Hands-on review of the Nokia N900

Back in September last year, I was invited to the onedotzero event at the BFI London and was one of the first people to get their hands on the shiny new Nokia N900. During the event I was able to grab a quick hands on with N900 with my fellow bloggers, but sadly the time was limited and didn’t get to try out the new handset as much as I’d have liked. Thankfully the lovely people at WOMWorld/Nokia we kind enough to send out a trial handset that I could test properly. Read on to find out more…

Whats in the box

The Nokia N900 comes in a stylish square grey box with an embossed outline of the N900 handset, with Nokia Nseries and Nokia N900 written in silver writing.

I’ll come to the main item in the box in a minute, but for now here’s some of the other things that you’ll find in your N900 box:

A video out cable to connect your N900 to a TV/sound system, and a Micro USB > USB cable for connecting your N900 to your computer.

Now that Nokia have signed-up to use a standard phone charger with other phone manufacturers, they have been good enough to include an adapter that will convert your old Nokia charger cables to the new Micro USB format.

Also included is a Nokia Nseries cloth to clean those grubby little finger marks that you are going to leave over the phone.

A set of Nokia earbuds, and a power adapter are the remaining items that can be found inside your N900 package along with the usual manuals.

The front of the N900

So here it is, the Nokia N900. The handset sports a glossy 3.5 inch touch screen which dominates the font of the device. The handset is designed to be used primarily in landscape mode, as you can tell from the orientation of the Nokia logo and model number above the screen.

The earpiece can clearly be seen on the left of the screen, and on either side of the handset are the stereo speakers.

On the right hand-side of the device you will find the headphone jack, mic, lock switch and the infamous Nokia Stylus that they like to include on their touch devices.

The back of the N900

Flipping the glossy screen over for a minute, we take a look at the back of the N900. Here you will find the 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens with dual LED Flash. Surrounding the camera is a kickstand which can be used for propping up the N900 to watch a movie.

The slide-out Keypad

As well as being a touchscreen device the N900 has a slide-out keypad containing a nice set of QWERTY keys. The slide mechanism gives a nice solid click as the device locks open.

Unlike the similar-looking Nokia N97 (which runs Symbian OS) – the QWERTY keyboard feels much more like a traditional laptop keyboard, but in miniature.

Keys are nicely spaced, and a joy to use.  There isn’t a navigational D-pad like on the Nokia N97, but instead arrow-keys like the Nokia N97 Mini. I did miss not having the D-pad, I guess thats a personal thing, but it’s removal of course keeps down the size of the device which is more important.

The Touchscreen

The screen is gorgeous, and has a bright 800 x 480 touchscreen display.

You are presented with a ‘desktop’ on your phone that allows you to put shortcuts and widgets to your favourite applications and sources of information for quick and easy access.

The top left of the screen is your main navigational method through the device. This can take some getting used to, as it’s not immediately obvious how you cycle through the various Applications/Desktop/running apps modes of the phone. The top of the phone also has a menu bar that can be tapped to pull down more options depending on what you are doing, again this isn’t that intuitive and can take a bit of time to get used to.  Once you do understand how this works, it does become second nature though.

One of my main concerns about the touchscreens used in the N900 was that it uses resistive instead of capacitive touchscreen technology. Basically the difference between the two is that you have to apply more pressure to the screen on a resistive screen (ie like you are pressing a key) where as a capacitive screen can pick up light taps (like the iPhone). On the Nokia 5800 and Nokia N97 you have to firmly press the screen and slide to scroll.  Thankfully the resistive implementation of the Nokia N900 is pretty darn good, almost as good as the light touches you would apply to an iPhone.

Inside the N900

The Nokia N900 flys! This is one fast mobile, in-fact it can’t really be called a mobile, it truly is a pocket computer.

At the heart of the N900 is an ARM Cortex-A8 processor running at 600 MHz. This provides the N900 with plenty of power that gives the user a desktop-like experience in the palm of their hand. Opening and switching applications is painless and quick, its really is a tiny powerhouse.

The N900 comes equipped with 32GB of internal storage which is plenty of room to store all your applications and documents.  This can be expanded should-you-really-need-to with the included MicroSD card slot, although this will only be up-to an extra 16GB.

The camera is a standard issue 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens, that we have come to know and love from previous Nokia handsets.  Great pictures as expected, and with the dual-LED it can help out in some lowlight situations.

Here here for the full list of N900 Technical Specifications.

Quick Questions Answered

I know that you cant really compare like-for-like on handsets that are made by different manufacturers for different audiences, but when people have a choice of choosing between 2 similar-in-spec devices they really want to know basic things like ‘is it fatter than my friends iPhone?’ So here I have tried to answer some of those questions:

• How heavy is the N900? – The N900 weighs 181g.
• Is the N900 fatter than an iPhone – Yes the N900 is fatter than an iPhone, for those familiar with the Nokia N95 its pretty comparable to that.
• Can the N900 run more that one application at a time? – Yes the N900 has full multitasking, unlike the iPhone.
• Are there lots of apps for the N900? – At the moment the platform is fairly new, but new apps are always being added to the Ovi Store.
• Will my existing Symbian apps work on the N900? – No, The Maemo Operating System is different than Symbian.
• How much is a Nokia N900? – The SIM free price of the N900 varies, but you can expect to pay around £460.

In you have a question about the N900, add it to the comments below, and I’ll get it answered for you.