I threw at N900, some of the most popular media file formats and each time it amazed me with the video and audio quality that was rendered from the onboard media player. I didn’t any of the files whatsoever either to set the resolution right or fiddle with the file formats. What all formats do you think you can dig with the N900? Hit the jump button to find out.

The first time I saw the UI of media player, I just fell in love with it. It looks like some console of a high end music system and make no mistake the onboard stereo speakers pack quiet a punch and you can use N900 as your portable media player, as long as you keep a spare battery in hand for the speakers really drain out the juice out of the device at an alarming rate. Anyway coming back to my point, did you guys know that N900 is DivX ready? Apparently the device is and Nokia have so far not highlighted this fact in any of their N900 promos and hence I was taken by a surprise when N900 played both .avi and .divx files with absolutely no lag or loss in quality and that is when both the files were in resolution of 624 x 352px.

This is what I totally love the N900 for. I have like a TB of video content all in either DivX or avi formats and now I don’t have to bother about converting them to some unheard of resolution or format to port them to my handphone. Apart from the frustration of going through the conversion, am gonna save not hours but days of computation time that the conversion would take considering the size of my video collection.

Now that’s one more reason why N900 is not a smartphone but a mobile computer. Beat that competition!

P.S- N900 doesn’t play.wmv files but am not complaining for the format never really took off the way Microsoft wanted it to and its nowhere close to the popularity of avi and divx formats.

Not to mention the canceling of pre-0rders from Amazon, Dell, NewEgg and other online dealers, N900 enthusiasts are just losing their patience and I got some first hand experience of the same when I was mobbed this weekend, after being spotted with N900. However, I put up a brave fight and managed to keep the N900 with me but only after letting my attackers have some hands-on feel of the device. Yeah, I was just kidding about being mugged, my attackers just wanted some first hand experience of the device. I was traveling on work over the weekend and hence was not able to update the blog here. Anyway having missed out on the black Friday, I realised that a lot of N900 buzz has been doing the rounds, which by now you should have already read. So, I thought I will cover something which no other N900 blog has touched upon so far- Data backup and Recovery on N900.

Unlike anyother smartphone, N900 is capable of managing its own recovery system, meaning you don’t have to connect to a PC/Mac to create/load your backups. If you ask me, this is one of the coolest features of the N900. Many a times you play around with your phone only to realise that you messed up with some setting and are not able to fix it. This is where you would start hunting for a backup image on your PC/Mac if it were anyother smartphone. Not with N900 though, you can create and restore a backup right from the device itself. Creating a backup takes around 3-4 minutes, depending on your contacts and other data (like calendar entries, bookmarks etc) you select to backup. Restore is pretty swift as well. So make sure you create a backup of your N900, once you have loaded all your contacts and other relevant data.

This is just another reason why the N900 is not just a smartphone but a computer in your hands.

If you happen to have a N900 at your disposal, head to menu->More-> Backup for creating/restoring N900 backups

Having played around with 5800 for almost a year now,  I know that the battery drains at an alarming rate when one uses 3G and with the features onboard the N900, I just can’t imagine using N900 sans the 3G.  I was hoping that Nokia would go for a higher capacity battery for there flagship device the N900 but Nokia’s strategies continue to baffle me! Even their previous flagship device N97 had a bigger 1500 mAh battery (BP-4L). However looks like the folks at Nokia Conversations are aware of these battery woes of N900 and have released this latest N900 Explored video, which you guys can catch after the break.

As much this video is reassuring, I still doubt the battery life of N900. All they show in the above video is that they were able to take 231 shots of still photographs. If you have used a smartphone, you would know that the functions that drain the battery are 3G and Wi-Fi, apart from video recording and ofcourse actual voice calls. What Nokia Conversations is showing is just still photograph battery life and am sorry, I won’t fall for the bait.

I will wait for my N900 to give a test ride of battery life myself before giving a verdict on this. Till then sit back and enjoy the N900 videos.

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!

While there has been no official changelog on the new firmware update yet, early adopters of N900 have reported improved battery life among other tweaks. If you happen to be toying around with a N900, you would probably want to get this latest firmware update from Nokia. There is a catch though: contrary to the recent firmware upgrades from Nokia on their other smartphones, the update to v1.2009.42.11 is known to get rid of all the previous installed applications on N900s. User added files like photos and media files are known to be restored though. So N900ers make sure you backup your devices, before heading to NSU for the update and yeah do drop us a line here and help us compile a changelog for v1.2009.42.11.

The latest beta version comes after the encouraging feedback the Mozilla mobile team led by Fearless Leader, Jay Sullivan have been getting after the beta 4 version of the browser was made public, early this month. Yeah, that makes the latest version the second beta to have surfaced in less than a fortnight. Somebody is losing sleep to bring those amazing browser features to the N900s and we are not complaining. Wanna know on what they have been burning the midnight oil? Hit on the jump button to find out.

In case you failed to spot it, here are the things that are new to the beta 5:

• Firefox official branding, with Firefox name and logo (Looks like the Mozilla mobile team threw the Fennec branding out of the window)
• Support for multiple languages, currently including Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Russian
• Full flash support meaning you can now stream YouTube on your N900 without breaking a sweat
• The viewport meta tag is now supported by Firefox on mobile sites using it
• New form filling assistant for the clumsy at keyboard
• Improved panning and zooming performance and behavior
• Several bugs fixed

In case you already have a N900 at your access, you can get a feel of beta5 of Firefox for mobile by downloading this setup file.

The N900, as you may know by now is more a mobile computer than a phone with PDA capabilities. With high speed 3G data connections being the norm these days, N900s are going to be indispensable for the upwardly mobile crowds, and driving home this very point is the “Offline as it happens” campaign of Nokia. Sample videos and more details on the contest after the break.

Fishing!!

Wedding

Riverboat

Soccer game

Personally I think the soccer game one is the most plausible one but hey you never know, you may end up in any of the above scenarios! Point taken Nokia, but when will you put the N900s in the shelves of the retailer next road?

Coming back to the contest, the rules are simple: show the world how N900 can save you a flesh and bone by making a short video of it and submit it to Nokia’s YouTube Channel, for a chance to win the all new Nokia N900. Also, the winning entry may end up as the next video in the series shown above. So get your grey matter working to show the world how badly you need a N900!