The Nokia N900 is the next evolution of the company's Internet Tablet line. It's remarkably smaller and adds phone capabilities, a 3D graphics accelerator, and uses Linux-based Maemo software. You can preorder it online now for $649.
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Design
The N900 measures 4.37 inches long by 2.35 inches tall by 0.77 inch thick and weighs 6.38 ounces. It has a similar design and shape to Nokia's other N series smartphones, but the N900 definitely amazes with its ultrasharp, 3.5-inch WVGA (800x480) resistive touch screen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
You can customize four home screens with various apps and widgets, which you can then rotate through by swiping your finger left to right. If it's too much, you can also choose to hide one, two, or three of the home screen panels.
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Plugged in
The N900 is equipped with a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. It also supports stereo Bluetooth and comes with a built-in music player that supports MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, and M4A files.
We got a quick demo of the media player, and the user interface is much better than Nokia's previous iterations. Using the touch screen, you can advance and rewind tracks by using finger gestures and album art.
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Camera and video
On back, you'll find the N900's 5-megapixel camera. It has a CMOS sensor, Carl Zeiss optics, and autofocus. It can also record WVGA 16:9 video in higher-than-DVD resolution.
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Browser
The N900's Maemo browser is based on Mozilla technology and is one of the most powerful mobile browsers we've seen. It supports Adobe Flash Player 9.4 and AJAX. While it lacks multitouch capabilities, you can navigate sites, in a couple of ways. You can use a variety of finger gestures, such as a circular motion to zoom in and zoom out of pages, or bring up an onscreen cursor.
The N900 offers support for T-Mobile's 3G bands and also has integrated Wi-Fi. Here is a view of visual bookmarks on a home screen panel.
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Multitasking
Similar to the Palm Pre, the N900 allows you to easily switch between tasks and have applications running in the background. This screen shows all current apps in use and tapping on one will bring it to the front.
