N900 Nokia


Twiitcher

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Just saw a nice piece of hardware from Nokia - review covers their OS running on a Cortex A8... N800-review. No interest for me though, I still anxiously await the Pandy, it's all about the gaming for me.

Twiitcher
 
Yah, I considered whether this might be appealing to me in the way the Pandora is- and well, maybe it would be a little easier to play games than on the iphone since it has physical keys to be used, but still- The Pandora will really be that needed convergence device, small PDA like, but highly capable in the gaming department. The only thing I wish for is a built in GSM module with 3G :) But, I can always tether to my phone to get that done.
 
What a low capacity battery. How long is this supposed to last during heavy use, 2-3 hours?
 
Exophase said:
What a low capacity battery. How long is this supposed to last during heavy use, 2-3 hours?
That's probably a good guess. My E71x, which has a much smaller LCD (so less backlight power draw potentially) and a slower processor and a higher capacity battery (1500mAh) will last about 4 hours if I have gps and bluetooth and the screen on continuously.
 
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I'd really like to get one, but I'm not so sure about that battery life. I mean, for a phone the battery is probably good enough, but given that it's a bit more, it might be too much of a strain. But with smart phones these days the line between phone and internet tablet is pretty blurred, and I think the N900 basically shatters it given that it's both. And I've heard things about it coming to T-Mobile, so that's a plus! I just want to see how the new SE phone with the Rachael UI does first...
 
Looks like it's the same hardware as the iPhone 3GS again, that is if anyone can pin down if they are really using the 530/535/540. Basically the same core processors as the Pandora again.
 
If that thing were available today, as a pay as you go phone similar to those I know, then I think I would be picking one up at my earliest convenience and spending a day playing hard with it.
 
The battery life might be pretty good, we went a bit over the top with the Pandora battery size to try to guarantee the 10 hours.

I'll be interested to see the price compared to Pandora.
 
The specs of the N900 have been more or less known for nearly a year already. That's why I ordered a Pandora last year. I don't want a phone in my mobile computer -- I've got them left and right already (I get a new one at work every year) and I prefer phones to be very small and have very few gimmicks and long battery time instead.

Including a phone in the N900 induces compromises all over the place. Instead of the two full-size SD slots in the N800 it's got one micro-SD, so I can't use it with my other equipment. And it's got no room for a good sized battery. The N800 had a 1500mAh battery, the N900 has a _smaller_ battery, for no other reason than there wasn't room for anything more. And it gets insanely expensive to boot.
 
The N900 is really disappointing in that it's a phone, and thus the price automatically gains a £100 - £200 "Don't worry, we can subsidize that" cost to make sure you buy it on contract instead of SIM-free. The Nokia N8x0s came out for quite reasonable prices compared to heavily subsidized phone.

I wanted to break out of this nasty phone contract habit and simply use a PAYG phone (very unlikely I'll top up with more than £10 every few months) alongside a data-only SIM on a rolling contract (Three currently do £15/pm with a dongle for £10 up front on a rolling, no ties contract) to use in my MiFi mobile router.

Losing the convenience of the iPhone's internet/GPS tie in and having readily accessible data is worth freeing up the money to buy any device that takes my fancy every 6-8 months.

Of course, the problem was that one of every 10 people buying a Nokia N8x0 had the inkling it was a phone and complained when they found out it wasn't. I think Nokia have stepped up to the plate this time and just thought "sod it" and made the N900 a phone. Not so good for those of us who want a practical, long-lived phone and a separate compliment of mobile computers.


I just bought an N810 recently from Play, should get it next week, software for NITs has matured so much since I last had an N810 so I'm sure it'll feed my geeky habits much better than an N900 might. If you like the look of the N900, grab an N810 fast whilst they're still available. For £130 it's a steal, and a much better buy than the SmartQ if only because of the awesome Maemo community.
 
Enverex said:
Looks like it's the same hardware as the iPhone 3GS again, that is if anyone can pin down if they are really using the 530/535/540. Basically the same core processors as the Pandora again.
It's closer to Pandora than to iPhone, since it uses OMAP3430 (unless they changed their mind).
 
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I remember seeing a table on TIs website somewhere (I can't find it anymore for the life of me), but it showed that all of the OMAP3 chips (34xx and 36xx) that had an SGX had the 530. It seems that they're only putting the 530 in SoCs. It also seems (from other pages on their website) that the OMAP4 series will have the 540 in it.
 
Vorporeal said:
I remember seeing a table on TIs website somewhere (I can't find it anymore for the life of me), but it showed that all of the OMAP3 chips (34xx and 36xx) that had an SGX had the 530. It seems that they're only putting the 530 in SoCs. It also seems (from other pages on their website) that the OMAP4 series will have the 540 in it.

That chart is available on wikipedia also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_OMAP#OMAP3
The 3640 looks nice for pandora :)
 
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WoD said:
The N900 is really disappointing in that it's a phone, and thus the price automatically gains a £100 - £200 "Don't worry, we can subsidize that" cost to make sure you buy it on contract instead of SIM-free. The Nokia N8x0s came out for quite reasonable prices compared to heavily subsidized phone.
No they didn't. When it was new, the N810 ran for over $500 in Canada, and it was comparably priced in the US. You can get some pretty decent unlocked phones in that price range or slightly more, and they have the advantage of being able to make calls (skype doesn't count, you can get that on a lot of phones too). The N-series tablets are priced pretty reasonably now, but it's also been close to two years since the N810 was initially released, longer for the N800. They're nice devices and the prices on them are okay now, but there's no way they could keep charging $500 for them.
 
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I've been waiting for this phone after I gave up on the pandora. Frankly I don't need additional devices in my pocket, I've already got a phone (with a phone contract), a music player phone with a net contract and the wiz. (why two contracts? blame the provider for not being flexible.. I have to wait until 2010) So an all in one linux phone fits my needs exactly. And frankly, after using a 770 and an EEE, I prefer to have my networking on a phone, instead of a secondary device.
 
This looks cool, but I'm going to stick with the Pandora / shitty old cell phone setup until I can figure out which is easier to program and how I would go about getting cell service on the N900.
 
Looks like a fantastic phone, aside from the boring design. I was so sure I was going to get a Pre but now I'll have to reconsider... I'm really not sure which one of the two I prefer. Maybe still the Pre as I'll already have a full pocket computer with the Pandora but it depends a lot on how it'll be priced. 500€ for the N900 seems reasonable.
 
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