Nokia N900: Hands-on photos with Nokia's first Maemo phone

After taking it for a test drive with Firefox Mobile, a pre-release version of the Nokia N900 has landed at Crave Towers. It's within a cat's whiskers of the final phone we'll see in shops, barring a possible firmware tweak or two.

The N900 doesn't skimp on specs, starting with the ARM Cortex A8 processor and working up to the 89mm (3.5-inch) screen. There's 32GB of memory built in, and you can add up to 16GB more with a microSD card, for epic storage options.

It's the first phone to run Maemo, an operating system based on Linux, and it's a cut above the touchscreen version of the Symbian operating system that we've seen on Nokia's other smart phones, because it was designed for touchscreens rather than being rehashed from traditional keypad-based phones.

The N900's keyboard slides out subtly, without the jaunty angle we saw on the Nokia N97. Instead, the three-row Qwerty keyboard just sneaks out from below the screen. The keys are larger than those on the N97, but they're packed together, with no space between them. They also have more travel, so they're more clicky when you're typing. The space bar is shunted to the right, so right-handed people may have more luck than lefties with this phone.

Click 'Continue' for a barrage of our first impressions of the N900's keyboard and screen, as well as its box-fresh Maemo operating system.

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• Nokia,
• Nokia N900,
• touchscreen,
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• test drive