Over the last few days we've been getting to grips with the Nokia N900. We've checked out the Nokia N900's industrial strength build in depth already, but the hardware's only half the story. The Nokia N900 is the first internet tablet from the company to run the new Maemo 5 operating system rather than Symbian S60 like most N Series. Is it the sea-change we were hoping for? Read on and find out in our review...
At a glance, the Nokia N900's OS looks remarkably similar to Symbian S60 on the Nokia N97 and Nokia N97 Mini. You can run homescreen widgets which flow through with the latest news, your messages, events, bookmarks and music. Things look more polished, there are four profile pages to perch mini apps on, and settings menus have been tidied up, but anyone coming from Symbian will be right at home.
A core change though is multitasking on Maemo 5 - it's very well executed. You can close an up by hitting the big X button in the top right, but if you want to leave it on to come back to later, you hit the multitasking tab in the top left. It pulls up a new screen showing every app and internet tab as a separate thumbnail (With live view, so you can see web animations taking place within them). Tap that tab again and it takes you to the app menu screen which you'll be familiar with communing from any Symbian phone.
It's undeniably the best multitasking software we've ever seen on a Nokia phone. We love all the little touches, from the drop down menus to the integrated instant messaging you can access from the status bar at the top of the screen. Our only real gripe with it is switching from the app menu screen to the profile screen isn't very intuitive - you have to press the outside edge of the screen and make sure you don't start up an app in the process.
Check out our Nokia N900 review
The browser on the Nokia N900 is also rock solid. It's fast, drop down auto suggestion menus are just as snappy, and it even runs some Flash videos in the browser, like YouTube. It's a bit choppy, but a revelation on a mobile nonetheless. Swirling gestures to zoom work with a bit of practice, but it's not like the Maemo browser is even your only choice on the Nokia N900. You can try the beta of Firefox mobile on it too, and Flash video aside, it's even more powerful, thanks to its ability to sync with your desktop browser through the free Weave plug-in.
Speaking of apps, there are fair few you can try out right now. You can access them by loading up the Maemo Select widget from your profile screen, and where necessary, they'll integrate with core apps in the Nokia N900. Install Evernote for instance, and you'll be given the option to upload to it from within the Maemo 5 standard menus whenever you take a photo.
It's true that there aren't a ton of apps to get stuck into as on Symbian S60. But you can see the enormous potential in the ones that are already there (See the demo of Bounce to scope how incredible the Nokia N900's 3D graphics are for gaming), and given Nokia's making it easy for developers to port apps to both Symbian and Maemo, we're optimistic it'll take off soon.
Even if it doesn't though, what you're left with is an incredibly powerful and productive software platform in Maemo 5 on the Nokia N900, and one you really need to try for yourself.