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The Nokia N900 is a touch screen and slider phone that has a
QWERTY keypad. It is also Nokia’s fist phone that runs Maemo5, a Debian Linux-based
operating system that can run on computers and phones and it may end up being
the only Nokia phone with Maemo5. This leads to the question is the N900 worth
the purchase?

One thing I like about the N900 is the fact that it has a
keypad. I really hate touch screens (eat your hearts out iPhone folks), so the
fact that Nokia was smart enough to provide the slide out keyboard is an
excellent choice on their part. However, one must point out that the N900’s
touchscreen is very responsive. The colour quality is also very good, and the
screen resolution (800×480) is an excellent choice. This brings this phone well
into computer range (most netbooks use that resolution natively).

The sound quality of this phone is unbelievable. The speakers
which are located on opposite sides of the phone are something, and this
quality makes it a great phone for listening to music or quickly watching that
downloaded video. Unfortunately, Zain’s connection did not allow me to see what
a streaming video would look like.

Like any good Operating System should be, it is easy to
customise Maemo5. This made it easy for me to put different applications in
particular orders on different homescreens. The N900 has 4 by default which
also means that you can have multiple programs open and switch between them
easily. Think of it as the equivalent of Alt+Tab on your PC.

Web browser

One of the killer apps for me is the in-built web browser. Based
on Mozilla, it is called MicroB, and unlike certain other platforms (iPhone and
Android I mean you), it has support for Adobe’s Flash. If you are a news
junkie, you will find the inbuilt RSS reader to be a very useful tool. Just
export your XML file from your computer and import here, or better still
subscribe directly to your favourite news sites and everything comes to you
with ease. Unlike in most other smartphones, the web browser recognises the
phone as a desktop computer. This means that when you are going to Facebook for
example, you get the full site instead of the striped down mobile version. But
the downside to that in the Nigerian environment is that I had to keep paying
more money to Zain for Internet connection. It might make more sense with MTN’s
mobile Internet package.

The phone’s application manager is easy to use. However, I think
that Android’s Marketplace is some steps ahead. Again it did not seem to have
as many applications as the Android, which definitely means that the iPhone has
more applications than it does. Unlike my Android, however, I did not have to
start scrounging for FM software as the phone’s music player has an inbuilt FM
transmitter which allows you to listen to stored music in your car on the move.

Impressive storage

Speaking of storage, the inbuilt storage on the N900 is
impressive. It comes with 32GB split into three partitions. 2GB is mounted as
home, 768MB is reserved for swap space, and the remainder, a princely 27GB
(remember this is a phone) is reserved for storage. Now, that is something.

One great advantage that the Blackberry has over this phone is
that setting up email accounts on this phone for push mail is not at all
intuitive. I gave up after some attempts, but to be honest since I was just
testing the phone, maybe I did not try hard enough. Another thing I did not
really dig is the size and weight of the phone. If I was the owner of the
handset, I’d be tempted to stone a Lagos bus conductor with my device. He would
certainly know that he had been hit by something.

Back to the earlier question, is the N900 worth the purchase?

For an infinitely large phone book where you can store contact details,
working bluetooth, infrared and USB, and a 5 megapixel camera where pictures
can be geo tagged, and a battery life that the manufacturers claim is up to 9
hours of talk time; the only reason not to shell out N66, 000 at the Computer
Village, Otigba, Ikeja, Lagos is that our mobile service providers don’t give
us enough bandwidth to make this phone really fun. If they did, it is worth
having.