So here we are, the fun part begins. I was trying to make this review a bit similar to the E72’s but it seems I’ll need much more than that to rate the almighty N900. For that, I’ll divide my review into as many parts as required in order to highlight the major characteristics of Maemo 5 running on the N900.
Getting to know the N900:
In case you live under a rock, the N900 DOES NOT run on Symbian. It runs Nokia’s own Linux-based OS – Maemo 5 – which is an open source operating system allowing developers to create a plethora of apps for the platform. Before switching to the UI part, I’d like to mention that the N900 is powered by a single CPU (ARM Cortex-A8) with a clock rate of 600MHz (one of the most powerful chips used on current mobile phones) and a Graphics Processor (PowerVR SGX with OpenGL ES 2.0 support), 256MB of SDRAM coupled with 768MB of NAND memory (think of it as virtual memory) for a total of 1GB of RAM for running/inactive applications and live multitasking on the DASHBOARD (covered later). Some of the remaining goodies are 32GB of inbuilt memory for storage, an additional microSD slot for an extra 16GB card (if you’re that sick), a 3D accelerometer, TV-Out functionality (through the 3.5mm A/V jack using the supplied cable) and A-GPS.
Now that you’ve feasted on the above specs, let us move on to the more fun part, the User Interface.
It’s nothing close to Symbian. If you’re coming from an S60 3rd edition or even an S60 5th edition device, you’re going to be amazed. It will probably take you around 2 hours to get the hand out of the UI and truly know how to interact with it, but once you do the results are great. I will try to guide you through the menus and submenus to see what the interface looks like. The homescreen will have an entire post dedicated for it.
The Menu:
On the homescreen on the top left side, you have a small rectangular frame that houses 6 squares (3 squares over 2 rows). That’s the menu virtual button and your multitasking key. Here’s the main issue, it’s not a “hard” key. I would have loved to have a dedicated menu key like on Symbian devices to make things a bit easier and luckily I have found an app called “camkeyd” which does just that using the camera button when the lens cover is closed. Nevertheless, I still haven’t used it because I’m going the “legit” way!
So… tap on this onscreen menu button and you’re inside the main menu: it’s a grid of 5x3 icons which consist of the most used apps such as calendar, contacts, web, media player, maps, settings, etc.
This is the crappy part about the current FW and the N900 in general; you cannot re-order or organize those icons. No folder creation, no moving icons into submenus, nothing. You’re stuck with those 15 apps on the first screen the last of which is the “More…” icon that takes you to anything you install after booting the device for the first time, besides the pre-installed apps which are already there. That not being such a big deal, I think we can all live with it. I hope future FW updates would fix this.
In order to go back to a previous menu, all you need to do is touch an empty space (any space above or next to the icons) on the screen this’ll take you one step backwards. Doing so on the main menu takes you back to the homescreen. There’s no double-tapping, no triple clicking, no secret combination or poking the screen, everything runs smoothly as long as you’re hitting the right spots. There is, however, an additional “press and hold” action which acts like a “right click” if you will. This generally works on items inside the file manager or on music and pictures, to bring up a list of things you can do to interact with your selection i.e. delete, rename, details, etc. It all depends on the item you are working with so if it’s a folder you can copy it or see its details, but if it’s a certain MP3 file you can move it, or delete it, etc. More on this when we cover the File Manager.
When you’re inside an application, the menu button which used to be 6 small squares divided on two rows turns into two rectangular frames (or tabs) over each other symbolizing the multitasking process. Tap on that and you bring up the dashboard, explained in the paragraph below.
The “live” Dashboard:
Nokia says you are “multitasking on a live Dashboard” when using an N900. Well, here-below is the dashboard, and as you can see I have plenty of apps running in the background with the ability to choose which one I need to bring to the foreground (or call it my working space) or which ones I need to close.
RAM usage varies between 114MB (44%) and 161MB (62%) but actually it is very hard for you to run out of memory because the percentage I am showing you here is only that of the SDRAM. The virtual memory (768MB) should come to the rescue should you need it. I’ve managed to run 20+ apps all at the same time without breaking the 180MB barrier. Of course, doing so does not keep the system running as smoothly as when it’s only running 4 apps, but I’d like to see my N97 pulling that off!
Once on the dashboard, you can directly close an application by touching the small X on the top of the apps’ window, or by tapping it to bring it to the foreground then closing it normally with the X button as well. Whenever you need to go back to the menu, it’s a 2-step process because you’ll need to press the menu button twice:
1. Once to go to the dashboard,
2. And once to bring up the menu
Here I am inside the calendar. I press the menu button to go to the dashboard, then the same button again to go to the menu. Had I pressed anywhere around the frame of the calendar app, I would have gone straight out to the homescreen.
An alternative to go back homescreen would be to press and hold the menu button; this also takes you back to the homescreen but now shows the menu button in its multitasking “state”. Check the picture below.
A single tap on the title of each app (i.e. calendar here) brings down a menu with all the options that are available. This works almost everywhere.
System notifications (like device charging status, delivery reports, and any other thing you’ve been used to seeing as a message at the bottom of your Symbian device) are now shown as a band on top of the screen; it shows up with a certain message then disappears with cool transition effect, accompanied by a sound if those are enabled in your profile. Other notifications will be covered within their apps.
The On/Off button (or power button, if you will)
This button doesn’t just act like the usual power button in Nokia phones. Yes, it does allow you to switch profiles (by the way, there are only 2 profiles available: General and Silent which I shall cover later as well), and yes it does allow you to lock the screen or secure the device, or put the phone to offline mode, but the cool thing is you can click it twice (as in a “double-click) to lock the phone – a cool and fast way to do it.
You can alternatively lock/unlock the phone using the dedicated lock button on the right side of the device.
While inside any application, pressing the power button adds another functionality to the drop down menu; you can "force quit" the app by pressing "End current task" which takes you right back to the homescreen if it's a single app you're working with, or back to the dashboard if you are multitasking with several.
A general conclusion about the UI and how the device behaves:
In general, the N900 behaves much faster than my N97s (both classic and mini). Navigating menus is easy; not having to tap more than once is a treat. All the above is just a small glance at what you’re missing if you still don’t have the N900. Believe me, there are some really special things buried (not so deep) within the menus that you’re definitely going to like.
Stay tuned for more posts as I still have to cover the major apps, the camera, multimedia, browsing, and navigation. Requests are always open, you know that. Feel free to @ me on Twitter where I’m often active.
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