Nokia recently launched a new class of smartphone as its flagship. The promised N900 is a crossover between smartphones and Nokia’s Internet tablets, and makes its biggest break in its change of operating system: although still a phone, the handset runs Nokia’s latest Linux variant platform, not Symbian. Symbian OS seems like incapable to support a heavy duty computer likes application on phone. Maemo 5 renders it one of the first smartphones to have true PC-like multitasking and not only lets it run “dozens” of app windows at once but gives it a simple, large dashboard for switching and closing apps.
In hardware, Nokia makes clear the N900’s role as an effective replacement for the N97 and the company’s answer to the iPhone 3GS. The QWERTY slider design has the same 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor as the Apple smartphone and a faster graphics core that, again like Apple, supports OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics features. GPS and Wi-Fi are similarly onboard. However, the N900 brings much more app memory at up to 1GB (256MB actual RAM), full HSPA-based 3G at up to 10Mbps down and 2Mbps up, and a much sharper 800×480, 3.5-inch touchscreen. The 5-megapixel camera and 32GB of storage are also carried over from the N97, but a microSDHC slot lets users add at least another 16GB with today’s cards.
