N900 Videos

Matthew Miller presents a walkthrough of the phone functionality of the N900, which is the first Nokia Maemo device to have an integrated cellphone (although Maemo supported Skype calls on all previous Nokia Internet Tablets—the 770, N800 and N810).

The walkthrough starts with waking up the phone by pressing the power button and moving an on-screen slider.

The phone application defaults to portrait mode. You can switch between a dialling pad and your contacts list. Cellular phone calls, Skype calls, and Google Talk are closely integrated. For each contact you can store phone numbers, Skype numbers, Google Talk, IM etc.

When you initiate a call you see a speaker button, a dialpad button, a mute button and of course an “End” button. The proximity sensor will turn off the display if you hold the phone up to your ear, the same as with an iPhone. Opening the keyboard switches the phone application to landscape mode, where the same options are available.

When you add a contact you get a wide choice of fields: the usual cell/landline/work/home combinations, plus email, Google Talk, Jabber, Ovi, SIP, Skype etc. You can also add non-communication information such as address, birthday, web page, gender, nickname, company and job title, and a general-purpose note.

Matthew ends on a positive note: “The more I use it, the more I actually enjoy using it as a phone. The phone call quality is typical Nokia, very high.”

Matthew Miller of NokiaExperts.com takes us on a tour of the settings available on the N900, which includes Themes, Date/time, Display, Text input, Profiles, Language/region, Notifications, Transfer/sync, Mail for Exchange, Bluetooth, Location, Account sharing, VoIP/IM accounts, Internet connections, Phone, FM transmitter, Security certificates, Microfeed publishers, PC connectivity, Device lock, TV out, Available memory, Product details, and (being a resistive screen) Screen calibration. Whew!

Two themes are included: Digital Nature and Nokia. The date and time has an automatic update option. Various settings are available for screen locking and backlight timeout, and you can activate vibration feedback whenever the screen is touched.

Text input options allow you to enable or disable the on-screen keyboard, and to toggle several convenience features: word completion, auto-capitalization and automatic space at the end of a word. Matthew’s device has two keyboard layouts active: English and Dutch.

There are two phone profiles available: Silent and General. This would be enough for me, but some people would prefer to have been offered more (such as “Outdoors”, with a very loud ring).

You can set the notification light to shine for any of: Device On, Missed Call, Text, Email or Instant Message.

Transfer/sync connects to your PC via Nokia’s PC Suite. You can turn on the FM transmitter and set its frequency. You can turn on the internal GPS, or pair an external Bluetooth GPS, and can also toggle the use of the mobile network for assisted GPS.

Phone settings include caller-ID, answer timeout, call waiting, call forwarding, network selection and roaming. Data roaming can be toggled, and there’s a data counter to show data traffic.

TV Out provides a PAL/NTSC selection, and the product details show the software version, WiFi MAC address, Bluetooth address and IMEI number. There’s also an acknowledgement and license details for the open source software contained in the device.