Nokia N900 Review – A Power Full Multi Media Device

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Huge clear display, best in music and video quality, one of the best browsers we have ever seen, huge storage memory, fast and capable of multi tasking.

Thumbs Down:

No support for Exchanger Server 2003, Ovi Store (but Nokia promises the latter will be made available soon). The phone is a bit big and heavy.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: GPS, FM radio, Camera, Music player, Video Player,

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Nokia N900 has 3.5 inch LCD touch display which gives a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. Display languages are Danish, Czech, Dutch, French, German, English, Polish, Finnish, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese and Norwegian. Internal memory of the handset is 32 GB and it supports expansion cards up to 16 GB

Supported audio formats are WMA, MP3, WAV, AAC and M4A files. Supported video formats are MP4, WMV, Xvid, H.264, AVI, MPEG-4, 3gp, and H.263. The phone has FM radio which can be heard with the wired head set plugged in. The phone has connectivity options of Micro-USB, Headset jack – Mini-phone 3.5 mm, Audio/video out.
Downloadable content on the phone is Ring tones, Video files, Wallpapers, Audio files, Games, Screensavers and Themes. The accessories included are cleaning cloth, video cable and wired headset.

N900 is powered by 600MHz TI OMAP3 3430 (Cortex A8) processor
The 1320mAh lithium ion battery of the phone gives a talk time of 9 hours
The phone has 5 megapixels which gives maximum resolution of 2584 x 1938. It stores photos in formats of EXIF , JPEG. Video Recorder Resolution is 800 x 480 and storage format is MPEG-4. The camera supports Geo-tagging.

Razzle Dazzle:

N900 is definitely sexy material; it is perhaps the only phone which hasn’t got any buttons on the surface. We don’t know if this will go well with you but we had to struggle a bit while making calls, we wished for simple talk and end physical buttons. The phone is 4.37 inch wide, 0.77 inch thick, 2.35 inches tall and it weighs 6.38 ounces. The exterior of the phone is tough and this makes the phone quite durable. But there is plenty of hardware in the handset (which in turn offers lots of features) and this makes it quite bulky and pretty big too. Make sure you are wearing baggy jeans; this won’t fit easily in tight pants.

Inside Dope:

N900 is the first device to feature three digit model number for the N series and it looks really promising device. The phone is more of a internet tablet device and less of a phone. But pretty much all the high end phones are becoming like this, N900 is the first device to openly come out as a power full mobile multimedia and internet device.

N900 runs on Maemo platform which is Linux based and it is great for multi tasking and has lots of customization options.

N900 is nothing like previous N series devices that Nokia has produced. It looks like a mini TV from the outside and has no buttons on the surface of the phone.

You will find the Nokia N900 placed sideways advertisements and pictures. We welcomed this new maneuver to make the phone look different. When we were using it, we realized that most of the applications of the phone can be used only with the phone in landscape mode. Phone dialer is perhaps the only app which can be used in portrait mode. We were not so much comfortable with this as we are used to using phones in horizontal mode. But a landscape mode means that you get more space while using your applications and for web browser this is a boon or else you will have to scroll loads.

The display of the Nokia N900 is huge 3.5 inch resistive and no physical buttons around it makes the phone sexier. But thinking from the ergonomics point of view, we would have liked two buttons for talk and end. But we couldn’t keep our eyes of the screen while scrolling through for pictures and watching videos. The WVGA screen gives resolution of 800×480 pixels, the text and videos on the screen look very bright and vibrant.

The screen is resistive and not capacitive which means you will have to put a little more pressure while touching the screen.

Below the display is a full size QWERTY keyboard which we thought was a bit small for typing text. The slide out keyboard is not even half as big as the upper half of the phone which makes the buttons quite crowded on the phone. This makes the phone sound like a half baked pie, the huge display gives great web browsing experience but is marred by the small keyboard which will be a pain in the neck while typing URLs. On the plus side the buttons were adequately elevated from the base which helps while typing and the buttons are non slippery. We were disappointed to see the space bar again aligned on the right side of the board which will be hard to use, especially for left handed people.

The face of the Nokia N900 doesn’t sport any buttons but there are a few on the sides, like volume rocker, camera key for capturing and activation, power button. On the other side there is a compartment for stylus and 3.5 mm head phone jack and microUSB port. On the back of the phone there is a sliding cover which has camera lens and dual LED flash beneath it. Just like N86 there is a kickstand which lets you place the phone on the desk for watching movies and videos.

We found that the Nokia N900’s user interface was not so user friendly, the phone which has Linux-based Maemo platform takes a bit of time getting used to but with time, we are sure you will find it easy to use. The menu of the phone is quite different from what we have known N series menus to sport.

You get four pages for storing your widgets, short cuts to applications that you use the most. You will have to scroll left or right, just like most smart phones, to access the pages. You can always reduce the number of pages if you think that four is too much for you. To add icons the menu, you will have to tap any part of the screen outside these icons.

You will get a tab menu, from there you can go the desktop menu and you can add widget, contact, shortcut, book mark, etc. You can also change you the theme or the background. Pressing the cross icon (X) on the right side of the short cut or widget will delete that item from the main menu.

We were quite impressed by what the new interface had to offer. But a newbie or even a veteran Nokia user will take a time to get used to it. For example if you are deeper in sub-menus you might keep wondering how to go back. It just takes a tap on the outside of the window, it is as simple as that but you will need some time to get used to it. But once you use it and understand how it works, you will sure like it, just as we did.

Nokia N900 comes bundled in with stereo headset, AC adapter, cable for video-out, reference manual and cleaning cloth.

Internet browsing is one the best features on the phone, if not the best. The power full phone comes with an equally power full browser, which is based on Mozilla. Browsing the pages was just like using a full sized browser on a computer. Adobe Flash Player 9.4 and AJAX is supported and there is Flash which means YouTube videos are welcome.
Other features include searching in a page, visual bookmarks, multiple windows, downloading, but just like the OS, it will take time to get to know how to use these features. For zooming in and out of pages, you double tap on the screen or use the volume rocker which is one the sides of the handset.

Nokia N900 has Wi-Fi connectivity and has T-Mobile’s 3G network compatible. We didn’t have much problems finding and connecting but we struggled a bit to get online on the network. It takes about 15-20 seconds to load a website with all the flash content. Watching videos was a bit of a let down, with the choppy quality disappointing us, but again watching videos on this big screen was mouth watering. Flash games couldn’t get through easily on the phone. Mozilla is right now working on a Firefox mobile version; we expect a beta version by the end of 2009. It will be first available on Nokia N900.

Other features on the Nokia N900 include conference calling, quad-band world roaming, speakerphone, speed dial, multimedia and text messaging, vibrate mode but there is no voice dialing. Bluetooth features include stereo and mono headsets, hands-free kits, video/audio remote control, object push and file transfer. VoIP calls are supported on the Nokia N900 and the phone has wizards for Jabber, Skype and SIP accounts settings.

The Nokia N900 has its own limitations when it comes to messaging. The phone has POP3 and IMAP connectivity but there is no support for Exchange 2003. It currently supports only Exchange Server 2007. There are also various applications which you will find useful like calendar, PDF reader, Documents to Go, Nokia Maps, clock and calculator. N900 doesn’t support Ovi Store, Nokia says it will resolve the issue soon by an update. Till that time you only have about a dozen of applications to download from the handset’s Application Manager.

N series phones from Nokia have always been centralized around music and they deliver one of the best music quality when it comes to smart phones. The phone continues to be one of them and supports WMA, MP3, WAV, AAC and M4A files. There is also support for ID3 tags and album art. You can create play lists on the fly and use the repeat and shuffle modes.

For video, the recognized formats are MP4, WMV, Xvid, H.264, AVI, MPEG-4, 3gp, and H.263. Support for such file formats and the inclusion of a dedicated 3d graphics accelerator will certainly go well with the video enthusiasts. We were blown by the 32 GB internal memory of the phone as well as support for further 16 GB card for expansion.

The phone has 5 MP camera at the back, we would have liked a 8 MP camera that we saw in N86. Nokia claimed that N86 camera was so good that it would replace your digital camera and we found that to be quite true. And for a price like this, you expect a high quality camera right? The photo quality is excellent on this camera. It has features like auto focus, Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens (dual LED flash). Options on the camera include geotagging, ISO sensitivity, exposure settings and white balance adjustment. There is also photo editor on the phone which lets you give finishing touches to the pictures that you have captured. We have seen cameras have a flash and still failing to perform well in dark lit environments but this phone was not one among them, photo quality was impressive in dark rooms.

Nokia N900 came out with flying colors in our call quality tests. Voice was crystal clear and we must say this is one of the best phones that we have seen in call quality. We could hear the voices of our friends quite clearly and they too could hear us. Voice was so clear that they didn’t believe when we said we were using a cell phone. Speaker phone quality was good but not as good as handset calls. But still we were impressed by the call quality that this speakerphone had to offer. Pairing up the phone with Bluetooth headset was easy and calls were clear.

The Nokia N900 is powered by 600MHz TI OMAP3 3430 (Cortex A8) processor which is the secret behind the fast performance. The handset takes multi tasking quite easily and we didn’t have much lag while using more than one application at a time.

1320mAh lithium ion battery of the Nokia N900 promises to give a talk time of 9 hours.

Nitty Gritty:

Nokia N900 is great for browsing and multimedia which include music, video and camera. The phone is one of the most power full smart phones in the market right now. The phone is unlocked though, which means it will burn a hole in your pocket with its big price tag. Buy it if you have the money, you won’t regret making the purchase.