Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 OS hands-on

Home > Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 OS hands-on

By Mike Browne on August 21,

2009 at 00:00,

The Nokia N900, or RX51 tablet depending on who you talk to, looks like being the next major device from Nokia for anyone serious about being connected and on the tip. It has the same 3.5-inch touchscreen as the Nokia N97 but runs the Maemo 5 operating system instead of Symbian S60. It's surfaced online with a major hands-on, check out the details of the Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 OS in-depth hands-on....

The Nokia N900, also known internally as Rover and the RX51 tablet, has been doing the rumour rounds for some time now. However, Russian site Mobile Review, who seem to be able to get their hands on almost any Nokia before it surfaces, have gone and done it again and posted a full in-depth hands-on of the Nokia N900.

Nokia N900 graces the FCC

And are we impressed? You better believe it! The Nokia N900 ticks off many of the same must-have features as the Nokia N97, so we'll get a 3.5-inch resistive touchscreen display, 5-Megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, as well as HSDPA for super-fast downloads and even A-GPS.

The big change is that while we'll still get a full QWERTY keyboard, the Nokia N900 has done away with the angled hinge, in favour of a more traditional slider option.

However, while the hardware is all nicely in place and as expected, the big news with this device is the use of the Maemo 5 operating system, which is based on Linux rather than the Symbian OS. Mobile Review has also posted a bunch of screengrabs of Maemo 5 that are well worth checkiing out.

Finally, it seems we'll be able to get our hands on the Nokia N900 before the end of the year for around 550 Euros. No doubt we'll get the full official launch as part of Nokia World 2009, which is less than two weeks away!

So, is this the future of Nokia smartphones rolling out before our eyes? Check out the screenshots and let us know what you think in the Comments below.

Check out the Nokia N900 image gallery:

Via: Mobile Review

Tags: Maemo 5 N900 Nokia Tablet

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Tim

I admit to being a little disappointed – I was looking forward to the N900, thinking (on the evidence of the rumours) that it would be more of an “N810 with 3G and a decent camera”, rather than an “N97 running Maemo” (to put it crudely).

I’ll still give it a good look when it comes out, but at this rate I may be hanging onto my trusty N95 for a bit longer…
Mark

Same size! Higher resolution screen…
Marcos

I might have gone for the N900 if it ran Android, because you know straight out of the box there will be a lot of software for it, Maemo has a microscopic user base, and if the N900 flops ( I know this is a Nokia site, but we all know its possible) then you can’t really see many devs bothering making any software for Maemo, which means all the fancy hardware will be useless. Thats why I’m playing it safe and going for the N97 mini, sure the OS is old, but there is still so much you can do on symbian, and it still has a massive user base, plus the build quality of the N97 mini beats the cheap plastic of the N900 (why Nokia why?, Blackberry, Samsung etc use top qualty materials in their high end phones)
Jason X

The problem with the N900 is, outside of our “tech” community, about 3 people actually know anything about the N900 even coming out (sarcasm), there is no iPhone/Palm Pre/Blackberry/Google style build up/fanfare for this potentially great device. Plus Nokia fluffed the relase date, and again have failed to get American carriers on board. This disastrous campaign has put me off buying one, as I’m fairly certain its going to fail, which really makes me sad, but the reality is I’m not going to spend £500 for a phone which may end up with little support and applications by next year.
Mikey Bee

Jason, the Nokia N900 never was intended to be a mass market phone, it’s the new generation of tablet aimed at high-end users, that’s why you haven’t seen any big TV campaigns – though that seems to have just landed: http://noknok.tv/2009/11/10/was-the-nokia-n900-created-by-aliens/.

As for support, the Maemo community is huge and growing all the time. As this is an open source platform, anyone can create apps and get them used on the Nokia N900, unlike some other app stores that seem to run a closed shop…….
damo

Going for an n97 over an n900? Absurd! Access to the full internet more than compensates for a lack of apps. I think apples brainwashed everyone.
Pepe

I have never been a phone fan, I have always preferred a laptop/Desktop computer to a 320×240 pixel screen. But I like gadgets, and as almost every one of my friends owns a Mac and an iPhone, I wanted the N900.
To my amazement, I actually have become a very big fan in the 2 days that I have owned the phone. It is so full of features I don´t need any more apps. I´ve only scratched the surface of what can be done with it so far and am already happy. But there is room for 2GB for apps.
There´s about 50 CDs in there at the moment. 20 full lenght movies @800X480, which look and sound gorgeous by the way (check out GOMencoder, it will resize movies to any size, and even adds subtitles if they are in the same folder as the movie, and output to any format).
Fast Internet connection, and at home even faster (Wi-Fi). Everything is easy to set up and everything works well. Even the keyboard is great, the top of the keys are rounded and are higher in the middle of the key.
Plug the USB-cable to your laptop, the other end to your phone, choose mass storage mode and start transferring home videos, photos, movies, music and enjoy the high resolution screen..
Grenada

I have an N900, but not for much longer. The point is… this device is not usable. This device sucks, all the features are worse than the first generation PDA phones from years ago. I could care less if it has Linux… the features are non-existent. A-GPS? And exactly how are you using the A-GPS? There is no navigation software. I lost my HTC and bought this P.O.S…. back to HTC. Media player is minimal at best, but if you put lots of songs on the platform, it doesn’t have the features to find the song selections you want, leaving you with the only choice of listening to every song on your list and fast forwarding past the ones you didn’t want…. Oh, but the browser is darn impressive, and so is the camera. Software and OS is empty vaporware promises.
james braselton

hi there what a alwsoume dissplay better then apple windows or linux this dissplay is the best soo far good thing you had pitures of the unit dissplay i will go check the specs out of this unit i just might use this instead of the sprint instenct and the apple ipad tablet