I’m in Amsterdam at Maemo Summit for the third and last day of sessions. I am teaming up with Rafe from All About Maemo and Reggie from Maemo Talk to provide you live info, photos, and videos. You’ll be able to comment, ask questions, and vote on polls. The third day’s coverage starts Sunday October 11th at 09:00 CEST. All my photos will be taken and uploaded directly from the Nokia N900!
I’m in Amsterdam at Maemo Summit for the next few days. I am teaming up with Rafe from All About Maemo and Reggie from Maemo Talk to provide you live info, photos, and videos. You’ll be able to comment, ask questions, and vote on polls. The second day’s coverage starts Saturday October 10th at 09:00 CEST.
I’m in Amsterdam at Maemo Summit for the next few days. I am teaming up with Rafe from All About Maemo and Reggie from Maemo Talk to provide you live info, photos, and videos. You’ll be able to comment, ask questions, and vote on polls. The first day’s coverage starts Friday October 9th at 09:00 CEST.
You should see the embedded collaborative live content below.
News of the GSM Palm Pre releasing in October broke out today and I’m wondering if this affects your buying decision for the Nokia N900? The Palm Pre w/ SIM slot will support UMTS/HSDPA Bands 850/1900/2100, meaning European and US 3G on AT&T. No announcements for a Nokia N900 variant supporting AT&T 3G has been made yet.
Photo by offstandard / CC BY-NC 2.0
There’s a catch if you decide to get the Palm Pre over the Nokia N900. According to PreCentral, you might still need to unlock the Pre for use outside O2 or even get a QWERTZ keyboard. Here’s a quick rundown of the specs found on the Pre:
How does this new information affect your buying decision for the Nokia N900?
I asked Chanse Arrington, Product Manager of Multimedia at Nokia North America, to show me the Nokia N900 in about a minute and this is what we came up with. You can see how multitasking is done on this Maemo device. I have to say I’m loving the N900 more each time I see it!
You can also watch this video in larger size on Youtube. For a video walkthrough, you can also watch my longer Nokia N900 hands-on video from Nokia World.
The Nokia N900 appears to be made for multitasking. There’s no physical button on the front of the phone, but the area of the screen you’ll be touching a lot is the upper left corner. You press it once to show all open apps then press again to show the applications grid. Clicking outside the grid takes you back to your panoramic home screen.
Complaint & Suggestion. My complaint about multitasking on the Nokia N900 is that it tries to display the thumbnails of all open apps in one screen. If you have more than 3 apps open, the thumbnail preview of each app becomes very small.
I recommend Nokia to look into how the Palm Pre uses their “card view.” It shows one full thumbnail and two partial thumbnails that are movable like the panoramic home screen. Here’s how it looks.
The Nokia N900 has only been on Amazon for a few days, but that doesn’t stop the online superstore from lowering the price already. It started at $649, dropped to $589, and now for preorder at $583. I can’t find it anywhere else for a lower price.
If you have a prime account, you get free 2-day shipping or $3.99 for overnight.
Want a little reminder of how the Nokia N900 works? Take a look at our hands-on video below.
We found early prototype Nokia N900 sample photos on Flickr before by using the code “007 001.” We don’t need that anymore because the latest firmware now includes the real camera name in the Exif data. All we need to do now is the Flickr search trick to find the latest Nokia N900 sample photos.
Here are some of my current favorite Nokia N900 photos probably taken by Nokia employees. Click to see the enlarged photo on the owners’ flickr pages.
Photo by mdamt. I wonder if the vignette was added using the N900.
Photo by T-P. Nice self-portrait of the N900.
Photo by chanse.arrington. One of my favorite pizza spots in NYC.
Photo by Kaltsi. Great macro shot!
Don’t let me do all the hunting! You can search for more Nokia N900 sample photos by doing this query on Google:
Find anything interesting?
Right after finding out the expected shipping date for US retailers, we later discovered that Amazon added the preorder page for the Nokia N900. The page is so fresh, they didn’t have a product image at the time of publishing this post!
The Nokia N900 is available for preorder for $649 $588 with free 2-day shipping or $4 overnight for those with Prime accounts. Thanks @bdogg64 for the tip!
Mark your calendars for September 27th. Nokia has given one of its major distributors in the United States the estimated date for the Nokia N900. Retailers usually receive their stock a couple of days after distributors ship them over. Let’s hope nothing goes wrong with the shipment and see delays similar to the Nokia N86 NAM’s release.
The suggested retail is $649 USD just as expected. Want to find which retailers will carry the Nokia N900? Try searching google for Nokia’s manufacturer number: 002L929.
Nokia kept its word for the Nokia N97 NAM and 5800 NAM as the devices became available exactly at the given estimated dates. That is not the case with the recent Nokia N86 NAM, which shows no sign on retailers’ shelves yet. Let’s see what happens with the Nokia N900.
The Nokia NY flagship store told their fans on Facebook that a Nokia N900 prototype is now available for everyone to play with. Don’t get too excited as it’s not for sale yet. Why not use it a bit before making a purchase decision? They are taking names and numbers for people who want to be notified when it is officially out.
The flagship store is located at
5 E 57th St
New York, NY 10022-2556
Open Mon-Sat 10am-8pm; Sun 11am-6pm
(212) 758-1980
If you don’t live near New York, I have plenty of Nokia N900 coverage here that will make you feel close to actually playing with the device.
Nokia fans in the NYC vicinity on September 18th should check out the Nokia NY flagship store at 6:30PM. Bring whatever shiny new mobile phone you have been playing with and show it off at the meetup. I was told the Nokia N900 will make an appearance!
Where: Nokia Flagship Store. 57th st and 5th ave. NYC.
When: Friday, Sep 18, 2009. 6:30pm – 8:30pm
RSVP
Thanks to Will from S60 Users, for organizing the meetup!
What exactly happens at these monthly meetups? The flagship store reserves the entire second floor for the group to hang out, talk about phones, and play with the latest devices. Later on, we head out to get some food and drinks. It is recommended to RSVP so the store knows how many people to expect. I’ll be there. Will you join us?
David Rivas, Nokia’s vice president for devices R&D, told Reuters that Nokia plans to skip operator tailoring for Linux Maemo phones like the upcoming Nokia N900. Analysts say Nokia cannot afford to do this and risks refusal of the carriers to offer the device.
“Very clearly Apple, Android … are a whole lot less about providing customization to the operators and a whole lot more about providing a really cool, compelling value proposition to the end-consumer,” David Rivas, Nokia’s vice president for devices R&D, told Reuters.
“We have an opportunity, that we are going to take advantage of, with Maemo platform to play the game a little bit more along those lines than with Symbian lines,” Rivas said.
I don’t think this affects high-end consumers like me especially in the United States. I’ve never bought anything from the carrier because the Nokia phones I wanted weren’t sold by my carrier. I’ve always purchased unlocked phones, either from the the Nokia flagship stores or Amazon. However, I’m not the typical consumer.
AT&T recently sold the Nokia E71x, which was a good sign of things to come, but it had customizations that restricted certain features while also forcing people to pay a higher data plan than unlocked Nokia E71 users. The customizations may be perfectly fine to most new consumers, but certainly not those used to the freedom with unlocked phones.
Update. Official Nokia Conversations site says that this is incorrect and there are many customization points for operators.
This week, there have been a number of speculative stories suggesting that Nokia will not allow for operator customization of Maemo devices. Seems a few people are getting ahead of themselves. As we have said over the past couple of weeks, our plan with Maemo is to focus on the consumer experience – integrating applications and services from Nokia, our broad community of developers and publishers and, of course, from our operator customers. While we have not announced immediate plans to offer an operator variant for the N900, there are many customization points for operators on the N900. It would be absolutely incorrect to assume that we will not offer operators the ability to tailor future Maemo devices to suit their needs.
