Nokia has officially announced the forthcoming launch of the Nokia N900 Internet Tablet after weeks of speculation.
The N900 will be the first device powered by Nokia’s Linux-based Maemo 5 software platform, withh the manufacturer describing the platform’s main puropse to address different markets despite the obvious dangers of marketplace fragmentation and perceived lack of development focus with the recent announcement of its Windows based netbook.
The N900 features quad-band GSM/EDGE, 900/1700/2100MHz UMTS/HSPA support, a 3.5-inch 800×480 pixel widescreen touch display, sliding QWERTY keyboard, 32GB of internal storage expandable to 48GB via microSDHC expansion slot, GPS/A-GPS support via internal transceiver, FM transmitter, TV output, Bluetooth 2.1 with stereo audio support, Wi-Fi radio and 5.0 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual-LED flash.
The device also features the ARM Cortex-A8 embedded systyem on a chip which also powers the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS, 1GB of application memory and OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration. The device will make its official debut at Nokia World next week ahead of its official launch in October, with T-Mobile USA launching its variant later in the fourth quarter according to the most recent information available.
Nokia is making a smart move here. Instead of waiting like Palm until they lose most market share before switching to a new platform, they are doing it while still at the top of their game. I expect this phone to be a worthy competitor to the iPhone, with the added benefit that jailbreaking won’t be necessary to install your choice of apps.
only problem is there wont be much choice of apps yet.. when you do an all at once switch like palm you force the community to the new standard.. maemo probably is better than symbian but a symbian phone would be more enjoyable now
Maemo has quite a library of apps already. In fact, Mozilla chose to port Fennec to Maemo first, even before releasing a Windows Mobile build.
Granted, it’s small in comparison to the App Store, but we’re not in a day one scenario like webOS.
Too bad it’s pairing up with T-Mobile in the US. Another smokin’ device on an inferior network.
There are unsubstantiated rumors from Nokia of a UMTS 850/1900/2100 variant, but no independent confirmation yet.