During the Maemo Summit 2009 I was given a Nokia N900 for evaluation and development. For about three weeks now I have been able to use the device and got used to it in such a way that I seldom check the internet on my notebook or desktop. Here you will find my thoughts on using this 'pre-production' model.
Services I often use, like Identi.ca and Twitter, are consolidated using my Google Mail account. Normally I would quickly browse the web to check my mail and check the messages I received while I was offline. During a working day, I tended to use my other Nokia phone for tethering to my N810. This way I was mostly always online (Bluetooth sometimes wouldn't re-establish until a power down of both devices)... I was able to receive VoIP calls (SIP) on both my phone and internet tablet. Most of the time I would still use my notebook to have a full web experience or respond to my emails... and for calendar-keeping? I gave up on that... Symbian's calendar isn't comparable to the Palm calendar (or Agendus!). I have tried to use the N810 as a PDA, but the GPE tools didn't work well for me... I missed a good synchronization and integration: then came the N900.
Near desktop experience
The N900 is very powerful! That needs to be said. It is powered by a Texas Instruments OMAP3430. This processor is comparable to the BeagleBoards OMAP3530. The ARM Cortex-A8 core runs at 600Mhz and has the same PowerVR SGX 530 GPU. Only the DSP core is a little slower with 430MHz (TMS320C64x). The device gives a feeling of having more than enough power. When you start a game, like Bounce, you can still see it being active in the task-switching overview; true multi-tasking.
The OMAP-series processor can provide a full desktop experience, like the BeagleBoard can do with for instance Fedora and Ubuntu. However, this is also where the N900 falls a little short. Instead of providing a mini-HDMI connector it only has a composite out. After some tweaks in the OS you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse... and using the correct cables even USB. But you can't connect a larger screen... this way it is not a convergence device which could replace a desktop computer. Compare this to the the Creative Zii which I have for development; it provides HDMI-out and can playback a HD video in 1080p (but it can't do the desktop experience at the moment). The composite image quality is in my opinion too blurry. For games it works well, but viewing photos or a video felt a little disappointing.
Battery time and use
Lately I have seen a lot of news about the Motorola Droid. This device is also powered by the OMAP3430 and would be thinner than a iPhone 3GS. I am curious to see how they deal with battery time... since that battery must be small! The N900 is quite large and the capacity of the BL-5J battery is less than the one in the N810. The battery is empty after half a day of extensive use; GPS always on, always online (using 3G or lower depending on the location in NL, WLAN at home), FM transmitter on when I go to work (and back home) while playing music of course.
Luckily you can charge the device using the MicroUSB connector and at work I always have to do so. During this 'extensive' use I seldom made a phonecall! For me the N900 is primarily a mobile computer and a phone second. The GSM functionality provides me with the cellular data service I was missing the N810. Most of my phonecalls were done using VoIP (over 3G) and were short. I did notice the device became VERY HOT during a VoIP (over WLAN) of about 30 minutes.
Internet
If you want the full Internet in a device, the N900 is what you want. It has a Firefox browser which loads pages fast and plays Flash videos from YouTube without any hiccup. Photos you take with the camera can be immediately uploaded to remote services, like Flickr and Ovi. GPS information can be set as a status message for your IM. Maemo uses the telepahy framework for messaging and video/voice calls. Out-of-the-box it provides support for SIP, Jabber/XMPP (and Google Talk, Ovi), Skype and GSM (Voice calls, SMS). What I really like is the way conversations are kept or started. Last messages are all easily viewed from the Conversations application.
All contacts are aggregated from the IM accounts I use. This immediately fills the gap of not having a phonebook service for my SIP accounts. Contacts from different sources can be merged into a single contact entry. If you want to call a contact from the phone application you can easily see if he is online using Google Talk or Skype and even initiate such a call.
You can send a message from either the contacts or conversations (or even desktop shortcut) and it will open a separate window in which you can see the chat. I haven't felt the need to install Pidgin, unlike what I did for the N810. By installing the telepathy-extras package you can also integrate MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, IRC and more.
Closing thoughts
Maemo 5 includes a simple calendar which for the moment works quite well for me. Although you can not sync it to a remote service, it works very intuitive. Notes, calendar entries and your contacts can be synchronized using the Nokia PC Suite or SyncML compatible client.
The camera in the device is 5 mega-pixels and can really make very good quality photos. Just take a look at the Photojourney with N900 from tigert.
As a game device the N900 could be a very good competition against the iPhone. It easily plays games like Quake3. Just connect it to the TV and play using the keyboard and the accelerometer! It is almost like having an embedded Wiimote. While the N810 still had a D-pad, this was dropped on the N900. The cursor keys feel more natural for typing emails... but for gaming it feels like you miss some control. Also the screen does not allow multitouch... so no on-screen joysticks for now.
Although the device has a complete open development model it currently lacks commercial support of big game companies. I have to admit, this is still where the iPod Touch and iPhone excels... it has a lot of available games. This will be addressed in the next release of Maemo (codenamed Harmattan). It allows a security model which will probably attract a lot more commercial development.
Last week Nokia postponed the release of the N900 to allow more feedback from developers and evaluators. It also gives developers more opportunity to get familiar to the N900. As an example, most applications were installed in the / (root) filesystem, while large datafiles should have been installed to the user directory (/home/user). I had suffered from an almost complete device lock-up due to system memory being full. This should not happen to a none experienced (Linux) users. So I really think Nokia does a good thing here... They really want to give new users of Maemo a good experience.
So if you are searching for a game console rather buy a PSP Go or even iPhone. But if you bought a Macbook with the idea of having Un*x under the hood (and a terminal) you should buy a N900. Even the Android falls short in this area. If you want a phone with mobile computer ambitions (being powerful and useful) buy a N97.
For me the iPhone is a good sheep-phone, while the N900 is the real geek-phone (/device)!
Take note, I have been using a 'pre-production' model. The full production model will likely provided a much better experience.
