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.

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.

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.

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

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 Nokia devices (their smartphones) have always been known for their multi-tasking capabilities, most of their devices fail miserably when simultaneously running five or more memory intensive applications. Can Nokia turn the tide the other way around with their latest flagship device? Read on to find out.

The answer is definitely yes and am not just basing merely on the claims made by Nokia in the N900 promotional videos but by observations made by actual users of pre-production N900s. The final version can be expected to fare much better though. Let’s now take a look at how far the N900 can go when it comes to multi-tasking:

9 Tasks:

As you can see for yourself, the N900 sails smoothly through this test and there is no noticeable drop in performance in any of the 9 tasks. Lets push it further and see what happens.

12 Tasks:

24 Tasks!

The N900 excels again and now you may allay all your fears about lagging performance on multitasking N900s. Now, can somebody show me any other mobile device that can beat N900 in multi-tasking?

P.S- The above tests were not conducted out by me but by archebyte (the first two) at YouTube who has been kind enough to respond to the feedback from the N900 community and carrying out the two tests. Thanks mate. The last one is another promotional video from Nokia Conversations team.

While not much has been talked about the office capabilities of the latest Nokia flagship device, the latest YouTube clip doing the rounds among the N900 community, shows a demonstration of the office suite pre-loaded on the N900.

While the E-series and the N 97 from Nokia shipped in with QuickOffice pre-loaded, the developer of the office snatuite of the N900 is not yet known but the suite looks promising nevertheless. Hit on the read button to check out the office suite on N900.

Unfortunately the commentry is in French and there is no English version yet (Atleast, we were not able to find one till now). However, from the video we can see some promising features like zooming in and out from volume rocker buttons and word count. One of the major complaints with mobile Office suites has been the limited screen resolution of mobile devices but with 800×480 px resolution of the N900 makes it the perfect companion for office suites and other applications which rely on high resolution screens.

After seeing this latest N900 video, we are really amazed by the versatility of the N900. Its a media powerhouse, an accomplished imaging and video capture device, a promising gaming platform and now it also turns out to be the workaholic’s best friend with its very capable mobile office suite. So whether you are a music enthusiast or an amateur photographer or a workaholic CEO, the N900 has something to offer for everyone.

The latest video doing the rounds among the N900 fanboys, is the video sample of N900 showing its fixed focusing capabilities. After seeing the video sample, I gotta say that not only is the N900 a mobile computer but also an accomplished cam-corder. Hit on the jump button to see what makes us say that.

As you can see, the N900 comes pre-loaded with first fixed focusing for the video recording, meaning the N900 sets the focus to the first thing focussed on while starting the video and continues to focus on the same point even after changing the frame. However, video recording can always be stopped and re-started by setting the focus point on the required object to get the required results. While dynamic focus would have been a great feature to have on the N900, the fixed first focus can be used to get stunning videos as well. The dynamic focusing feature can also be added to an already  impressive specifications list of N900 with a firmware upgrade.

Just in case if you were thinking of getting that pocket cam-corder  (that is along with a smartphone) for the coming holiday season, the N900 is something you should seriously consider.

Ain’t that Weave sync cool? Being an avid fan of weave sync myself, I just can’t wait to get this on my mobile, wait I need to first get an Nokia N900 for that!

While Firefox seem to have hit the bull’s eye with navigation options within the browser, the zoom in and zoom out options are a bit confusing (atleast from what we see in the video above). Double tap to zoom in once, double tap to zoom in again and then double tap to zoom out! How does the browser respond to the second double tap? Does it zoom in further or zoom out? Comments are welcome!