I’m quite excited about the newly announced Nokia flagship product N900. It is described by Nokia as a mobile computer which can also be used as a phone. It has very powerful hardware, with 600MHz CPU, 256M internal memory, resistive touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, 800x480 resolution screen, GPS, 3G network support and many more. I don’t care about the camera, however, it is nice to have one. It may be useful occasionally for not very serious task like making a copy of your passport. So 5M is enough for me. The user interface also looks great.
The most exciting point for me is that its operating system is a special version of Linux called Maemo. It is different from Google’s Android OS which only uses the Linux kernel. While for Maemo, it is a full fledged Linux. Basically, it means that any programs that can run on a desktop Linux can be used on maemo. In fact, I found that most of the software that I used everyday has already been ported to maemo, such as emacs, vim, latex, gcc, etc. If your favorite software hasn’t been ported already, you can easily do it by yourself, as long as it is open sourced.
Currently, there is no MMS support. Some people say that it can still receive MMS, just can’t send. Anyway, I have never sent MMS before, so it is not a big deal for me. Video call is not supported yet, which I do want to have a try. The problem with video calling is that it needs both parties to be in the 3G network with video calling capable devices, which is normally not the case. Chinese is not officially supported. A CJK project aiming to provide Chinese support is under development. There are some discussions on OTG support of N900. It is said that N900 doesn’t support it. With OTG support, we can connect other usb devices to the phone through microusb port. It would be pretty cool if it is possible.
This device can be preordered in a few countries. Sadly, Australia is not one of them. Even it is, I suspect the price would be very high. I’m eager to buy one as soon as possible, maybe by importing from the US, though I’m a little worried about the warranty issue.
