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.

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!

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.

I have had enough of those annoying “facebook videos are presently not compatible with iPhone/iPod Touch” warnings from my iPhone and am really looking forward to the facebook experience on the N900. The flash support on the Mozilla based browser on the N900 is the talk of the town these days and even Engadget has gone ahead and declared this the best browser in mobile segment today. Coming from Engadget who are known to be critical of almost anything that is not Apple, the internet capability of N900 speaks volumes for itself. More importantly for me, does this translate into a seamless ‘facebook’ing experience. Let’s find out, after the break though.

Farmville on N900

This is one of the earliest videos of the N900 browser, flaunting its flash capabilities and yeah one can even play the popular facebook game Farmville on the N900.

Videos on Facebook

If “facebook”ing from mobiles is your forte, you would know the frustration of not being able to see the videos from most of the smartphones including the iPhone. The flash based browser of N900, makes a mockery of uploading videos to facebook and yeah it can ofcourse play those facebook videos.

Facebook Contacts Synchronisation

Switching between phones is definitely a pain and especially if you are switching across platforms which is definitely going to be the case with N900 as this is the first Maemo device to hit the market. Instead of using a middle man software like the outlook to sync your contacts, one can easily use the Facebook contacts for synchronisation. Thanks to an app called Hermes, which makes this possible on the N900.

So lets see how the list looks like now: I can upload and playback facebook videos (thats such a relief after the frustrating experience on my iPhone), I can synchronise my phone contacts with my facebook contacts and yeah the most important thing, I can play Farmville and MafiWars, two of my favorite games on the facebook on the move on my N900. The bottom line is N900 is going to bring the full facebook experience to me on the go but only of they start shipping it soon, will I get to play with it before the curiosity kills the N900 cat inside me!

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.

Just connect the damn cable (which is a part of the standard box package), thats it? Apparently it’s as simple as that! While we can think of a ton of different uses of this feature, do let us know what would you dig this feature for.

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.

Now that’s rather unusual for smartphone ad. Wait! Did I say smartphone? Sorry its a Psychotic Shape-shifter. Looks like the folks at Nokia have a spooky sense of humour!