Nokia N900 Review

It's been a week now since I got my Nokia N900 and I want to record my initial thoughts on the device.

Speed

Unfortunately, when I bought my N900 I just expected it would work on AT&T's 3G network in the US. I was wrong and should have checked the N900's specs. Nokia really missed the ball on this one if they intended selling these in the US. I'm hoping they have something up their sleeve. While 2.5 isn't terrible I find my iPhone's 3G loads browser pages slightly faster, which is to be expected. The only option for US users is T-Mobile if they want the 3G experience. YMMV when it comes to T-Mobile's coverage.

Wireless setup and speeds are similar to any other device. I set mine up in a few seconds after finding the Internet Connection option under Settings.

The N900 scores an A if you're on T-Mobile, B for AT&T.

Touchscreen

As we know there are two types of touchscreen most common in handheld devices, capacitive and restrictive. A capacitive touchscreen recognizes touches using the electric impulse from your finger, i.e. iPhone or iPod Touch screen. A restrictive screen uses the pressure of your finger or stylus (yuk!). In my opinion, restrictive screens are passe. It's unfortunate that the N900 has one. I find it unresponsive compared to what I am used to with the iPhone. However, I have found a happy medium in that I can use my finger nail to achieve rather accurate touches. I refuse to use the stylus since it's not 1999. Do Treo's still exist?

All-in-all, I'd give the screen a B-.

Keyboard

You have two options here. One is the onscreen keyboard. While it's effective using the fingernail technique, it doesn't always popup when you enter a text field. Annoying! Which leads me to the slide out keyboard. The full query keyboard is nicely laid out and the custom keys are very intuitive. I find typing on it somewhat difficult when attempting to strike keys on the first row. I have large, not mutant large, but large hands and struggle to strike those keys with any consistency. I would have preferred another 1/8 inch or a slide out similar to the n97.

I think this the slide out is another just-miss for the N900 and give it a B-.

Camera

The N900 hit gold with the cameras. Not only do they work well they are highly configurable. 5MP in high resolution and 3MP in widescreen with integrated flash plus all the modes you would expect from a pre-SLR digital camera appear to be there.

The video camera in the N900 is excellent as well. I found the videos to be quite smooth and crisp. The good news is theres also a camera in front of the camera. While Nokia does not support that camera yet, one of the upcoming firmwares are sure to. Does this mean video conferencing is coming to an N900 near you? I hope so.

This score is simple, A+!

Apps

The app count just hit 100 as of New Year's Eve, but this device is still very new. The open Linux-based Maemo OS has lots of promise but let's hope we get some robust applications and not hundreds of small console-based niche apps I see in most Linux repositories. The best thing to do is to turn on the dev-extras repository under Application Manager. With this repo you can browse dozens of apps still under development.

I can't put a score on this one so I'll have to check back and see where we are with apps after Q1 2010.

Happy New Year!