Review: Nokia’s all-rounder: the N900

by Scott Bicheno on 2 April 2010, 07:00 3.0

Tags: Nokia (NYSE:NOK)

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Interface

We found the screen to be perfectly responsive, if not great in that respect. The N900 doesn't support multitouch, so zooming in and out of web pages is done by a double tap on the screen. Navigating web pages was nonetheless perfectly straightforward and the quality of the images good, however moving around web pages without inadvertently clicking on a hyperlink can be tricky, bordering on annoying.

Worth noting is that this is currently the only platform on which you can use Firefox Mobile, which we found to be quicker than the built-in web browser, despite the latter being made by Mozilla too.

Setting-up push email via exchange was pretty straightforward; thanks to a wizard provided by Nokia, and the N900 has the distinct advantage over many smartphones that you can have several windows running several different apps open at once. But while the phone will make a little noise and flash an alert light when a new email is received, there's no on-screen alert, which is an issue.

Talking about apps, one distinct benefit of owning a Nokia smartphone is the free Ovi Maps satnav application, a special Maemo version of which comes pre-installed on the N900. Ovi Maps loads up nice and quickly and has no trouble getting a GPS signal. However, inputting a location can be a bit fiddly and getting the view you want requires further fiddling, so it's not as easy to use as a standalone satnav device.

The Ovi store itself is perfectly well laid-out, but we found that there weren't too many apps available for Maemo yet. This could well be about to change with the merger of Maemo and Intel's Moblin OS and should also offer cross-compatibility with larger computing devices.

There is also a ‘Maemo Select' icon on the home screen to help you find what there is for Maemo on the Nokia website. The home page is quite customisable; adding or removing icons is in theory straightforward but again can be a bit fiddly.

 

 

The camera seems excellent, with a lot of automatic functions that you would expect from a dedicated point-and-shoot camera. The same is true of the video recording functionality.

The battery life seems perfectly adequate while using the phone, but runs down surprisingly fast when it's on standby. On average the phone is sending us an alert that it's about to run out of juice about every 48 hours, even if we haven't touched it in that time, which seems odd.

 

On the whole the Nokia N900 is a very impressive array of technologies packaged into a handheld device. The chip and graphics handled everything we threw at it easily and it justifies the ‘mobile computer' label given to it by Nokia.

The only overt negative that struck us about the phone was the standby battery life, but if this was your main day-to-day phone you'd probably be recharging it every night anyway.

The big danger with cramming so much computing goodness into one package is what faces all converged devices: does it perform each function well enough? The handset is bulky, although to a certain degree that's inevitable with a slide-out QWERTY and while it does most things well, it can sometimes be less than obvious how to get the best out of some of the functions.

On the whole it's a good effort by Nokia and sets the scene for even more mobile computing goodness in the near future. But if Nokia hopes to even keep up with, let alone beat the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft in the smartphone market it needs to offer a user interface that makes it much easier and more intuitive to access all these clever features.

 

The Good

Excellent hardware spec

Multitasking

Does most of the things you could ask of a smartphone well

 

The not so good

The user interface is relatively rudementary

Poor standby battery life

On the large side

 

HEXUS Rating

Nokia N900

 

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Nokia N900 smartphone can be ordered from the following retailers:

Nokia, SIM-free - £479

Carphone Warehouse, contract - from £30 per month for a 'free' handset

 

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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A very thin review of a relativly important piece of technology. This phone is Nokias answer to google android and apple iphone. This is the make or break phone for Nokia if they are to be taken seriously in the new age of smart phones.

People would be advised to really really read more reviews of this phone if deciding to buy. There are many forums wirh issues on this phone. From software issues to battery issues and even issues with the phone falling apart… (see usb port falling out)

There alot of people saying this phone would be brilliant… If it has google android on it. But nokias new os is too new, too buggy and programmers arnt interested enough. Also this phone still does not support simple phone MMS.
I have an N900 and whilst it is a good phone there are a few problems, the app store is very limited being the main one… a few times the desktop customisations have gone a bit wrong (lost settings etc) and the OS does lack some options you might find in Symbian, battery life is crap

On the plus side the applications do work well, it's highly customisable if you know how (runs Debian packages for a start), the screen is brilliant, the keyboard is very good to type on for a small phone keyboard… the web browser is great, Wi-Fi connection is seamless…

Many things to debate, on balance maybe I'd have preferred the Motorola Milestone (Droid) I was choosing the N900 against, but without using both its hard to tell.
I am currently looking at the Motorola Milestone (Droid), as its the only UK Android phone with a Keyboard ( that I am aware of ) I also love the HTC desire, but I am a firm believer that a true smartphone needs a key pad/board. Touch screens for all the cleverness they are, they are not as responsive as buttons.
the review is very brief,
been using nokia phones for a while now..whatever this new OS has to offer i'd rather take my chances with the new home brewed OS from samsung (BADA) on the soon to be released “Wave” phone,it's estimate to be cheaper, and it's UI has wow factor nokia has failed to deliver.

plus app store is going to start with 100 app at start and SDK is already been introduced to 3rd party devs,:)
Problem with Samsung or Sony is their os's (as with Nokia's Mezmo), regardless how good they are now are too late to the show. We don't need 5 different OS's and app stores for each one. When you have brilliant OS's already made and available, with maturing apps there is little room for more and more different OS's - programmers are generally only interested in making apps for popular and powerful OS's not one or the other.

Samsung and Sony will have to pick a mature os like Android or Windows soon too if they want to be taken seriously in the smartphone world.