N900 Videos

Jussi Mäkinen is the Marketing Manager for the Maemo Devices division of Nokia. In this TNB video he gives an extensive tour of the device.

Jussi consistently refers to the N900 as a mobile computer rather than a phone, and stresses that it runs the Maemo operating system.

First we see the four home screens from the panoramic desktop, all laden with widgets including several that are scrolling, auto-updating. Clicking on a “contact” widget brings up all of the contact methods for that person (phone, email, skype, IM, twitter…). The dashboard shows all of the open applications: contacts, bookmarks, chat etc.

Next we see the context-sensitive menus, and a demonstration of movie playback. The 5MP camera has a widescreen aspect ratio. We see Jussi taking a photo, which gets automatically geotagged and added to the gallery. From there it can be shared by email, bluetooth, or online services such as Ovi, FaceBook and Flickr.

With heavy usage, Nokia aims for one full day of battery life.

The web browser features kinetic scrolling, double-tap to zoom in/out, or alternatively spinning to zoom. A mouse pointer can be brought up by swiping in from the left. As it is moved across the screen it “hovers”, bringing up the display of tooltips. You can “click the mouse” by using the space bar on the keyboard. An on-screen icon changes the mouse pointer to active, enabling text to be selected.

YouTube videos can be played in context, embedded on the web page, using the Flash 9.4 player. When you go to the task switcher, you can still see the video running in the thumbnail, together with your other multitasked applications.

Jussi said the N900 was coming out in October 2009 for 500 Euros plus tax. As we now know, it didn’t make that date.