Review: Nokia N900 – The Hardware

Wake up the kids! Its time for the most anticipated Product Review by a Small Time Blogger with Big Time Connections and Dreams of Greatness of all time, the review of the Nokia N900. That’s right. I got mine a couple weeks back and I can tell you right up front…

Wait! If I do that, you won’t read the review. You’ll find that your choice was validated or not and then go your merry way, assured that I, Tyler Regas, Blogger of Extraordinary Talent, told you so. Well, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to write a god’s honest review of a very, very… device-y device. Yeah. So Click on through after this very large image of the Nokia N900 and enjoy.

If you are familiar with Nokia’s efforts at their web tablet line, you likely are aware, or have even had, the original 770, and the n800, and n810, each of which were markedly better than the previous model (hint: I didn’t have an n800). Those devices were all web tablet, specifically meaning that they did not have phone hardware, but were dependent on wi-fi and bluetooth for their connections. Nokia also ran the gamut of hardware configuration tests to see what would stick. The n810 was the best received, mostly because it was the first internet tablet, or IT, to have a hardware keyboard.

In addition to the hardware, Nokia decided to tap the open source community and produce and sponsor its own flavor of Linux called Maemo. This proved to be an intelligent choice, as over recent years, Maemo has grown in capability and robustness, and as is the case with all open source projects, all of the open source code is turned back to the public good. Nokia has proven to be a good public citizen and friend to open source, and as a result there are a great many open source projects developed for Maemo. Of course, Nokia has also sported its own internal code shop which works on the core, and this is the group who produced the base for Maemo 5, the software behind the Nokia N900.

HARDWARE

Now, I don’t have a slick segue to start up the review, so I’ll just jump in. The hardware is impressive (no, I did not receive one of those insane smoking boxes, and I’m rather thankful to be honest) and smaller, primarily because it is the first IT to be a real phone. That’s right. The N900 contains not only Bluetooth and wi-fi hardware, but also a SIM card slot for service from carriers in the US like AT&T and T-Mobile. As for the rest of the specs, we’re talking a 600MHz TI OMAP 3430 Cortex-A8 CPU, a PowerVR SGX GPU, 1GB of RAM, a 3.5″ 800×480 touchscreen display, inbuilt stereo speakers, and the usual iPhone-type gadgets, all powered by a 1350mAh battery pack. Nokia calls it a mobile computer. Duh.

The N900 is smaller and than the n810 it replaces-ish, but it is by no means less impressive. The n810 would have been awkward to put up to your ear, and Maemo 5 still takes extensive advantage of the 800×480 display for web browsing. The N900 is thicker than the n810, but it works a lot better as a phone. The big change with the N900, however, is that you hold it in widescreen fashion, not tall like an iPhone or Google Android handset. All of the menus and controls are arranged in this fashion except the Phone program, which will change to a vertical orientation when the handset it turned and the slider is closed. This is convenient for the phone, but nothing else works that way.

As with the n810, the N900 has stereo speakers, one on each end of the phone, which sound surprisingly good and clear. The slide lock has been moved to the right end of the phone next to the 3.5mm headphone jack and microphone hole, and there is a micro USB jack on the left side. On the top of the device is the zoom rocker which now also doubles as the volume controller. The power button remains in the middle, and there is a camera button over on the right. Oddly, Nokia included an Infrared window, though I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t use the much faster Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR or attach the supplied USB cable for tethering. On the front of the glossy black face plate is the display, an earphone hole, the front-facing camera, and light and proximity sensors. On the back is the 5MP camera with a slider cover and an integrated prop stand.

Overall, this arrangement works well, but for longtime Maemo/Internet Tablet users, the loss of the dedicated hardware menu, back, and switcher keys will take a bit to get used to. I’d say, however, that the Maemo team did a pretty good job, but I’ll get to that in the Software section of my review. The keyboard itself is vastly improved over the N810 version, which was inconsistent and mushy. Nokia also wisely or stupidly (depending on what you need) ditched the D-pad for a traditional set of cursor keys. I know its a space issue and I like having them, but when it comes to gaming, there’s nothing like a d-pad. Of course, this is an issue which has always plagued mobile handsets which are not dedicated gaming platforms, and the N900 suffers alongside its lesser brethren.

That’s the hardware part. I was going to run this review all at once, but its taking too long to finish, so I’ll put up the software review later. Enjoy!