Nokia N900 review

November 25, 2009 2:30 pm

by Joe Minihane

Categories: Mobile Phones Reviews Tags: n97 mini, Nokia

We love

Maemo 5 is ace, multitasking is easy, QWERTY keyboard is a breeze to use

We hate

Touchscreen is woeful

Verdict

A cracking effort from Nokia let down hugely by a resistive touchscreen

Launch Price

£Free on contract

7 Pages

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The chaps over in Finland will tell you that the Nokia N900 is not a successor to the N97. It’s an internet tablet, the flagship N-series is a phone. But with its touchscreen skills, QWERTY pad, smartphone OS and stellar connectivity this really does look like the sequel to the year-old N97. So how does it stack up? Read our full Nokia N900 review now for our verdict.

The main buzz about the Nokia N900 has centred on its operating system. Instead of the ageing Symbian S60 OS found in all Nokia’s top end blowers, Espoo has opted for Maemo 5 instead. And we’re pleased to say the results, as far as the OS is concerned, are every bit as good as we hoped.

Maemo 5 is a far more intuitive OS than S60 and certainly edges out the N97 for ease of use. The menus are clear and straight forward, so you won’t spend ages rooting around for what you want when you need it. It feels way more powerful too, with the Nokia N900 dealing with multitasking at lightning speed. Open more than one app or web page and you’ll get all your tabs and programme info in one handy window. It’s every bit as neat as the multitasking on the Palm Pre.

The Nokia N900 also has a stunning status bar for IM and the fact you can add Facebook and RSS contacts easily, just like on the Nokia 5800, is a move which shows this is far more than an internet tablet: it’s a smartphone with social networking on the brain.

Read our Nokia N97 Mini review now

But while a touchscreen OS like Maemo 5 is most welcome, it’s let down by the Nokia N900′s biggest flaw: a resistive touchscreen. Frankly, we’ve seen better on budget touchscreen phones and the lack of a capacitive effort is a real disappointment. Its laggy and you really have to ensure you press hard in order to register your side swipes. You’ll be breaking out the stylus regularly.

It’s a real shame, because elsewhere the Nokia N900 truly stars. The QWERTY board is more akin to the business-brained E-series than the N97. The keys are more defined and you’ll find this your preferred method of shooting around the phone’s messaging clients.

And while the screen might be a pain to touch, it’s a joy for watching back movies and clips. At 800×480 its ideal for snacking on TV shows and YouTube vids, the latter of which can be accessed via the Nokia N900′s browser, embedded into pages just like on your PC. It’s a neat touch and one which adds to the browser’s all round skills. We’ll admit that the finger swirl zoom can lead to you zooming to the wrong part of the page, but that’s more down to the touchscreen tech than the browser itself.

In all, the Nokia N900 is an ace phone. It has the media extras you’d expect, with HSDPA, a 5MP camera, Wi-Fi and a stonking 32GB memory (which can be expanded to 48GB). It’s every inch the successor to the Nokia N97. Just make sure you try that touchscreen before you buy. It really does let the N900 down and you’ll need to ensure you’re happy with it first. Our advice? A great smartie, but tread with caution. Expect a next-gen capacitive model to blow this out of the water in the not too distant future.

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Seb Mason

The N900 is capable of amazing things, Yes it’s let down by its screen, but it does not deserve 3 Stars… Maemo 5 is brilliant, 6 Months down the line their will be LOTS of new stuff to install, tweek, more personisation not to mention MMS and Portrait mode for everything…. Looking at the youtube vids, there is already oldskool video games you can emulate, like mario, Ghosts ‘N Goblins, + various others. The device is out on the 4th of December, and it already has that!? comone EP! be a little bit more fair to this rising star.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Joe Minihane

Hey Seb

Cheers for your comments, always good to hear readers’ thoughts. I agree that the potential is massive, but that’s just what it is, potential. There’s no doubting the N900 is great in a lot of ways, but I’ve reviewed the device as it is now. I agree that Maemo 5 is great and much, much better than S60.

That said, the touchscreen just doesn’t cut the mustard. If I’d bought this phone, I’d be mightily annoyed that one of the central features wasn’t up to the job. That’s why I went for 3 stars rather than 4. But it was a tough shout let me tell you!

Thanks again for your comments.

Cheers

Joe

Seb Mason

Having not spent any time with the device myself I don’t know how bad the screen really is, But I agree with what you’re saying, It’s kind of like buying a Ferrari with a bus steering wheel (slightly weird analogy there)
Nokia does frustrate, they’re releasing the X6 this Friday, so it’s not like they haven’t got the infrastructure to cope with capacitive screen production. They released the N86 with an 8MP camera, so same thing applies there.
At least they have got a lot of things right on this device. Lots of Storage, resolution of screen, etc.

It still does amazes me there is still no perfect device out there coming up 2010. EVERY device has got something not quite right, missing or wrong with it.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

I couldn’t agree with you more. iPhone – extremely limited multitasking. Pre – 8GB of storage only. Milestone/Droid – landscape keyboard. N97/Mini – Symbian. BlackBerry – shonky browser. Windows Mobile phones – Windows Mobile. You know what I’d love to see? An Android 2.0 phone with a portrait QWERTY and a capacitive touchscreen. Sort of like a Palm Pixi. I’d be all over that in a second and pay to get out of any contract.

Jakub

Hi guys, I have a question about the touchscreen, is it really that bad or is it just with comparision with capacitive screen? e.g. how would u compare it with screen of nokia 5800. I have 2yrs old LG viewty and i want to replace it really badly but main thing I want is adobe flash in the browser and n900 is the only option right now so if the screen is just bit under capacitive Im fine with it, if its gettin close to my laggy viewty im out of there:)

Thank you for the answer.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

If you’re coming from a Viewty, and know the kooks and kinks or resistive and how firm you need to press down and have long accepted this, you’ll be fine, especially if your determination to get Flash running is so strong. It’s similar to the N97 in terms of forceful swiping required – but the good news is the stylus is built into the case this time, not a separate tab you need to carry around. But it’s still not the fluid sensation of just tapping something on an iPhone or Palm Pre and watching it spring up, every time, guaranteed. Hope that helps!

Carlos

Why is a capacitive touchscreen the “holy grail”? This is an internet tablet with phone capabilities based on previous internet tablets. I have a n800 and I function quite well without using a stylus. Besides, there are some programs that require a stylus, such as the drawing/note-taking programs which are excellent.

The resistive screen is key for certain programs and you can’t use it like you would an iphone, palm pre, etc. You have to use your fingernail or the side of your finger. It’s really quite responsive.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

When a device is a phone, it needs to be easy to use. It needs to be something you can pull out of your pocket, fire up with one hand while you’re holding onto the stand on the bus, say, and start prodding through email. You can do this on Android phones, you can do this on iPhones, and a recent bunch of handsets show capacitive works phenomenally well at high screen resolutions (Droid, First ELSE). With resistive tech, the simple fact is you can’t start doing this quickly and easily without some frustration. I want to press an icon on screen without having to pull out a stylus, and I want it to load 10 times out of 10 when I do. This still isn’t the case on the Nokia N900, and a real pity on an otherwise incredible smartphone.

Carlos

I respect your opinion but it is strange that you can not operate this without using a stylus. Almost every single video of this product that I see is someone using the n900 without a stylus. Matter of fact, they usually don’t even mention that it has one. I honestly don’t think that you have had enough practice using this device. I hardly ever pull out a stylus to use my n800 and the screen on the n900 is better.

I guess to each his own preferences.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

It’s really interesting hearing all the feedback on our review, and seeing how much support there is for resistive touch out there. And I think you can get around an N900 without the stylus. But, and here’s where I feel Nokia lets me down, you still have to be firm about it. If I forget and just tap with a thumb, which would be enough on an iPhone or Android handset, a window or app won’t open 10 times out of 10. That’s just not good enough now when platforms on rival handsets do.

Carlos

Oh, one more thing. You didn’t mention the full firefox browser with the ability to add add-ons. Is there any other phone out there with a full and unhindered browser?

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

Hi Carlos, we’ve actually previewed Firefox mobile extensively, you’ll like this post http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/11/17/firefox-mobile-full-launch-next-month/ it is worth pointing out though that Firefox mobile is headed to Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian too. It won’t be an exclusive for long. But yes, it is awesome!

F3arsy

This is the second time I have heard this analogy of being able to use a phone one handed while holding on to a bus stand. What complete and utter rubbish, it’s almost as if these so called experts are seeking out extaordinary circumstances in order to highlight a problem. If you are unfortunate to only have one arm then I can understand this being an issue. If like me you are able bodied in all respects and find that 99% of the time you are not holding on to a bus stand then perhaps in the great scheme of things it’s not really an issue – is it!!!!! Besides if you spend most of your time on a bus – can you really afford a n900, go buy a second hand iphone, it’s cheap and meets all your one handed bus induced requirements. THAT ONE’S FOR YOU MR SILLIS and all those other extarordinary situation one handed challenged individuals. PS go find a seat or wait until you have reached your destination : 0 )

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

I also didn’t mention the issue of multitouch. Yes, some resistive screens can do it, but not the Nokia N900′s. Its swirling gesture for zooming isn’t brilliant, and certainly not the intuitive swooping pinch feature you can pull off on an iPhone, HTC Hero or HD2. If it’s an internet tablet, shouldn’t it be about getting around the internet quickly? Multitouch makes it that much easier to.

F3arsy

So apart from pinch zoom what other requirements are there for multitouch?
Whilst a capacitive screen may be much more sensitive than a resistive the former is less precise. The fact that you have full browsing capabilities in the n900 requiring precise actions (not just a swoop of the finger), a resistive screen is therefore more appropriate for full user functionality – even if it means using a stylus for pinpoint perfection. If you just want to flick things in and out the the screen then fine stick with your capacitive (but note the n900 screen allows you to do this and in all honestly these reviews are merely splitting hairs for the sake of putting ink on paper – you will not see that much of a difference beween a capacitive screen and the resistive screen on the n900 when it comes to flicking things in and out of the active window. For my money tapping to zoom is just as good if not more intuitive than pinching!!! As I said pinching is not that precise and sometimes has to be done twice to be effective.

F3arsy

Ok so apart from pinch zoom what other requirements are there for multitouch – did you say typing errrr the n900 has an app (oops sorry) keyboard for that!!!

http://www.gravatar.com James Holland

Multitouch simply means using more than one finger at once. The OS might only support one or two gestures (like pinching) but it means apps can use more if developers choose to. E.g. piano simulators let you play lots of keys at once, for proper chords.

F3arsy

Apologies for the typo ‘extrarordinary’ I am doing this one handed on my iphone while travelling on a bus.
http://www.electricpig.co.uk Joe Minihane

I have to say this boils down to what Ben has highlighted. The touchscreen just isn’t good enough. If you’ve spent a fortune on a phone like this and are going to havr it on contract for two years, it’s to be expected one of the central features works like a dream. If the Droid can do it why can’t the N900.

I don’t buy Nokia’s talk of it being an ‘internet tablet’. This is a smartphone vying for top spot with a raft of other devices and a decent touchscreen is a must have these days. The X6 can manage it, why not the N900?

F3arsy

I think Ben is splitting hairs for the sake of having something to say – the n900 screen user experience is not that different from the iphone or htc hd2. Seriously folks why would Nokia release something that falls short of the competition???

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

To save money on cheaper touchscreen technology. I could say the same of Sony Ericsson, which has only just come round to capacitive too.

F3arsy

Not sure I understand your response – they may be saving money but the experience is not that different from the Iphone – even the Nokia 5800 and the N97 gives you a very similar user experience the difference being the OS, but the physical act of swiping is pretty much the same from my experience – by saving money on a screen that gives you the same experience as the iphone they have been able to offer so much more and in doing so raise the bar.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

I have to disagree – the beauty of the iPhone, regardless of its lack of multitasking and questionable closed approach, it how sensitive the screen is to taps. It never drops an action. I can’t say the same is true when I go to tap the N900′s drop down menu bar at the top of the screen, and when I swipe through profile screens, I really have to remind myself to drag, or use a thumbnail. We now know that phone UIs can be easy to use in this way now without a) dumbing down or b) looking dumbed down so this really shouldn’t be acceptable anymore. I don’t want the pixel accuracy of a stylus – put simply, I don’t draw stuff on a phone on a regular basis. Does anybody?

Michael Dame

There are too many positives about the N900 to make such a huge deal about the resistive screen. The N900 is a high end device, period. It is a touch screen phone. You need to touch the screen in order for it to work. Okay. Touch it. I owned an iphone 3GS, but am a T-Mobile customer. I wanted a native 3G phone with amazing specs, which is why I bought this phone, otherwise I’d be pretty satisfied with my white 16Gb iphone 3GS. And yes, even though I’ve lived in a cold climate and wear gloves many months out of the year- I took my gloves off to use my iphone cause I had too. Its wasn’t a big deal. I did what I had to do in order to use the quality phone that I had. It wasn’t a horrible sacrifice. BUT, it was a sacrifice I had to make because it was capacitive. True, there are some amazing things to be said about capacitive technology, but its not the Savior of the industry. Its all how you look at it. For me, since I have T-Mobile- the difference in data speed, the ability of multitasking, access to a truly open source platform, the superior camera, a REAL web browser, the expandable memory slot, the front VGA camera, the kickstand, the FM transmitter, the IR port, along with the true capacity for personalization of this device BLOWS away the iphone in features, functionality, 3G speed (for T-Mobile), and therefor has gotten 550 of my precious dollar bills. I do appreciate informative, detailed reviews, but I had to add my perspective as a consumer. In short – Its an excellent purchase, and without a doubt the best option that T-Mobile has as a supported mobile device, but its not good enough to switch from AT&T if you’re already situated with an iphone 3GS.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk Ben Sillis

Great to hear a US perspective on the N900, thanks Michael! I agree with almost everything you say about it proving more practical than an iPhone, but I do genuinely think that being able to use the N900 without gloves is the most important feature. It’s so important to be able to quickly pull a phone out of your pocket and drill down to what you need – and right now, with resistive screens, you can’t pull that off with intuitive taps 10 times out of 10. Somewhere along the line that 90-95% success rate hits, and while that sounds like a small percentage of missed touches, it’s enough to irritate you even after browsing just a handful of web pages.

Gurney

I’m new here, just another guy trying to find out info on this device so as to make an informed decision.

I presently have a great user experience on the T-Mobile network so I did not jump on the iPhone bandwagon but I do own an iPod Touch and a HTC hero (Euro version) that I purchased when I had to give in and say “uncle” to my Nokia n97. When numerous apps are resident in memory the HTC Hero does get a tad sluggish but if the user experience of the iPod Tuch and my HTC are anything to go by and I were to compare it to my life with my Nokia N97, talk all you want about resistive versus capacitive and good luck convincing me on being appeased and satisfied with resistive.

For each unit (HTC and Apple) neither being perfect, the user interface and user experience are splendid! Effortless! Works without issue, thought or concern! For all the gripes some nay-sayers may have with the iPhone, the touch screen and unit responsiveness is not one of those issues. It’s the benchmark for a reason and its more than apple hype and marketing…I LOVE MY iPod touch and I’m no apple fanboy!

I have almost used Nokia’s exclusively since the early 1990′s when I got my first cellphone back in the analog days and have hung in there with the occasional forays into the Motorola and SonyEricsson arena from time to time but always came back.

This new generation of smartphones that are now living up to the name of being smart are cranking up the heat, and for me I think my everyday user experience with the N97 might have been the straw that starts breaking the camels back. I had a wonderful time with the E-90, E-71, great units so far as effortless user experience goes I even had the E-75 for a spell up until the n-97 came out…It offered the new user interface and truly compared to Android with HTC-sense and the apple UI the symbian UI looks and feels severely dated (albeit stable and reliable). Nobody is bigger than Nokia, but it’s time to get current..that’s why I was overjoyed when I heard about the N900, I thought “a new platform” when I heard about Maemo. I looked at reviews and demos on good-ol youtube and heard folks exclaim about the speed and sharpness of the UI, but have also heard about less than glowing comments regarding it’s phone capabilities.

Much of the problem I think lies in that all the marketing material I see and read presents the device to me as a smartphone but on various forums I have come across, posters are adamant about the n900 being the next gen of Nokia internet tablets (which it is)…with phone capabilities as a second. Nokia should be much more assertive about this if this is the case. In fact for all my reading and viewing I did not know that the device came with and utilized a stylus until I happened upon this website about an hour ago…MAJOR TURNOFF for a fellow looking for a smartphone..I dont want to hear, see, taste, or smell the work ‘stylus’ attached to whatever device I end up getting, even if it isnt a requirement to use it! I suspect that there may be those folk like myself that have heard the hype and the fanfare about this device and may be seriously let down if it doesnt live up to the effortless-reliable-stable-easy-and-fast dream that is the promise of the ultimate smartphone. I with the neverending parade of E and N series units I have purchased over the years find I have spent crazy amounts of money on mobile phones as I have been buying unlocked units for years because my carrier offers none of them, so although not tied to a contract I am always paying the full retail price. The HTC Hero has been a great unit only let down by its tendancy to get sluggish (kill the resident tasks or restart the device cures it for a day or three), it has lots of apps so far for everything I have a mind to do and more.

After easily over 15-years as a Nokia user, the thought that I could finally be stolen away by products that simply do it better and easier made by vendors that are rather new to the space is a shame. I think the N900 is a potential desaster not because of what the device is (internet tablet w/ phone capabilities) but because of what the marketing material are presenting this device to be. Go to Amazon.com and have a look and if you like myself are a regular consumer looking for a smartphone get the sense that being a smartphone is this devices primary mission…almost the N97 fixed yet enhanced and on a ‘computer’ (linux) based platform, so ‘truly smart’! I suspect a lot of irate early adopters that didnt read the small print, lots of unts returned and on Ebay and alas it wont be the units fault, it will be the fault of the sales and marketers of this unit. Stylus??? I hope that those folks like myself that were on pre-order lists and have this built up anticipation and expectation as we tend to do when we await the latest tech-toy to surface wont feel so let down as to seriously damage their relationship with the brand and it’s products in the future.

I’ve sure said waaay more than I intended and this sure is wordy but I had to say my piece (large piece admittedly)
Neb

I’ve had the N900 for just under two weeks and am about to take it back for a refund. I can’t really compare it with the iphone or other phones as it is my first Smartphone. But, it was expensive, as the reviewer and others have said, given the price, one wants a phone that one feels really happy with. The screen is sometimes perfectly sensitive to light finger taps and very responsive indeed. At other times, in exactly the same place (on the screen) it requires several taps, and sometimes no amount of tapping will be picked up and you have to try to complete the task by a backdoor route (opening and closing the keyboard, opening a drop down menu, etc). one of the 4 homescreens comes with a Phone Icon which you click to get to the phone application. The icon is rather small, consider that this device is a phone. The device has the possibility of adding and removing icons from the home screens, including the phone icon. Fairly often, by accident one can switch on the function that allows icons to be removed. I did this by accident two days ago and accidentally removed the phone icon. And there does not seem to be any way to replace it. So, I have a 600 dollar phone, but the only way to use it as a phone is to go into the address book (which i sometimes can’t open at all) and tap on a contact or create a new contact and then call the contact). There is another way to open the phone application, by setting the phone so that when you rotate it to portrait the phone app opens automatically. Sometimes this works quickly, but typically it is slow and sometimes doesnt work at all. Once you are making a call, it is frequentlt difficult to end the call by tapping the on screen icon.

The phone sometimes shuts down of its own accord. The integrated GPS only works if you first download and then open another app like an exercise app (I only learnt this by trawling Maemo’s web site and finding other user experiences). There are other problems too. The phone is amazing in some ways, but it is tremendsouly frustrating in others.

F3arsy

Sorry to hear you are having problems – it is a bit more than just a phone so I can undertstand it can be frustrating at times. If you still have the device and wish to re-install the shortcut just tap on an empty space on the desktop, you will see a settings icon appear at the top right hand corner – you probably followed these steps when you accidently removed the icon – just tap on the wording tab ‘Desktop menu’ and a full menu will apear – if an application shortcut has been removed it should re-appear in the shortcut list – just add again and position on desktop of choice.

Hope it helps.

Steve

Have had the phone a few weeks now and while there have been a few glitches with software (possibly because I’ve ben downloading pre-production software) I must say I’m really impressed. What I really don’t understand is all the fuss about capacitive versus resistive screen.
Personally I’d be disappointed if this came with capacitive screen.
The ability to use a stylus and utilise greater precision to my mind is far better than slghtly more responsive capacitive screens. I’ve found the screen works fine with fingers and stylus, although it took a day to get the finger technique right.
Gamgigo

No capacitive touchscreen? BRILLIANT, all those capacitives can go jump. I find resistives a lot more responsive. The iPod touch's screen is the worst I've ever used. Also resistives can be touched with anything, capaitives need a finger or special stylus. No MMS, does anyone really care? The last time i sent an MMS was years ago (literally).

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