IPhone Killer? Hell Yeah!. Review on Nokia N900

The iPhone has charm, and it has its allure. And like all Apple products it has its price. What makes people buy a device that is still struggling to introduce the concept of multitasking? I don’t know, must be the looks, has to be the looks(surely the X10 is better looking!). As I ponder and struggle with these myriad of thoughts I am forced to consider my options.

I want a phone that is powerful, flexible, a total geek device and above all good looking. What is that I hear? Best of luck? Thank you, but the task at hand has been achieved already. After months of extensive research, I came across a phone that deserved the title of ‘Geek Mobile’. The N900 is a refreshing addition to Nokia’s now ageing stable of phones.

I could go into a long drawn debate as to which phone is better but. no hang on! Why not? Here is a comprehensive comparison of the iPhone 3GS vs the N900. Hardware(Beware: A little bit of geeky stuff ahead)

Both phones come equipped with a processor running at 600 Mhz and almost the same graphic memory. The iPhone 3GS has a maximum of 32 GB RAM where as the N900 has onboard 32GB ram and an additional slot for a micro SD card of 16 GB, coming in at a whopping 48GB. Much like the iPhone the N900 is very fast and responsive and does most tasks effortlessly.

The N900 also comes equipped with a 5 MP Carl Ziess camera that is far superior to the one on the 3GS. In addition, the N900 can capture video at a much higher resolution than the 3GS although the frame rate is lower. In addition, the camera is also capable of capturing images in widescreen format at a lower resolution of 3.5 MP.

The N900 has the massive benefit of a full qwerty keyboard that makes the simplest things like chatting using Pidgin a joy. The N900 also comes equipped with a handy FM Transmitter for much older car audio systems.

The biggest advantage that the N900 has over the 3GS is that the N900 can play Xvid and Divx movies, a feature that is present in only a handful of phones today. All in all the N900 edges out the iPhone on this one.

Screen

The N900 has a touch screen of much higher resolution than the iPhone(480×320 vs 800×480 of the N900). There is no denying that the 3GS is the king of touch screens with a multi-touch display, but this factor is well negated by the responsive(at times inaccurate) touch screen of the N900. Watching movies on the N900 is far more rewarding that it is on the iPhone.

A tie because of the iPhones multi-touch vs the better resolution of the N900.

Applications:

The 3GS has such a massive fan following when it comes to apps that most people buy the iPhone for this reason alone! The N900 on the other hand has decided to blow the iPhone out of the water on this front, instead of developing a steady stream of applications for the Maemo 5 platform(a linux based platform the N900 runs on), the N900 can install and run a Lite version of a Debian distribution. for people scratching their head right now. this basically means the N900 can quite literally run a computer operating system.

In essence, the N900 can run OpenOffice, Gimp, Audacity and pretty much everything available for Debian Linux. Oh, and did I mention all these applications are FREE, not like the pay for use apps of the iPhone. The N900 is way ahead of any phone on this front, let alone the 3GS.

Dimensions

The N900 is bulkier than the N900 for one simple reason, a built in sliding keyboard. That said, the iPhone is much sleeker and easier to pocket. iPhone wins on this front.

The Operating systems

The iPhone is shipped with the iPhone OS, the(as mentioned earlier) N900 comes with Maemo5. As far as speed of applications is concerned, the N900 can match the iPhone in terms of speed, and is far superior in terms of multitasking. In fact, I have heard of the N900 being able to open nearly 32 applications at the same time!

The N900 also comes equipped with the most powerful browser I have seen on a phone. The browser has full Flash support(read it and weep Apple). In addition, it is capable of rendering pages just like in a normal computer, i.e. there is support for Javascript etc.

By far the N900 has a better, more robust and scalable OS than the iPhone

Price

The N900 is priced at 24000 and offers far more value for more money than the iPhone.

The bad

The N900 does not do video calling over 3G a disappointment that will be fixed in coming versions. There is a third party app for MMS available, but not an integrated one at the moment, something that will be fixed pretty soon I hope, in addition the N900 does everything in landscape mode which is not exactly a bad thing but something that takes away choice from me.