Nokia N900 Phone: The End of Symbian As We Know It

Symbian Fifth Edition, Nokia's first attempt at a touch-screen platform operating system, never really cut it. While the more budget handsets could get away with a subpar touch user experience, the N97, Nokia's first high-end smartphone to use the new OS, ultimately failed. It wasn't so much that the OS was bad, there were just a lot of far better alternatives out there, like the Palm Pre, a number of HTC touch-screen devices, the Droid, and of course, everyone's favorite iPhone.

It's a good thing, then, that Nokia had an insurance plan - the N900. By throwing in some simple phone capabilities, the next-generation N8xx series because an overnight sensation, mainly due to a powerful Cortex 600 mhz processor, a developer-friendly, open Linux-based operating system (Maemo 5), and a much improved user experience.

There's a lot here. We've got 32 gigabytes of internal storage, 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, a large 3.5" touch display, and 3D graphics acceleration. Unlike previous Nokias, there's oodles upon oodles of memory (256 RAM with 768 MB of virtual memory). The browser is Mozilla-based, and supports full Flash 9.4 along with the standard HTML/XHTML, CSS, and Javascript (+AJAX).

Battery life is quite decent, and lasts about 5 hours on 3G, and 9 hours on GSM.

Connectivity is a little strange, however. For the N900, Nokia opted to use the 1700 mhz band (essentially, T-mobile's 3G band in the USA) instead of going with AT&T's 850/1900 3G combination. This can be seen as a plus, or a minus depending on which network you prefer. The way I see it, however, is that T-mobile users have been left out in the cold for every Nseries and Eseries model ever produced - so it's all fair.

Let's also talk about what the N900 is missing. That list currently includes MMS support and portrait mode, and I can't really seem to find any good reason why the second wasn't implemented.

Sadly, the biggest problem with the N900 right now is simply finding one.

Find the lowest prices on the Nokia N900 phone.