The N900's keyboard slides out smoothly, without emerging at the same jaunty angle as the Nokia N97's. Instead, the three-row Qwerty keyboard just sneaks out from below the screen. The keys are larger than those on the N97, but they're packed together, with no space between them. They also have more travel, so they click more when you're typing. The space bar is shunted to the right, so right-handed folk may have more luck than lefties with this phone.
Multitasking is easy, thanks to a thumbnail screen that shows you everything you've got open, including multiple browser windows, and notifications of new texts and emails. You get to the thumbnail screen with a tap of an icon in the corner of the screen, and another tap opens a menu of options that will look familiar to anyone who's used a Nokia handset in the past. Tapping away from the menu, in a blank space, returns you to the home screen. We hate phones that are overloaded with buttons, but we sometimes craved a home button to get us out of the menu system and back to our desktop of handy shortcuts.
Conclusion
It's early days for the Maemo 5 operating system, and the Nokia N900 isn't
the most straightforward phone out there. Its app store is just
getting started, and it's designed to be a two-handed typing machine, rather than a handset for
single-fisted use on the move. But it
packs a fresh user interface, a decent keyboard, heaps of memory and great
connectivity into a stylish, if slightly chunky, body. Getting in the N900 elevator on the ground
floor may mean a bumpy ride as new features and apps come your
way, but we think that Maemo's already so good that it has the potential to go all the way to the top.
Edited by Charles Kloet
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User reviews13
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Andrew Cserbakoi 23 June 2011
Good: homebrew stuff, for a techy guy like me its a laptop in my pocket
Bad: the phone app, lol & battery life but battery not an issue for me coz I'm a cabbie
Comment: Nokia never said it was a good phone. jnust a brill multimedia device. Owning this for myself who always has access to a mobile phone charger in my cab is ideal. If I'm going out anywhere and need the convenience of a decent phone then I take the sim card out and put it in my old Nokia N95 8GB which is an excellent PHONE
von dutch 22 June 2011
Comment: Gah! stupid resistive touchscreens ruin days even more than rain
jemp2099 27 March 2011
Good: Applications, Multi-tasking, Skype integration, Adress Book
Bad: Battery Life up to 1 day with 2G and Wifi, but with Bluetooth and GPS up to 4 hours top, Camera; although it has Carl Zeiss you are not able to take a photo in low light conditions (so.. no photos in the afternoon nor the night), GPS; no voice indications, if you are not connected to the internet you can't search places or streets, and it becomes extremely slow to locate you , the USB mini-port is extremely fragile (broken after 4 months of normal use), size (too big) ... practically it's a BETA phone
Comment: A very geeky OS, not as complicated as Blackberry but not for most regular users. The FM transmitter has a very low range, sometimes it does not work in my car. Without internet ( I have no internet plan) the GPS took about half an hour to find my position (not an option for when you get lost in a big City), It's very disappointing that you practically not have a camera working in the afternoons, nights or interiors. The mini USB port is very fragile, and it seems to be a some-what common issue that it becomes broken (which may be solved only by changing the whole Motherboard). No Java compatibility, no compatible also with the latest Flash version. Landscape mode almost all of the time, no real use of vertical mode.
It is very sad that Nokia is selling such a BETA phone, with many flaws with such a expensive cost.
A total disappointment for me.
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