I was using Ovi Maps on N900 for routing today and was largely impressed by the app. The GPS lock-on was fast, and so was routing. The all new “Track Me” feature is what appeals to me the most. It auto-rotates the map and makes sure that you are reading the map in the correct direction. However, with no onboard digital compass, the task of orienting maps is based largely on your movement. If you happen to come to a halt, be it for a traffic signal or for refuelling your automobile, the map gets disoriented (Check out the Ovimaps-9 screenshot for traffic signal scenario) but it will auto-rotate and set in the right direction once you start moving. Overall it accounts for a decent navigation experience though.

We did see some blood on the battle field yesterday  and am now pitching them in a YouTube  round to find out which browser packs the  strongest punch. Which browser would you bet on? Safari? Maemo? Android?. I am afraid you will have to hit on the read button to see if you got it right?

YouTube Performance Test

Adobe’s Flash needs no introduction to anyone who spends a decent amount of time on the web these days. However, this very flash support is absent on some of the most popular mobile browsers today: Safari, Opera Mini, Android to name a few. However, HTC has its version of flash compatible browser in its Hero and N900 as we know comes with full flash support (by full flash support we mean the same version of flash that we use on our desktops). Now that we have ironed out the basics of browser capabilities, let’s see how they perform in our test

Round 1: iPhone- YouTube app, G1-YouTube app, Hero-Mobile version of YouTube, N900-Desktop version of YouTube.

Ew, this is something I didn’t expect from the N900 browser, especially after acing the speedtest yesterday. On a second thought, I should highlight that YouTube apps on iPhone and G1 are not browsers, so strictly speaking I shouldn’t comparing them with Hero and N900. Now, coming to Hero it no doubt performs better than N900 for the maemo browser has to load the desktop version of YouTube while the Hero is loading the lighter (data consumption wise) mobile version.

Round 2: iPhone- YouTube app, G1-YouTube app, Hero-Mobile version of YouTube, N900-Mobile version of YouTube

To zero in on a winner, I will now compare YouTube streaming speed for the mobile version of YouTube on both Hero and N900. iPhone and G1’s YouTube apps are also included in the test just for a comparison but it is not really fair to compare them with the browsers.

What was that? The N900 was nowhere in the picture when the Hero started streaming! Also, the resolution of the video on Hero was much better than that on the N900. Seems like Google have optimized their android browser to get the best out of YouTube. Even the YouTube app on G1 fares better than the one on iPhone.

So, who really takes the honours here? Based on the tests that I carried out, I will have to say the winner is HTC flash enabled browser of the Hero. It supports flash (mobile version) and it loads webpages and flash content faster than the maemo browser. What does this say about N900 browser? It’s not really as bad as the tests I performed might suggest for the maemo browser is loaded with full flash, which may take a while to load but it lets you do everything that you can do on a desktop browser (well, almost). So what should you go for? Well, depends on your usage, if you are someone who just likes to read content from the web on their mobile phones, I would suggest the HTC Hero but if you are a heavy internet user, you should go for the N900 for it will allow you to do everything that you can do on your desktop browser. Be it blogging, or playing Farm Frenzy on facebook, the N900 browser lets you do everything you want to but its just not optimized for mobile usage yet but give it sometime and am sure the updates will make it a much faster browser than what it is today.

To zero in on a winner, I put them through several tests and threw in HTC Hero, which according to me is the best Android phone in market (as of now) and HTC G1, the legendary Google phone which gave the world the first feel of Android. Eager to know who is the winner? Hit on the read button to find out.

Speedtest

Well I first started with the Speedtest on the devices using the services of speedtest.net as the benchmark. The service guages your net connection and summarises the upload and download speeds accessible from your devices. This is rather a hardware test than the browser but its the combination of both which matters when you are browsing and that’s why this test was the first on my list. Let’s see how our smartphones fare in this litmus test.

Needless to say N900 wins by a handsome margin over G1 and Hero and by rather a slim margin over the iPhone. Please note that this test reflects better Wi-Fi radio reception rather than browser speeds.

Webpage Test

Ok, we know that the N900 has an edge in the Wi-Fi reception, lets now see how it fares in load times of an actual webpage and whats better than our very blog, which has a fair amount of Flash content, along with images and other data intensive scripts.

While we saw that the G1 was the first to finish loading the page, we should note that it’s browser doesn’t support flash and as a result, it may have suceeded in loading the blog page faster than the other browser. The same goes with Safari on iPhone. But, between Hero and N900, it can be seen that the Hero loaded the blog page marginally faster than N900.

It’s rather too early to declare a winner here for I have carried out a few more tests. Apparently, YouTube doesn’t work as fast as I do and its taking me ages to upload those videos. So, stay tuned for more tests and conclusion of the battle of the browsers.

P.S- The tests couldn’t have been carried out without the assistance of my friends-ARD, Deeps and Horizon guy. Thanks a ton guys.

In case you are shifting across platforms, for someone like me shifting from iPhone to N900, there is no easy way out and just when I was running out of ideas, I stumbled upon this tiny little app called Hermes available for free from the Download section of the app manager.

What Hermes does is it synchronises your contacts with saved contacts from user’s twitter and facebook accounts. This may sound too simple but the practicality of this app is just amazing. Imagine getting all the contact info, including the date of birth, web page, addresss etc at just one go, thats it! Hermes is all that and more. Take a look at the demo video here to know what to expect from the powerful contact sync tool.

I was rather fortunate to unearth this video from the web for Nokia Conversations had just demoed the video in continuation of their ongoing Explore N900 under 30 seconds campaign. I was about to write at lengths explaining the methodology of the syncing the contacts, but the YouTube clip above makes it more lucid than I can ever get with my text instructions. So I will let the video do all the explanation, while I set back and give my verdict on the app.

I gotta give Hermes a special mention in our list of must have applications as this app is one of the most innovative apps, I have seen on the Maemo 5 till now. If you have like 300 friends, you should definitely not miss this app.

Hermes can be downloaded for free from the Downloads section of the app manager.

Having played around with Nokia 5800, N97 and iPhone, I have gotta say, image sharing has never been as easy and intuitive as on the N900.  Hit on the jump button to see what makes me say so.

Can it get any simpler than that? Infact I find this image sharing so intuitive and easy to use that I have never used either the bluetooth connection or the data cable to manually transfer any of the photos or screenshots that I keep uploading in this blog here. Incase you have noticed, most of the screenshots I have embedded in this blog are softcoded to my Flickr account, to which I directly uploaded from N900. This saves me a lot of time in copying and pre-processing the photos, that I had to previously in absence of a decent sharing service. I totally dig the multiple sharing and sort by tags for uploading my photos.

Once you get your N900, you should definitely try its sharing services, which by default includes Flickr and Ovi. Further the Pixelpipe plugin, along with Facebook and Evernote apps only enhance the usability of this service. So make sure you give this sharing feature a spin on your N900, as soon as you get one and I promise you that you will just love it and you might as well forget PC Suite or the Ovi Suite for all your image sharing needs.

Ever since I got my hands on the N900, I was wondering if I could get something similar working on one of its homescreen for this comes in very handy especially for a people like me who have to often work outdoors and at very short notices. Now I know exactly what gear to chose before setting my foot out of my residence. Thanks to Foreca, an amazing weather forecast widget for N900s.

Screenshots-

The widget is very easy to customize and one of the most intuitive apps that I have seen so far on the Maemo platform. Ofcourse there are not many apps yet but getting this app/widget working is a no-brainer. While one can find some of the most popular cities in the side panel, the app description says it can relay live weather forecast for as many as 140,000 locations across the globe. Further, the info displayed on the widget is soft coded, meaning clicking on the widget, will take you to the Foreca webpage for finer details related to the forecast.

As you know when it comes to weather forecasts, the info is only as useful as the units that they are displayed in and in this app, you can chose the system of units of your choice, so that you don’t have to pull out your hair trying to figure out the temperature in the unit systems of your choice after a glance at the N900 Foreca homescreen.

The bottom line is this is one handy app and a must have on your N900, if you already have one and mark this app in your “must have” list, if you still haven’t got your hands on a N900 yet.

If you have been following the blog here you would have noticed that I mentioned that the N900 would ship with Skype built-in and now I have got more evidence to back up my claim. Who is the source? The folks from Skype themselves. Sit back and enjoy the 2 min tour below for more info on skype integration within the N900 and yeah overlook that last part where Mark says you can buy a N900 off the shelf, not yet guys!

Embedding not working for God knows what reason. Check the demo video at Skype’s official website here

Thats right, Skype support out of the box, no installing apps or anything! Beat that iPhone or Droid or whatever smartphone you wanna put against it!

So obviously I started hunting for a podcast aggregator for my yet to arrive N900 and as always I headed to Maemo Select for my search and look what I found: gPodder. Its a gem of app, which makes following podcasts on your N900 so damn easy that you can install and start using one in less than 3os. Too good to be true? I have got video evidence to prove it.

gPodder Demo Video by Nokia Conversations-

So now you trust me, right? As you can see in the demo video, gPodder supports both audio and video podcasts and makes subscribing and downloading podcasts an absolute no-brainer. Some of you may argue that with the flash enabled browser, you can catch the podcasts directly on the publishers web-page but not all publishers have a dedicated webpage for hosting their podcasts. With gPodder making it so easy to follow podcasts, I would rather use this app for my daily dose of podcasts instead of hovering around the web, hunting for my favorite podcasts.

As a sidenote, gPodder should have definitely made it to my top 3 apps to install on my N900. What goes out from the earlier list? Nothing actually, with it now confirmed that skype coming pre-installed on the N900s, gPodder can sneak into my list of top 3 apps, without me having to compromise on anything.

Whether you find Twitter as an ideal replacement for google as the search engine of choice is debatable but the addiction to Twitter is unquestionable not only for me but for millions of netizens out there, for whom tweeting is as much a part of everyday routine as brushing their teeth! How does the N900 treat the Twitter addicts like us? Let’s find out.

Hahlo

Used to my iPhone, I thought I need “an App for that” but as it turns out I don’t actually need one! Yeah you read it right, there is this web app called Hahlo, which like google apps runs directly from the browser. So you don’t have to bother about installing anything on your N900s. Now thats one cool feature, but the list doesn’t end just there and infact the awesomeness of this web app continues to grow on you as you start using it.

I was kinda sceptical about the capabilities of a browser based app on the emerging Maemo platform but make no mistake Hahlo is a fully loaded twitter client for this latest platform. Features like auto-refresh, inline photos, inline replies, tweets near me, Auto-login, etc make this one of the most complete twitter client on the N900.

Gravity

If you have ever had a symbian smartphone, you would have probably heard of and used Gravity, one of the best selling twitter clients on this platform. The application is one of the most impressive on this platform and was the first application to introduce Kinetic scrolling on the symbian devices. Kinetic scrolling aside, the twitter client is one of the best across any platform and yeah I would love to have this on my N900. Unfortunately Jane Ole Suhr, the developer behind Gravity has no plans to rewrite the code for the Maemo platform. There is a huge market demand for this app on the Maemo platform and if you are one of those who are missing the Gravity experience on the N900, please do vote here to convince Ole Suhr to come up with the Maemo version of the best selling twitter client on the symbian platform.

Coming back to my question, yeah looks like the N900 can handle twitter load in an effortless manner. While am a big fan of Gravity, am more than impressed with the capabilities of browser based Hahlo. Browser based apps are the way to go and Maemo 5 as such seems to be future ready!

P.S- Btw, N900 is now officially on sale in the US where it is priced at $ 649 (Nokia flagship store) and $509.99 at Amazon and other participating stores.

Knowing for a fact that the N900 browser comes with full flash support and the upcoming Firefox browser for the N900 looking very promising with full flash support among other things, YouTube was a no brainer but getting other things working on the N900, was something I was looking forward to. Can I or can I not make the N900 my ultimate tool of choice for accessing the web? Let’s find out, after the break though.

Google Docs and Calendar

Microsoft Office may still be the best selling office suite but the future belongs to Google Docs for sure. If you have ever used Google Docs, you know exactly what am talking about, when I say that Google Docs has just revolutionized the way I work on my documents, spreadsheets and presentations and Google Calendar is as much an integral part of my lifestyle as my morning breakfast!

Google Wave

Taking about future, how can I afford not to mention about the Google Weave? The service which at present is “by invite only” is all set to change the way people work and interact on the web. While its been just over a couple of weeks since I started playing around with it, I can see that this is going to be the tool of the future and yeah, it can be accessed very much from N900.

Google Maps

Now this is one service, which probably needs no introduction and has become the navigation choice of many worldwide. Not only is it free but it’s also easily available in almost every country of this world. But, here comes the first roadblock for my migration to the N900, there is no Google Maps support yet on this device and I just can’t imagine my life without it. There are millions of people like me out there and help us in bringing this service to the N900 by voting at http://productideas.appspot.com/#9/e=cf&t=google+maps