Nokia ships Maemo N900 — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Nokia’s first non-Symbian samartphone} Nokia ships Maemo N900

11 Nov 2009 at 05:15 GMT Timo Poropudas

Nokia has started the shipments of the Nokia N900. This is Nokia’s first computer phone based on open source Maemo 5 software. The device has created a lot of attention. The reviews have been mainly positive.

The Nokia N900 will be available in retail stores in November with an estimated retail price of EUR 500, excluding sales taxes and subsidies.

“Maemo software, which takes its cues from the desktop computer , offers a full browsing experience like no other handset. We believe the Nokia N900 will be a very compelling device for people who are passionate about technology," says Luis Martinez, Vice President, Nseries.

The Nokia N900 uses ARM Cortex-A8 processor and it has up to 1GB of total application memory. Users can browse the internet the way they would on any computer and keep dozens of application windows open simultaneously on the dashboard.

The panoramic desktops in the Nokia N900 can be personalized with widgets, contacts and shortcuts. The device has 5Mpx Carl Zeiss camera. It shows automatically where they were taken, and users can add their own description tags to make searching the photos even easier.

SMS and instant messages are organized as chat flow and people can conveniently switch between the multiple conversation windows. There is built-in 32 GB storage. It it can be expanded up to 48GB with an external microSD card.

Nokia says it its press release that its work with the developer community has recently created significant innovation with Maemo. “As a result, people will be able to discover a wide range of games, utilities, themes, panoramic wallpapers and service plug-ins for photo-sharing and messaging for the Nokia N900 through Ovi Store and Maemo Select, starting later in the year.”

In October Nokia announced official Qt port to Maemo 5. This means developers can use Qt software to target the Nokia N900 and that applications can be easily ported to all Qt's supported platforms including the next Maemo 6 release as well as Symbian.

The Nokia N900 will initially be available in Europe, Middle-East, Russia and North America. It is also possible to order the device from the Nokia Online Store.