Nokia N900 Maemo 5 device in hand, S60 apps on the Internet Tablet
Given that the Nokia N97 flagship product did not receive the highest praise from everyone that Nokia hoped, there has been a lot of excitement about the upcoming Nokia N900 Linux Maemo-powered Internet Tablet. I just received a pre-production unit and posted some first impressions along with several photos of the hardware. The hardware is finalized, but I understand the software will be updated before production models hit buyer's hands. That said, the N900 so far is quite an impressive device that is very responsive with an excellent web browser.
The hardware is not super sleek and modern and actually feels quite blocky when compared to the nice curved form factor of the iPhone 3GS and Sprint HTC Hero. The specifications are quite impressive though and it is a pretty solid piece of hardware. It does take a bit of practice to figure out how to customize the desktops and find everything loaded on the N900 and it is not as drop dead simple as the iPhone. It supports 3.5G on T-Mobile USA's 1700 MHz frequency network and as a T-Mobile customer I am quite pleased by this.
The iPhone-optimized Google Reader site loads like a champ on the N900 and works well, except for keyboard shortcuts. I was very pleased to see Nokia include some software from their Symbian S60 platform in this Linux-powered device, including Mail for Exchange, Nokia Maps, Notes, and more. Mail for Exchange supports syncing calendar, email, contacts, and tasks with your Exchange account. I found it interesting to see that DataViz has a Documents To Go Office viewer available for the N900 since we have seen Quickoffice all over the S60 platform and this is the first I have seen of DataViz's client working with a Nokia device. There is an Ovi Store client on the device, but it is not active as the store backend does not appear to be live yet. I am extremely happy to see threaded text messaging in the Conversations application and with the heavy texting that my teen daughters perform this is essential for me to keep my sanity.
Nokia sent these loaner units out for all of us to use for a couple of months so I plan to post quite a bit about the device. If you have any questions about it that you want me to answer, please feel free to post them in the Talkback section.