After a painfully long wait and a host of delays, the Nokia N900 finally landed last week. We're waiting for our handset to land but we thought we'd take a look at what the press has been saying about the Nokia N900. Read on after the jump for more details.

The Maemo 5 powered Nokia N900, which was announced at Nokia World 2009, is easily one of the most heavily anticipated Nokia handsets in quite some time - and as flagship devices go, it’s quite a bold statement by Nokia, representing quite a change in direction for the company.

Screen

The Nokia N900 has a 3.5-inch has a resolution of 800x400, which according to T3 is “fantastic, bright, colourful and sharp.” Therefore, viewing video clips, websites, and images on the N900’s screen is a pleasant experience, with everything appearing as it should and in the highest possible detail.

Check out our Nokia N900 hands-on

While the Nokia N900 does have a few interesting aspects to its touchscreen UI, T3.com picked up on a few grievances, such as the zoom function which is achieved by either double tapping on the screen or using the volume button - “at the moment it’s not as responsive as the iPhone or the Palm Pre”. In addition, T3.com noted that the resistive touchscreen could do with being a little more responsive.

QWERTY

Unlike a lot of flagship smartphones on the market, the Nokia N900 has a full QWERTY keyboard, which means you aren’t confined solely to the touchscreen UI. Techradar’s review of the device said that using the QWERTY keypad was a “decent experience” which is certainly good news for users that appreciate a good QWERTY keypad.

OS

Obviously, the Nokia N900 is powered by the Linux-based Maemo 5 OS. According to T3.com, Maemo 5 is intuitive and flexible, and makes “Symbian look antiquated.” In addition, the versatility of the UI is praised no end on account of its intuitive, and user oriented nature - “Swipe through four home screens, each fully customisable with website shortcuts, RSS feeds, applications (that update live), contacts and shortcuts to your address book, calendar, web etc.”

Another popular aspect of the Nokia N900 is how customisable it is. For instance, you can have up to 4 home screens that can all be customized with widgets, apps, shortcuts, and RSS feeds. This makes the N900 is seriously personalised device, that can be tailored to suit the needs of any user.

Open applications and web pages appear as tabs on the virtual ‘dashboard’ screen, which sits between the menu and home screens, here you can swap between different programs and shut them down. Phone settings are accessed through the applications menu.

Overall Performance

You only have to read a few reviews of the Nokia N900 to realise that it is a resounding success - people like the functionality, the open source nature of its OS, the memory, the possibilities for development, and the little features on it. Techradar disagreed with Nokia on one thing: they don’t believe that the Nokia N900 is a computer. Instead, they said, “it’s a smartphone and a very good one at that.” In addition, they were also impressed with the overall performance of the OS.

Similarly, T3 were highly impressed with the overall functionality of the Nokia N900, saying it was “better than any Nokia handset we’ve seen in along time.”

They added: “In terms of browsing and sheer multitasking capability, it’s also superior to other smartphone rivals.”