Nokia N900 Unlocked Phone/Mobile Computer with 3.5-Inch Touchscreen, QWERTY, 5 MP Camera, Maemo Browser, 32 GB – U.S. Version with Full Warranty Reviews

What customers say about Nokia N900 Unlocked Phone/Mobile Computer with 3.5-Inch Touchscreen, QWERTY, 5 MP Camera, Maemo Browser, 32 GB – U.S. Version with Full Warranty Reviews?

1. 454 of 465 people found the following review helpful

   
   Rough Around the Edges but Huge Potential, December 3, 2009

   By 

   Guest –

   This review is from: Nokia N900 Unlocked Phone/Mobile Computer with 3.5-Inch Touchscreen, QWERTY, 5 MP Camera, Maemo Browser, 32 GB – U.S. Version with Full Warranty (Wireless Phone Accessory)

   Review Updated June 1, 2010

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   Design & Hardware
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   [CONSTRUCTION]: The surface of the N900 is a smooth black matte finish. The build material is aluminum, steel and rubber/plastic. The N900 easily fits in a pocket, being smaller than the N810 but noticeably thicker than most phones. The four front components are the status light, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, and VGA camera. There is a consumer infrared port (universal remote), wrist strap option, stylus and kickstand. The removable back contains the main camera, SIM, battery and microSDHC slot. Removal requires some strength but it’s reassuring knowing it won’t fall off.

   [KEYBOARD]: The keyboard is side-sliding with a smooth, springless mechanism providing a solid feel. The keyboard is three-row, localized and backlit with rubberized key surfaces. The keys are more difficult to use than devices with rounded keys but are still easier than virtual keyboards. While reaching speeds of 35-40 WPM is realistic, extended use is rather tiring. It is possible connect a USB or Bluetooth keyboard, gamepad, mouse and even a Wii Remote.

   [TV-OUT]: There is 480i resolution TV-out which uses an included 3.5mm jack with 4 rings. These are ground, audio left and right, and composite video. Useful for watching movies, playing games or doing work that requires a big screen.

   [SCREEN]: The 16 million color, 800×480 pixel display is incredible. It is pressure-sensitive, 15:9 aspect and transflective, making the screen easier to see in direct light. It uses a surprisingly responsive resistive touch screen allowing use with gloves, fingernails or a stylus. The ambient light sensor adjusts the brightness automatically. Lack of multi-touch means cumbersome “swirling” gestures in some software but is generally not a huge issue.

   [CAMERAS]: The main camera is a 5MP Carl Zeiss, the same as the Nokia N97. It comes with a sliding shutter to protect the recessed lens. There is also a front-facing 640×480 webcam. The camera interface is the same as the S60. The image quality is sharp, skin tones are vivid and there is very little, if any, chromatic aberration at the edges. The camera uses the accelerometer when photographing so the photo viewer can show the picture “up” however the N900 is held. Take a portrait picture and view it landscape and it’ll be small. Turn the device and it’ll fill the screen. There are the following modes: Automatic, Macro, Portrait, Landscape, Action, and Auto video. The camera can take 848×480 resolution video at 25 fps. The video quality is crisp, recording at an impressive 3000 kb/s but the framerate usually drops to 20fps and the audio has a noticeable metallic tone. The camera also works with Adobe Flash.

   [CPU]: The CPU is an ARM-based TI OMAP 3430 600MHz clocked at 500MHz but can be overclocked. Some users of the Maemo forums have managed to push it up to 1.2GHz. This allows improved performance with high resolution media, gaming/emulators and web browsing among many others. Overclocking requires downloading a modified kernel with the desired speed. They are generally made available in 50Mhz steps such as 800MHz and 850MHz. Then simply run fiasco-image-update on the download. While overclocking would normally reduce battery life, most kernels also provide underclocks for idle which allows the N900 to use significantly less power when not in use, the net result often being EXTENDED battery life. According to Nokia, overclocking does void the warranty. Since the N900 does not have any active cooling the heat created by overclocking could significantly shorten the N900′s life if pushed too much. N900 units are unique, each will overclock differently. So far though the series does seem to overclock extremely well.

   [BATTERY]: The battery is a 1320mAh Nokia BL-5J, 22% smaller than the BP-4L. A full battery with unoptimized settings allows about 5-9 hours of continuous talk time, 5 hours of music or a few hours of 3G. 3G/3.5G drains the battery faster than Wi-Fi. Lowering brightness, removing desktop widgets and disabling GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G easily triples battery life. Charging is through microUSB which takes about 4-5 hours for an empty battery. An issue with the USB port breaking off has been acknowledged by Nokia as a design oversight, they advise care should be taken while plugging/unplugging devices to mitigate this problem. The “complete cycle” method some people use is for calibrating multicell laptop batteries, but the N900 only has a single cell battery so it’s pointless and marginally harmful to do complete discharge cycles as there’s nothing to calibrate.

   [INTERNAL MEMORY]: The N900 has two memory chips. The first is a 32GB eMMC: 768MB of ‘virtual memory’ (swap), 2GB for settings and software (ext3 /home), the last ~26GB (MyDocs) is for your files only (software not allowed). The…

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2. 149 of 154 people found the following review helpful

   
   Awesome piece of technology!, December 3, 2009

   By 

   TrekGeek (Florida) –

   This review is from: Nokia N900 Unlocked Phone/Mobile Computer with 3.5-Inch Touchscreen, QWERTY, 5 MP Camera, Maemo Browser, 32 GB – U.S. Version with Full Warranty (Wireless Phone Accessory)

   I received my n900 just a few days ago from Nokia USA. For the purposes of this review, I will compare it to my previous phone, the HTC G1. My opinions are solely based on the user experiences in the past days with the n900, and since I’ve never owned an iphone, I will not compare it to such.

   Physical layout:
   *The N900 is a pretty beefy phone, and rightfully so. While having some heft to it, the n900 is solid and well-built. The black metal rim is a nice touch without being too gaudy. The slide is not spring-assisted but gives a nice click upon opening and closing. I have not noticed any creaks or wobbles from the screen. Few have complained about the back being hard to open. Although true, I rather have that with the peace of mind that the battery won’t pop out if I dropped it (God forbid)! the n900 is of comparable size to the G1, albeit being slightly thicker, and not a problem for me.
   *I don’t really understand all the fuss about resistive and capacitive screens. The n900′s screen is gorgeous and is incredibly brilliant. There is a little ‘give’ to the screen, but I’ve yet to have problems with it. The screen is quite responsive and supports kinetic scrolling. I did have some difficulty clicking on small links in the browser, but that’s because your index finger isn’t exactly the most accurate pointing device. This was easily solved by zooming in (more on that later).
   *The keyboard is pretty good. It is a different experience coming from the G1 (as you have to type with the ‘chin’ in the way on your right hand) so naturally, it felt better. The keys have a grippy rubberized texture feel to them, and although the buttons are smooshed next to each other, (like a real keyboard) they have good response. I do miss the 5-row keyboard on the G1, and I don’t understand why the n900′s screen doesn’t open up a bit more. For those with large hands, it might be a little uncomfortable. However, one plus for the n900 is that my thumbs don’t have to travel as far to type.
   *I love that the placement of the speakers are on the sides of the phone, as opposed to the back on the G1. I do a lot of talking on speakerphone, and so I’m not forced to flip it upside down during a call. Sound quality is good and the speakers are decent.

   Maemo 5/ Software
   *This is the ultimate customization OS. When they meant open source, they really meant it. The 4 desktops make things a lot easier to navigate. For example, one page is devoted to my common phone contacts, another utility apps, the third has bookmarks to frequent sites (the homepages of those links are previewed on the desktop, fyi), and so forth.
   *The way Maemo multitasks is ingenious. The “overview” page where you see all your actively running programs makes navigating between windows and programs very easy and efficient. One thing to note is that you have the ability to close out any of those windows upon your choosing, as opposed to the G1 where the 6 app limit neither allowed to you open more nor shut them down, making it very sluggish, especially during critical times (ie texting someone directions while running gps).
   *SMS (called conversations in Maemo) is pretty similar to the G1, but has one added step – conversations either in text or IM by the same person are displayed in the same window. The ability to have the other person’s contact image in the text box (that is if you set one up for that person) is a nice touch. I personally don’t care about MMS, so no gripes there.
   *The email client is pretty decent, I set up my gmail account with a few simple steps, but it isn’t nearly as accessible as the gmail app on the G1. For example, I haven’t found a way to delete an incoming email when it first comes in. I have to leave the letter, go into the inbox, back into the email, then delete it.
   *Browsing experience is comparable to the pc, and is nothing short of awesome. Full flash means I can access full youtube pages, and among others. I think the “swirling zoom” gesture is pretty neat, and helps me to click on the smaller links. I figured out that using your index to swirl zoom produces the best results. Alternatively, you can double click the screen or use the volume rocker. Going to previous pages not only allows you to go to the last page, but scroll through the entire history of that window. Neat.
   *Applications-wise, there are not many out there, but I’m certain many will be out soon. You can also access the Maemo repositories for more (google it) but be careful as many of them are still in development and are potentially dangerous to your phone. Noteworthy apps include Hermes (connects your social sites, like facebook to your contacts so you get contact phones, birthdates, etc) and Qik (live streaming recording).

   Hardware:
   *Fast, fast, fast. Need I say more?
   *No hang ups yet, since I can close apps at my own will.
   *The camera is good, that is for a 5mp phone camera. It will…

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3. 202 of 230 people found the following review helpful

   
   Incredible potential. Substandard execution., December 3, 2009

   By 

   Kevin Nicholls “jaded, aging hipster” (Milford, MI) –
   
     
   
     
   
     

   Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)

   This review is from: Nokia N900 Unlocked Phone/Mobile Computer with 3.5-Inch Touchscreen, QWERTY, 5 MP Camera, Maemo Browser, 32 GB – U.S. Version with Full Warranty (Wireless Phone Accessory)

   I pre-ordered my N900 the moment I found out about it, back in September. And I patiently waited, and waited, while watching every demo, preview, and review I could find. With each passing day, I knew I was closer to mobile bliss. And one day, my N900 arrived.

   Sadly, it didn’t really deliver.

   Having (briefly) owned an N97, I was incredibly disappointed to discover that Nokia has tried their hardest to port elements of Symbian phones to the Maemo platform. Once you’re past the (admittedly awesome) desktop effects, the N900 feels disturbingly similar to the N97 in terms of use.

   “Mail Not Responding. Quit?”
   If you use e-mail, you’re going to see this message. Using the included Mail application for Exchange and an IMAP account is painful, to say the least. If you’re coming from another Symbian phone, you’ll discover that the Mail application is every bit as slow and constrained as your old phone, but does a (marginally) better job of rendering HTML messages. If you’re coming from something like an iPhone or BlackBerry, forget about it. Having an iPhone 3G and BlackBerry Bold as well, the messaging on the N900 is infuriating.

   The screen is gorgeous, in terms of resolution. It’s trash in terms of accuracy, if you aren’t using the included stylus. I don’t have huge fingers, and yet, nearly every tap is either interpreted wrong, or not registered at all. Using kinetic scrolling will inevitably open something you didn’t intend to open, or do nothing at all. You’ll find yourself asking “Did I tap once or twice?”.

   Web browsing? Brilliant. Seriously. The included web browser is every bit as good as everyone says. Pages render properly, Flash works, zooming in and out is excellent. If you just wanted a handheld web browser and nothing else, I’d recommend this ten times out of ten.

   “But it runs Linux! Linux, Linux, Linux!”
   Sure. I consider myself to be fairly platform agnostic when it comes to phones, and frankly, the “open” nature of Maemo is something of a red herring. Yes, getting applications on the N900 that aren’t blessed by Nokia is relatively easy. Yes, you can compile OpenOffice to work on the N900. The question really is: “Will you?”. In a lot of ways, I can see how the N900 would be an excellent tool if I was a Unix / Linux admin who wanted the flexibility to work anywhere without a laptop or netbook. And, there’s a certain geek credibility that comes with doing something for the sake of doing it, especially when you have such a portable platform. The N900 is great for those things. And keep in mind, that’s largely the audience that Nokia is targeting with the N900.

   For well over a decade, Nokia’s been known for rock-solid performance on signal and voice quality. With the N900, again, they’ve come short. 3G call quality is decent. If you’re outside of a 3G area (which is likely, if you use this with T-Mobile, and a certainty if you’re on AT&T), the N900 has a very difficult time maintaining a decent GPRS/EDGE signal, and dropped calls are frequent. Admittedly, the phone functionality is something of an afterthought from Nokia on this specific model — but it really shows.

   As for carrying it around, the N900 isn’t quite the “brick” some have claimed it to be. It’s definitely substantial, compared to other phones available, though not unreasonable to carry in a pocket. The multimedia functionality is above average, capable of playing just about every type of music and movie format I could throw at it. The camera, while decent, is not substantially better than what you’d find in most midrange to high-end phones in terms of picture quality.

   Overall, the N900 is a huge series of tradeoffs. For many “it doesn’t do…” there are workarounds, or will be workarounds, or might be workarounds. And that’s really the crux of my rating. The hardware, in and of itself, is not very special for a phone that costs this much. And the shortcomings may well be addressed, but you have to question how much time and effort you’re willing to put in to this device just to bring it at par with similarly priced alternatives. At the same time, there’s a lot of wishful thinking, if you aren’t prepared to roll up your sleeves and do some development work. “Maybe Nokia will address this in a firmware update…” or “Maybe someone will write a script or program that does this…” will be your mantras if you don’t do the work yourself.

   ***January 2010 Update***
   I’m now on my third N900 — the previous two were defective.

   I had considered completely re-writing this review, but too many aspects continue to hold true.

   What’s different:

   The newer N900 is much more stable, and doesn’t crash nearly as often as I had described previously. That’s not to say that it doesn’t crash, but with the newer hardware and firmware, it…

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