After our initial hands-on with the N900 – the video and gallery of which you can see here – we spent some more time playing with the Maemo 5 smartphone at Nokia World this week. Our initial enthusiasm has been tempered a little by some of the real-world compromises that blending a smartphone and an Internet Tablet demand, though we’re still looking forward to a full review unit; check out our hands-on impressions after the cut.
Video demo after the cut
We sat down at a roundtable this afternoon with Nokia’s Ari Jaaksi, VP of software at the company, and talked about the Nokia N900 and the Maemo 5 OS it runs. Describing the N900 as “your internet device on the go” and Maemo as “putting the internet first”, it’s obvious that Jaaksi – and Nokia – have the MID segment in their sights; however they’re also upfront about the issues they’re going to face not only with their first-gen hardware but the ongoing development of the platform.
While the Booklet 3G is certainly a neat addition to the netbook segment, there’s something undeniably more appealing about the Nokia N900. We’ve seen all the specifications and now know the unsubsidized price, so it was about time for some hands-on experience with Nokia’s latest flagship.
Hands-on gallery, video and first-impressions after the cut
As we just mentioned earlier today, Nokia is set to announce their RX-51, N900 Rover in just a couple weeks at Nokia World, but the guys over at Mobile Review got a prerelease model and took some time to play with it. They aren’t giving a lot of information out yet, considering they have a lot of respect for Nokia, and even mentioned that if there hadn’t been so many leaks regarding the device, we wouldn’t be seeing any kind of review from them. Luckily for all of us though, they did it, and they have the pictures to prove it.
Details on the Nokia/Intel collaboration are out, and unless the duo are planning a big surprise for their imminent conference call it’s not quite the announcement we were hoping for. That means no Intel-based Nokia MID or netbook, but a “long-term relationship” to develop new mobile device architectures with integrated Nokia HSPA/3G connectivity. The pairing will also coordinate their Moblin and Maemo Linux platforms, with common technologies and cross-OS applications.
Details of Nokia’s next-gen Internet Tablet have leaked, suggesting that the Finnish company have moved away from positioning the platform as a companion device and now perceive it more as a smartphone. According to leaked specifications, the Nokia N900 or “Nokia Rover” now has quadband GSM and 3G HSPA, in addition to the WiFi and Bluetooth of the previous-gen models. It also sheds some screen-size, scaling down to a 3.5-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen (from 4-inches) though as this leaked image suggests the overall design is very similar to that of the N810.
ARM-based mobile internet devices (MIDs) could soon be presenting more of a challenge to their Intel Atom-based rivals, if newly-emerging trends in China continue. According to Chinese retailers, ARM-based MIDs such as the SmartQ 5 - priced at roughly one quarter of the cost of a branded Atom MID are prompting manufacturers to move away from Intel’s chipset.
It was at Intel’s booth rather than Samsung’s at Mobile World Congress where we got our hands on the Samsung SWD-M100 Mobile Internet Device, and while the unit they had to play with was mysteriously non-functional, the hardware is certainly promising. Hidden behind a 4.3-inch touchscreen there’s a full slide-down QWERTY keyboard, together with WiFi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and – its crowning glory – WiMAX.
Check out our hands-on video with the Samsung SWD-M100 MID after the cut
Nokia have axed their N810 WiMAX Edition Internet Tablet, and while the Finnish company did not state their reasons for its demise, a fair guess would be that it’s due to the slower-than-expected spread of the WiMAX network itself. However, according to company spokesperson Laurie Armstrong, Nokia is not writing off WiMAX altogether.
Today Nokia announced that their Qt cross-platform User Interface (UI) and applications framework would be available under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 license from the release of Qt 4.5 that is scheduled for March 2009.
In addition, Qt will now be available from a new source over at www.qtsoftware.com. This move to LGPL licensing will provide open source developers with more permissive licensing than GPL and also increase flexibility for the developers. The Qt source code repositories will be made publicly available and will encourage contributions not only from desktop but also embedded developer communities. These changes are meant to drive developers to evolve the Qt framework.
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