Nokia N900 Smartphone Review

Editor's Score
Features:	Performance:
Value:
The Verdict: The N900 is an extremely powerful device that feels more targeted towards geeks than the average Smartphone user.

My first mobile phone was a Nokia and that was thirteen years back. I’ve used a lot of Nokia phones over the past decade and while lots has changed, two things remained the same. All of them had the Send (Green) and End (Red) buttons and were based on some variation of the Symbian Operating System. With the N900, that changes as well- gone are the Send/End buttons and the Symbian platform. And though Nokia has used the term “computer” for some of its previous smartphones, the N900 is really their first device that could possibly fit that bill.

For a phone that is so different from anything else than any other phone by Nokia, the packaging is surprisingly very similar to the N97. Like the N97, the N900 comes in a minimalistic black box with the phone sitting on the top level of the packaging and everything else underneath such as the wall charger, USB and A/V cable, the wired headset and applications CD.

The length and width of the N900 are within limits but what spoils it is the thickness. Measuring 18mm, its a pretty chunky device that sticks out from your jeans. On the top of the device you have a power, camera and volume keys while a lock switch and a 3.5mm A/V sits on the right and the USB connector on the left. The face of the device features a gorgeous 3.5″ resistive touch screen with a resolution of 800×480 pixels. Its one of the best screens I’ve seen on a mobile device. A forward facing camera and a notification LED are present on the front as well. Under the touch screen sits a slide-out keyboard very much resembling the N97. Unfortunately, the screen does not tilt on the N900. I liked that bit about the N97.

Nokia has left no stone unturned as far as the internals of the N900 are concerned. It packs the powerful ARM Cortex-A8 CPU much like the Apple iPhone 3GS and offers hardware graphics acceleration and 1GB of Application RAM along with 32GB of built-in Storage and a microSD card for an additional 16GB. It has a GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 2G radio along with a HSDPA 1700 / 2100 / 900 3G Radio. 802.11b/g Wi-Fi is also built in along with an FM transmitter, an InfraRed receiver, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2Dp and an A-GPS for navigation with Ovi Maps. You also have a Proximity sensor for auto turn-off and an Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate.