality is confined to landscape mode, which is probably why the phone is occasionally referred to as a tablet. When you want to fire off a quick text message or look something up on the Web, needing two hands will become inconvenient in a hurry.

Hot: Maemo 5 Operating System

nokiaThis thing looks smooth as it swipes among four home screens for your contacts, favorite apps, bookmarks and communications. Yes, it can multitask, and a handy button lets you see which programs are currently running.

Not: No MMS

It's puzzling that such a multimedia-capable smartphone doesn't allow for MMS. All that high quality photo and video is somewhat wasted when you can't immediately blast it out to friends and family.

Hot: Firefox and Flash

Check out this video of the N900's Firefox-based Web browser in action, and try to curtail your drooling. When you can play a Flash version of Tower Defense through the Web, who needs to pay for an app? I'm tired of the drawn-out wait for Adobe to bring Flash to smartphones. The N900 brings the smartphone to Flash.

Not: Ovi Store

Nokia's Ovi Store for apps doesn't compare to the iPhone's App Store or the Android Market, and it likely never will unless the N900 catches fire and developers suddenly decide that Ovi is the place to be. The N900's powerful Web browser somewhat offsets the need for apps, but If I paid for a phone with OpenGL and multitasking, I'd certainly want to use those features.

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthewcc (Post 372793)

http://www.pcworld.com/article/18191...t_and_not.html

Portrait comin soon
mms comin soon

has far has app store, iphone been out ova 3years plenty of time to get loads of apps so in time loads of apps will be out!!

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

No MMS? Wow. I guess anymore uploading it to facebook or what not is becoming more popular then sending a picture to someone's phone so they can view it on their tiny screen.

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

"plagued by delays"

For ****'s sake, it was delayed, what, 10 days?

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

So it is not a bad write up - They hit on the complaints we all have but do not inject the simple responses we have come to know and love to the negatives. My fanboy oriented response was:

COST:
TMO now has a sim only rate plan which effectively offers a 350$ subsidy over 2 years. The difference is you pay up front, and save over the long term. AND Amazon has it listed at 559, and dell.com fro 520. Looking at this math, it is not so bad... and compared to an ATT or Verizon rate... the phone is almost free.

Portrait Mode & MMS:
I am confident both these issues will cease to be problems after a firmware update or 2.

Ovi store: This is a more difficult one... in no way does the catalog of stand alone apps, or plugins match that which is offered by android or iphone. And there is nothing we can say other than give it time, it will come.

One thing I like to mention is the close integration that plug ins offer and high level of control over the apps, this is pretty unique to maemo.

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

MMS is useless for high def images from a 5meg camera + HSDPA/HSUPA phone.

The max you can send over MMS is 350kb I believe, the N900 will need to compress the large image into much smaller file to send over MMS.

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

yes, mms is useless, especially in an age of REAL email clients on mobile devices... Now how do we educate the masses on this?

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

Quote:

Originally Posted by matthewcc (Post 372793)

Nokia's Ovi Store for apps doesn't compare to the iPhone's App Store or the Android Market, and it likely never will unless the N900 catches fire

I'm rather hoping my N900 doesn't catch fire. That's more an iPhone "feature".

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrojas (Post 372801)

"plagued by delays"

For ****'s sake, it was delayed, what, 10 days?

Yup, that bit of hyperbole got me too... :rolleyes:

I guess this now means Jared Newman's writing style is "infected by the puss oozing pox of inaccuracy". :p

EDIT: Added bio link and reference.

Quote:

Main Entry: plague
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): plagued; plagu·ing
Date: 15th century
1 : to smite, infest, or afflict with or as if with disease, calamity, or natural evil
2 a : to cause worry or distress to : hamper, burden b : to disturb or annoy persistently

synonyms see worry

— plagu·er noun

Re: PCWorld Article: Nokia N900: Hot and Not

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave999 (Post 372834)

MMS no need! and all the shitty apps in appstore. no thanx. HOT: N900:D

Dude, ya'll know i'm not an apple fan, but they have some really cool apps on it. and if 1% are great, or even 0.1% are great that is still 100 really good, really useful, really innovative apps that we will likely have to wait months for. We all hope that this community will generate 100 apps/plugins/tools that the rest of the world not running maemo will drool over.

The future is Qt.