Nokia’s all singing, all dancing, top of the range N900 handset has failed to set the world alight, with research firm Gartner saying that less than 100,000 models have been sold since launching first five months ago.
To be honest, we’re not surprised that it failed to find favour with the wider public: although its upmarket specs excited beardie techie sorts, its chunky lines and unfamiliar OS failed to impress the iPhone-bedazzled public.
Fast spin cycle
Alberto Torres, Nokia’s head of business solutions was having none of it, rapidly reaching a high level of spin and insisting, “Sales have substantially exceeded expectations.”
Although Nokia’s excellent, no-nonsense business handsets have continued to do good business, the company has failed spectacularly to come up with anything to dent the all-conquering iPhone’s progress.
Total sales of under 100,000 of the Maemo-powered N900s look very small beer indeed compared to the 8.75 million iPhones shifted in January-March alone.
[Via]
Pup?
Do you think the Nokia deserves to do better? Or is it a bit of a pup?
Here’s some videos and specs to help you decide:
Display
- 3.5 inch touch-sensitive widescreen display
- 800 × 480 pixel resolution
Language support
British English, American English, Canadian French, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Swedish, Russian
Connectivity
- 3.5mm AV connector
- TV out (PAL/NTSC) with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable
- Micro-USB connector, High-Speed USB 2.0
- Bluetooth v2.1 including support for stereo headsets
- Integrated FM transmitter
- Integrated GPS with A-GPS
Battery
BL-5J 1320mAh
Processor and 3D accelerator
TI OMAP 3430: ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX with OpenGL ES 2.0 support
Memory
Up to 1GB of application memory (256 MB RAM, 768 MB virtual memory)
Size and weight
- Volume:
- Approx 113cc
- Dimensions:
- 110.9 × 59.8 × 18 (19.55 at thickest part) mm
- Weight:
- Approx 181g
Mass memory
- 32 GB internal storage
- Store up to 7000 MP3 songs or 40 hours of high-quality video
- Up to 16 GB of additional storage with an external microSD card
Keys and input method
- Full QWERTY tactile keyboard
- Full QWERTY onscreen keyboard
Colour
Black
Operating frequency
- Quad-band GSM EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
- WCDMA 900/1700/2100 MHz
Data network
GPRS class A, multislot class 32, maximum speed 107/64.2 kbps (DL/UL) EDGE class A, multislot class 32, maximum speed 296/177.6 kbps (DL/UL) WCDMA 900/1700/2100. Maximum speed PS 384/384 kbps (DL/UL) HSPA 900/1700/2100. Maximum speed PS 10/2 Mbps (DL/UL) WLAN IEEE 802.11b/g
Call features
- Integrated hands-free stereo speakers
- Call waiting, call hold, call divert
- Call timer
- Logging of dialed, received and missed calls
- Speed dialing via contact widget
- Virbrating alert (internal)
- Side volume keys
- Mute/unmute
- Contacts with images
- Conference calling with up to 3 participants
- Internet calling
Email & Messaging
- Supported protocols: Mail for Exchange, IMAP, POP3, SMTP
- Support for email attachments
- Support for rich HTML
- SMS and Instant Messages as conversations
- Support for Nokia Messaging service
- Instant messaging and presence enhanced contacts
- Multiple number, email and Instant Messaging details per contact, contacts with images
- Support for assigning images to contacts
Web browsing
- Maemo browser powered by Mozilla technology
- Adobe Flash™ 9.4 support
- Full screen browsing
GPS
- Integrated GPS, Assisted-GPS, and Cell-based receivers
- Pre-loaded Ovi Maps application
- Automatic geotagging
Camera
- 5 megapixel camera (2584 × 1938 pixels)
- Image formats: JPEG
- CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens
- 3 × digital zoom
- Autofocus with assist light and two-stage capture key
- Dual LED flash
- Full-screen viewfinder
- Photo editor on device
- TV out (PAL/NTSC) with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-75U, included in box) or WLAN/UPnP
- Landscape (horizontal) orientation
- Capture modes: Automatic, portrait, video, macro, landscape, action
Video
- Wide aspect ratio 16:9 (WVGA)
- Video recording file format: .mp4; codec: MPEG-4
- Video recording at up to 848 × 480 pixels (WVGA) and up to 25fps
- Video playback file formats: .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263
Music and audio playback
- Maemo media player
- Music playback file formats: .wav, .mp3, .AAC, .eAAC, .wma, .m4a
- Built-in FM transmitter
- Ring tones: .wav, .mp3, .AAC, .eAAC, .wma, .m4a
- FR, EFR, WCDMA, and GSM AMR
Personalisation
- Background pictures
- Widgets on your desktops
- Intelligent contact shortcuts
- Shortcuts to your favourite websites
- Shortcuts to applications
- Themes
Operating system
Maemo 5 software on Linux
Applications
- Maemo Browser
- Phone
- Conversations
- Contacts
- Camera
- Photos
- Media player
- Calendar
- Ovi Maps
- Clock
- Notes
- Calculator
- PDF reader
- File manager
- RSS reader
- Sketch
- Games
- Widgets
- Application manager for downloads
Gaming
- Bounce
- Chess
- Mahjong
What´s in the box
- Nokia N900
- Nokia Battery (BL-5J)
- Nokia High Efficiency Charger (AC-10)
- Nokia Stereo Headset (WH-205)
- Video out cable (CA-75U)
- Nokia charger adaptor (CA-146C)
- Cleaning cloth
On paper the device is fantastic. Was looking forward to it very much. But tried one out on a Nokia promotional night, and well, it was clear that it didn’t have mass market appeal.
The OS is fantastic though. Debian with a touch screen interface essentially. It’s a shame that they didn’t make it more of a phone OS, rather than a tablet OS.
Supposedly it’s step 4 of 5, with a Nokia high up saying that step 5 is going to be amazing, just before the release of the N900. Which didn’t seem the best of times to be making that comment.
Well, I just got my N900 3 days ago and have to say that I love it!
True Multi-tasking, a good browser, flash support, customizable. A real smart phone, which iPhone is NOT!
In my opinion you can compare the two like this…
iPhone – Looks like a Lamborghini and you just got to have one. Then you pop the hood and find out its got a 2.0 liter engine.
N900 – Looks like, well maybe a camaro and you are not sure it is your style. The you pop the hood and see a monster.