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N900 is the first Nokia’s mobile phone that runs on Linux. The Maemo 5 software platform has evolved from previous Internet Tablet products to fulfill all mobile phone needs. N900 comes equipped with a lot of applications and features. This review focuses on usability while on the road and some characteristics that differentiate the N900 from Symbian based mobile phones.

User Interface

The UI uses 4 desktops. One desktop is visible at a time and it is changed by sweeping the display with a finger to the left or right. All desktops can show application shortcuts and widgets. I have picked up the most used applications and contacts to the desktop with some additional widgets. Calendar widget provides a quick look to upcoming meetings and events. Weather widget shows a 4 day forecast without opening up a web browser. E-mail and Facebook widgets keep me in sync with all my contacts.

Touching the upper left corner brings in the application menu. It allows you to access also the device settings. Contact list and a numeric keypad are available via shortcuts on a desktop and also via menu.

The UI is clean and easy to use. Icons are large enough to operate with fingers. The N900 is equipped with a stylus if precise operation is needed. I have used the stylus mainly to navigate through small links on a Facebook. The touchscreen is based on resistive technology, which is not as sensitive as the capacitive one in iPhone. Only one finger is used to operate the N900, since resistive technology does not support multi-touch feature. I have not felt that this is a limitation, since the N900 UI has been designed for resistive technology.

The N900 supports multi-tasking, which means that several applications can be open at a same time. Multi-tasking works very well and switching between applications is done via the application menu icon. Touching the upper left corner shows up miniaturized versions of all open applications. There’s plenty of memory on the device and it has never run out during my heavy testing of various features. Multiple applications can really run simultaneously. There’s approximately 27 GB of free memory available and it can be expanded with a microSD memory card.

Phone functionality

The N900 is a four band phone that operates on 3G networks. Calling and sending and receiving short messages are naturally supported. One surprise is that multimedia messages are not support. So you cannot send those modern post cards to your friends while traveling with this device. It also means that you cannot receive them either. The best way to share photos is to use then Internet photo sharing sites or send them as e-mail attachments.

Web browsing

Web browsing is one of the strongest features on N900. The browser displays most of the web sites brilliantly and supports also Flash. All the Flash based menus, animations, and videos run smoothly. The web experience is quite close the same as with laptops. The main difference is the screen size, although the N900 has a high resolution 840 x 480 pixel display.

Web sites can be zoomed in by double tapping or rotating finger clockwise on the screen. Another double tap or rotating finger counter clockwise zooms out. Sometimes the double tap does not work properly and it seems to depend on the web site how well it zooms in and out.

Mobile version of Firefox browser is freely available for the N900. The Firefox can synchronize bookmarks with a PC browser version. Tabs, settings, and bookmarks are stored on both sides of the screen. They can be revealed by sweeping the display sideways with a finger.

The N900 provides the best web browsing experience on the mobile phone market today.

Maps

Maps is pre-installed in the application menu. This is not the same Maps application that is provided with Symbian phones. The N900 Maps uses the built-in GPS receiver and shows a location on a map with a red dot. It calculates routes for pedestrians and cars. The route is shown highlighted on a map or it can be viewed also in list format. A big disappointment is that turn-by-turn navigation is not supported. The N900 is useless as a car navigation device, which is a shame. The large and sharp display would have been good for that purpose.

Moving the map with a touch feels natural. Zooming in and out is easy with a slider. The maps can be shown in basic form, with aerial photos, or with terrain information. Aerial view is cool and quite contrary the terrain setting does not usually bring in any new visible information available. 2D and 3D view modes are available. Landmarks can be shown also as a 3D objects. Other settings are night color scheme and selecting metric or imperial system.

I have not used the Maps much due to the lack of turn-by-turn navigation. I have searched some pedestrian routes while walking around a holiday destination. I have also evaluated some driving routes with it.

Camera

The N900 has a 5 megapixel camera and a double LED flash. Auto-focus is triggered by pressing a shutter button half way down. The image quality is on par with other Nokia’s 5 megapixel phone models. Photos from Nokia N95 8 GB device seem to have a bit better color separation and sharpness. I have not done any detailed testing between these two devices. This is purely based on my findings after taking thousands of photos with both mobiles. Camera sensor, optics and image processing algorithms have an impact to the overall image quality.

The camera supports the following modes: automatic, macro, portrait, night, landscape, and action. The shutter response is slow after pressing the release button and the delay varies between situations. It may take couple of seconds before the auto-focus locks in. Faster operation is available with landscape mode. The auto-focus is permanently locked into infinity, which shortens the delay from pressing the button and when the image has been captured. Other adjustable settings are white balance, ISO sensitivity, exposure compensation, and image resolution. The camera can use geo-tags, which means it can record GPS coordinates into image data EXIF fields if enabled.

Video recording has two modes: automatic and night. Screen format can be chosen to be 4:3 or 16:9. A familiar fact about light is true in video recording and still image capturing. When there is plenty of light on a sunny day the colors come out crisp, contrast is good, details are preserved and there’s no significant amount of noise. Interior shots have less light, which results poor color re-production and increased noise level in dark parts of the frame.

E-mail

E-mail application is quite capable of handling all day-to-day tasks that are needed. It supports several e-mail accounts and it can send and receive attachments. Pdf attachments are opened up with the Acrobat reader. Both the real keyboard and virtual keyboard can be used to type in mails. Both of them are quite good. The keys on a real keyboard are really small, but still I have got very few typos.

Incoming mails can be monitored with a desktop widget. The N900 opens up Internet connection automatically to check if there are any incoming mails. The check period can be adjusted via settings. When Internet connection is open all the desktop widgets also update their status. All this happens in the background without any visible signs to the user. It is also possible to limit the Internet connection only to WLAN networks. I have a fixed price data plan, so I have extensively utilized also 3G for Internet connection.

Other applications

Foreca weather widget is pre-installed and it has proved to be very handy. It shows 4 day weather forecast on a desktop. Touching the widget opens up a 9 day forecast. It is easy to select a city for the forecast once the widget is open.

Mauku is a Twitter client, which is still in Beta phase, but it operates quite well. Tweets can be read and written, but unfortunately Mauku does not provide a desktop widget.

Facebook widget shows latest status updates from your friends. Touching the widget opens up a Facebook site on a web browser.

Summary

Nokia N900 is a brilliant mobile phone for travels with few caveats. Internet experience is strong and it is always with in easy reach. When a lot of power and features are packed into a small volume there’s not much room for use time. The battery has enough capacity for one and a half days. So the N900 needs to be recharged every night. Charging connector is a micro-USB socket, which makes charger a hard to find for a loan. It is better to carry your own charger always with you or at least an adapter that makes most Nokia chargers up to the task.

If you are looking for a basic handset for calls and short messages then the N900 is not a good choice. You would not enjoy any of the N900 benefits. Use time and the missing turn-by-turn navigation are the biggest disappointments. Otherwise the N900 can be recommended to all heavy users of Internet and social media.

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