Look what I found at my doorstep today:
A Nokia N900, no less. Looks like Santa dropped me an early Christmas present this year. Those big stockings I have been hanging at my doorstep paid off, a bit early though!
Enough of the teasers. This is the review unit I received a couple of hours ago from WOM World Nokia. Stay tuned for updates.
If you have been worrying about the battery life of the N900, let me assure you that you are in safe hands when it comes to power management of Maemo 5 and N900. Being powered by the same BL-5J battery that powers some of the most popular Nokia devices like the 5800 XpressMusic, battery life of N900 is something that has always bothered me.
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.
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!
If you are a frequent user of the web , I bet you have atleast a couple of podcasts you follow religiously. For me, there are close to a dozen podcasts, without which I start getting withdrawal symptoms!
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.
The N900 saga refuses to conclude! First came the undue delay in releasing the handset, which was promptly followed by an official launch but handsets mysteriously missing from retailer shelves, which continues to be the case even today after more than 100 h0urs of the official US launch of N900.
While the previous twists in the N900 tale have been nothing but disappointing for N900 fans, the latest twist promises to bring smiles to hordes of N900 fans in the US: Amazon US has now dropped the price of N900 to USD 479.99, making it the second most cheapest deal for N900 after that ephemeral deal from Dell for USD 441.99. While Nokia continues to price the N900 at USD 649, Amazon is giving a straight discount of USD 119.01 (18%) and a USD 50 mail in rebate, bringing down the price of N900 to USD 479.99. Now only if they would announce an estimated shipping date!
Source: Amazon US
It may have been just a couple of days since the N900 was officially released in the US and Italy, but that’s not stopping Nokia from releasing a firmware update to v1.2009.42.11. The 165 MB update is presently available only over NSU and is expected to be made available over OTA in near future.
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.
After eons of frustration for the N900 fans, looks like the retail units are finally up for grabs in the US and elsewhere. If you happen to be in NYC or Chicago, let me save you the drive to the flagship stores: Unless you have registered for N900 with the stores, you are not gonna be getting one off the shelf at the flagship stores yet.
If you are not on the list of the flagship stores, you gotta wait like the rest of the US for the N900s to appear on the NokiaUS store as well as other retailers (Amazon, Dell, Newegg etc). While the Nokia US online store is still showing the N900 as available for pre-order, even after 48 after official US release, Nokia Italy has gone ahead and silently released the Maemo 5 device in Italy. Kudos to Nokia Italy and by the way, I wonder when Nokia US will learn a few things from their European counterparts. With a disastrous launch like this, no wonder Nokia has a paltry share in the American handset segment.
After plucking the N900 US launch news out of thin air (read Twitter) last night, I was eagerly waiting for an official announcement from Espoo side on this and looks like the tweet was right. N900 was indeed launched in the US yesterday, the 18th of November 2009, atleast thats what Nokia Conversations wants us to believe.
The official price of N900 continues to be at USD 649, which is what you have to shell out if you happen to drop by the Nokia Flagship stores in Chicago and New York. Even if you are ready to pay in cold hard cash, I doubt if you can get your hands on a retail unit yet for its been around 24 hours since the official announcement and am yet to come across an unboxing video on YouTube or even a tweet of anyone flaunting a retail unit of N900. Whats annoying is that the Nokia Conversations post claims that the device can be bought offshelf from the flagship stores and even online from NokiaUSA and other online retailers including Amazon, which unfortunately is far from reality. A click on either of these online stores, reveals that the N900 is still in pre-order mode.
Having sorted out how to facebook from N900 last night, it was time to check on my second favorite online activity-Tweeting. The micro-blog service of Twitter has really caught on me and I just can’t imagine a day without accessing Twitter for Twitter is my new Google for its user generated content for search phrases have that human touch to it and are updated in real time making it a far better search engine than any of the automated search engines in market today.
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.
Having decided to move on to my “yet to be shipped” N900 for most of my web browsing as and when it arrives, I wanted to see how does my favourite online activity, yeah you guessed it right, ‘facebook‘ing fares on the Nokia N900.
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.
