Yesterday I took a trip to Chicago Nokia Store to play around with N900. Already being in love with the device before it's even released I knew I wasn't going to be disappointed. The main reason I'm so confident was due to my previous experiences with Nokia phones. First of the N-series was N80. Built like a tiny brick but had some (ok..quite a few) shortcomings mainly in the memory department. The device's built was one of the best ones I've had. Tight, no squeaking. Just a nice overall phone. Then I graduated to N95-1 (the first Euro version). Again, memory problems and since it was a new type of a slider phone, it was plagued with the wobbly and squeaky slider. The guts on the other hand... to die for. And after many firmware updates the phone was near perfect (skip the slider issue). A few generations later we're being presented with E's, N's and X's... Most of the previous issues seem to be a thing of the past. No more squeaky sliders, enough of memory, faster processors, the same VERY ggod camera that we were graced with in N95 etc etc. And then there's N900. If you think N95 was a good phone, think again. Over the past two or three years I had a chance to experience Nokia's N800 (courtesy of WOM World friends) and then I got N810 as a gift. While nice devices to "play" with, they did not have much of a real world use. The processor was just simply too sluggish and there was no GSM radio built in. That's where N900 became the savior. Already dubbed the "Moses" phone in the blogosphere this phone is causing geeks and others to flock to Nokia to see what this whole fuss is all about. I parted my ways with my beloved Nokia in October of 2008 when there was no love for T-Mobile 3G (aka AWS) frequency coming from Nokia in their HIGH end devices. Now (once again) Nokia kissed and more than made up for the lost time. After my yesterday's trip to Chicago Nokia Store I can easily say "I'm back". Just for the record the phone available to test out is the pre-release version dubbed as NXX0 (or is it N9XX). Either way the firmware is not final and there may be some changes. What I got a chance to play with was what everyone already saw on the interned. Due to the fact that this is a pre-release I was not able to test it with T-Mobile SIM card but only on WiFi (so no "3G Voice/Data" calling). After the initial "First contact" I honestly felt as if I was touched by Moses or some high power. You do feel the device's 181g weight. It's not heavy but it definitely feels "solid". The screen - an eve candy. Do you know what happens when you Take 800x480 screen and stretch it to 50 inches? Well each pixel gets enlarged and the screen looks ugly. Take this the other way...shrink 800x480 to a 13 inch size LCD and you get a decent display. Now compress the whole thing into 3.5 inches and you get something that's just simply amazing. Sharp as hell on par with HD sharpness of plasma tv. One bad thing that a lot of people are complaining about is the resistive screen (aka.. the screen must be physically pressed to invoke an action). While I'm not too crazy about it either, fret not...this is not your grandma's screen. The technology has advanced so far that it feels almost as good as the capacitive screen (as fond on iPhone and Android devices). I'm sad that Nokia did not elect to take this route - that only means that within 6 months we'll be upgrading to N910 or N920 or something similar that will fix these issues. I just pray that at that time it will also have AWS support. Anyway back to the software. I can't say anything else except WOW. The animations and screen transitions are exactly as you see in the promo videos.. These are not some gimmycky tricks to lure the world into buying a phone that wishes it was... this phone IS all that and more. The small space bar the people bitch about (before they even touch the phone) is a pleasure to use, quite contrary to what most say. It's placed in a perfect place - where your thumb lies. While I wish the keyboard had a dedicated numeric row, it's just a matter of getting used to. The positive outcome of 3 rows of keys is that the slider mechanism has a larger area to slide and therefore the slider is much sturdier. The screen, when opened reveals about 1/3 of the bottom part of the device. If there were 4 rows of keys, the screen would reveal about 50% of the lower part which would make the slider have less room to hang on to. It's all about mechanics. Not bad, but not the best either. The keyboard itself while a bit small felt pretty good. I have big thumbs but even then I had no problem with using the keyboard. On the right side was a nice feature..a spring loaded screen lock. I had a chance to try out the camera as well - Nokia stores have an ambient lighting so the pictures don't usually come out to good. This was not the case here. On the phone the picture taken looked pretty good and the camera's responsiveness was very good as well. The lag of the previous N-series devices, while still there" is barely noticeable. Remember, no matter how good the phone is, it still is a phone. It will not replace a dedicated Digital camera any time soon...maybe next year :-). On the the software... I felt like a kid in a toy shop. I tried to play with everything but in the pre-release version maemo applications (a la Android Market, App store whatever you call it) so I could not test the available downloadable apps. Only the included ones. Web browser rocks. There's no other way to describe it. Web pages load as fast as on the desktop, with EXACTLY the same layout. I was attempting to test the e-mail application but I did not want to put in my credentials and there was no test account so all I could see was the set up wizard. I don't think there will be much to complain about. One thing that I gave a go to was Skype. I logged in with my account and voila...my contact were online. To my disappointment the included Skype client doesn't seem to support video calling. A SAD SAD thing. I've always wondered why netowrk operators are so stupid and try to promote Video calling from phone to phone??? This didn't really take off. It was supposed to be one of the "IT" features of 3G and yet it failed. Instead someone could come up with 3G-to-IM video calling. I'm sure there are some WCDMA Video to IM Video gateways so put them to a good use. Skype could bridge this gap... Enable video calling from N900 to Skype and we have a winner. No need for the Operator to implement any equipment - only provide the data pipe. Hopefully this will be something that will be implemented shortly. Another sad part is the lack of MMS. As Nokia said this will be rolled out in the future update. With my previous experience I do not worry much about it - my bet would be that MMS update will be rolled out by the end of 2009. It's still sad to see The Moses phone not being able to relay pictures to its people...
Back to skype... upon signing in to my account I called my friend Tom to his Skype. I did the inevitable "Can you hear me now" or rather "how well do you hear me". He said normally. I told him I'm calling from Nokia store via Skype from N900. He said it sounded perfectly fine. Now once the phone comes out I'll have to give it a try via 3.5G and see how well it will sound. This brings another question... with T-Mobile's recent announcement of deployment of HSPA+ (aka SWEET 21 Mbits) in selected markets N900 supports HSDPA up to 10 Mbits...that's frigging more than I get at home on my DSL (I'm only on 3.5 Mbits). Call me a geek but this stuff turns me on, gives me ants in my pants, makes my heart race. Recently my friend had a heartbreaking situation in his relationship and fell apart. One day I was reading something about N900 on the web and he messaged me asking what I was doing. I told him I was reading geek porn... N900. He told me that it takes a very little to make me happy. Well he's wrong but my reply was that N900 will keep me a company, won't disappoint me, will allow me to get laid if need be, will be with me as long as I want to. He said that I can also put it up in tome other place. I said true - and that would get me off too. So there you have it.. a phone good for your everyday life, relationship and happiness. And it makes phone calls too. I love you my new lover... N900...that sound sexy.
Back to skype... upon signing in to my account I called my friend Tom to his Skype. I did the inevitable "Can you hear me now" or rather "how well do you hear me". He said normally. I told him I'm calling from Nokia store via Skype from N900. He said it sounded perfectly fine. Now once the phone comes out I'll have to give it a try via 3.5G and see how well it will sound. This brings another question... with T-Mobile's recent announcement of deployment of HSPA+ (aka SWEET 21 Mbits) in selected markets N900 supports HSDPA up to 10 Mbits...that's frigging more than I get at home on my DSL (I'm only on 3.5 Mbits). Call me a geek but this stuff turns me on, gives me ants in my pants, makes my heart race. Recently my friend had a heartbreaking situation in his relationship and fell apart. One day I was reading something about N900 on the web and he messaged me asking what I was doing. I told him I was reading geek porn... N900. He told me that it takes a very little to make me happy. Well he's wrong but my reply was that N900 will keep me a company, won't disappoint me, will allow me to get laid if need be, will be with me as long as I want to. He said that I can also put it up in tome other place. I said true - and that would get me off too. So there you have it.. a phone good for your everyday life, relationship and happiness. And it makes phone calls too. I love you my new lover... N900...that sound sexy.