Nokia N900 confirmed: Maemo on show

By Rich Trenholm on 27 August 2009, 2:50pm

The Nokia N900 surfaced in a leaked photo bonanza last week, but it's now been confirmed, giving us our first official looksee at the Linux-based Maemo interface.

The phone packs a large 89mm (3.5-inch), 16:9 touchscreen with 800x480-pixel resolution. Maemo allows you to create multiple desktops, each with application shortcuts and widgets. A dashboard lets you see all your open apps at once, and all your incoming notifications. Text messages are shown in IM-style conversations, and up to ten email accounts can be supported. Each contact displays their availability and status updates, so you can choose the best way to contact them.

Nokia has confirmed the N900's 32GB of storage, expandable to 48GB via microSD card, and the 5-megapixel camera with dual flash. The N900 camera software features an intriguing-sounding tag-cloud user interface, and in-camera editing. A-GPS allows for geotagging of images.

Under the bonnet is an ARM Cortex-A8 processor running at 600MHz and 256MB RAM. Multiple apps can be run simultaneously, unlike the iPhone, which won't let applications run in the background.

The N900 connects to the Internet via HSDPA and Wi-Fi. The onboard Web browser is powered by Mozilla, the good folk behind Firefox. The touchscreen allows for double-tap zooming and copy and paste. You can take the weight off and watch some online video with full Adobe Flash support, plus it'll record video in WVGA resolution and MPEG-4 format, complete with stereo sound.

The N900 will make its official debut at Nokia World next week, alongside the Nokia Booklet 3G.