Is your N900 battery running out of juice faster than you can get back home after work? Blame it on the power hungry apps constantly pulling feeds from the web via 3G or Wi-Fi, depending on whatever is within your vicinity. But these are the very feeds that differentiate our N900s from iPhones and the like, for not many smartphones boast of  a widgetized customized homescreen.

Is there a way to have the best of both the worlds? Fortunately for N900ers, there is: its called AutoDisconnect, which is still in its early stages of development but looks impressive nevertheless. How effective is it? Let’s find out after the break.

Screenshots-

The first screenshot shows the settings screen of the app and as you can see, you can monitor either or both of  Wi-Fi and 3G/GPRS data connections. Further, you can play around with Interval and Max Idle Traffic to your liking to suit your needs. Coming to how effective it is, calvin_42 of maemo talk tested battery performance using battery-eye, a battery status monitoring app and found that the battery lasted 5 times longer with AutoDisconnect enabled. Now if that doesn’t push you to download the app, I don’t know what will.

AutoDisconnect is available for download in Extras-Devel repository.

Have you been smitten by the Live Wallpaper of the Nexus One from Google? If you are and are looking forward to seeing something similar on your N900, I have some good news for you. Vasvlad from maemo community has developed a live wallpaper app for the N900, which is still in beta stage at his moment. Though the app is not as interactive as the one on Google Nexus One, the app does a smooth transition of wallpapers in the background giving you the feel of having a time-series wallpaper on your N900. If this is something you fancy, hit the jump button for a demo video and download link!

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Unless you have been living under a rock for the last month or so you would have probably heard of the latest toy from Apple, yeah I am talking about the iPad. While there are a hundred things that iPad lacks when compared to our N900, what’s important is that it boasts of a better eco-system and big wigs like Google have launched a customized version of their popular email service just for this tablet. How does that matter to us N900ers? Well, for starters the iPad version is more optimized for large touchscreen devices and two we can fool the gmail servers to render the iPad version of GMail to our N900s. Do I have your attention now? Am sure you are now reading between the lines and let me tell you how to get this hack working, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, if you have been yearning for some chrome action on your N900, you don’t have to wait for long for our friends at MeegoPortal have found a way to get this awesome browser onboard our N900, without having to wait for the Google guys to release the Maemo version of their popular browser. Whether Google will ever release an official version of the Chrome browser for Maemo is not known yet but then our linux gurus have already found their way around the system. Hit the jump button for more screenshot and a brief tutorial on installing Chrome on N900.

Screenshots-

Now that should disperse any second thoughts you had about the flash experience on Chrome. I will not waste any more words and blurp out the instructions for the installation:

1. Download libxss-1.1.3.deb and chromium-5.0.369.2.deb from  this site ( and thank Jace Kowski for all the good work!)
2. Make sure you have root access and launch Terminal
3. Type the following commands:

cd “wherever you downloaded the packages into”

dpkg -i libxss-1.1.3.deb

dpkg -i chromium-5.0.369.2.deb

That’s it.. You are now ready to browse the web the Chrome way from your N900!

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It may be a while before Google releases their chrome OS to public and it eventually landing on N900 but till then enjoy the chrome browser on your N900!

Have you ever thought about connecting your desktop keyboard and mice to your N900? Perhaps you thought you would need a pricier bluetooth versions of these accessories to connect them to your N900. You cannot be more wrong. No, there ain’t a Wi-Fi version of these peripherals yet but you don’t really need to wait that long. May be now you are thinking am talking about some wired accessory that allows you to connect your existing peripherals to the N900. Am sorry you are wrong again, for it’s now possible to connect the very keyboard and mice you are using to browse this page (if not on N900) to control your N900 wirelessly. Surprised! I was too when I first stumbled upon this tiny little app, which goes by a tinier name “x2x” by . Catch the demo video and more details after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Now we all know that our powerhouse N900 is locked at 600 MHz and make no mistake that was at the very top of the mobile processors when it was released last year. But then the Snapdragon came up and now with the iPads shipping with Apple’s homegrown A4 processors, both clocked at 1 GHz have been making us N900ers look like the smartphoners of the yesteryears. But what good are our hackers for? Here comes smoothie1000 who has managed to overclock N900 to 1Ghz! Yeah no kidding, but then it’s not advisable to overclock your N900 at these levels as the in-house cooling system cannot handle the heat! Now this one is for our friends in the temperate and polar regions but we tropics can take solace in this demo video below.

Demo video-

Now, thats some serious overcloking. If you are willing to dive-in, this Maemotalk discussion should walk you through the process.

[Via]

Ending the mystery for good, MeeGo has now finally landed on our trusty N900s after all. It’s just a co-incidence that it’s the Fool’s day for we ain’t kidding about MeeGo on N900 whatsoever. As promised by Valtteri Halla of Nokia in his March 3rd post, MeeGo has been delivered right on the March end deadline, and is available for free download at the MeeGo portal.

So, now that MeeGo is released, should an average end user like you and me head to the Meego webpage to get the OS? I would advise against it, unless you are a hardcore Linux geek/developer who adores to code in the terminal window, for thats all the present version of MeeGo on N900 is sporting. There goes your hopes for some fancy UI and apps that you have been lusting about for a while now, but hey the folks Nokia never promised that and they did deliver on what they promised. What exactly does the present version of  MeeGo on N900 do? Let’s find out after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, the last couple of days have been attracting a lot of attention from speculators for our dear N900 is all set for another firmware upgrade. Yeah, PR 1.2 is going t o be out soon and though it’s not out yet, screenshots and even the complete changelog have been spotted on the effervescent blogosphere.

While the screenshots and changelog bring a lot of welcome changes: like the all new soft keyboard and customizable menu window, the chances of dual-booting option in view of the MeeGo release due soon is given a miss. There goes early hopes of MeeGo for N900ers, for there are many a changes that are headed the N900 way soon. Eager to know what we are talking about? Catch the story of the break.

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Well, one of the geekiest contests on a smartphone platform to be hosted by a smartphone manufacturer itself has just concluded in the ongoing CTIA Wireless Convention in Las Vegas. Ofcourse, we are talking about Nokia’s PUSH N900 MOD in the USA contest, the one and only of its kind where Nokia themselves threw the door open to hackers to come up with innovative hacks for their flagship device-N900. Hear that Apple? Dare to do something like that with your iPhone? May be Apple can start with first opening up their iPhone with Adobe first, to finally let iPhoners get the feel of Flash on their iPhone.

While the iPhoners can sulk, we N900ers can rejoice: thanks to the open source infrastructure of Maemo and Nokia’s efforts in attracting the hacker community to N900. Coming back to PUSH N900, you would know by now that Niko, the twitter controlled N900 robot, which was earlier covered was in the leading run but “Bike Dashboard”, which pretty much lives up to its name, took the top spot, followed by Niko and “Pit Crew”, bringing slot car racing to the realm of N900s. Catch out more details of the contest, after the break.

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Yeah, you read it right! You can actually control this geeky little robot which is powered by our very own N900, just by tweeting the control commands to @N900Niko. How cool is that?

Wondering the rationale behind the whole twitter controlled N900 robot project? I gotta confess I was more than intrigued when I first stumbled upon it,  but when I checked the project details, I wasn’t really surprised for I always knew our N900 was capable of some really cool stuff. I still haven’t spilled the beans yet but do you remember that PushN900 contest that Nokia US was hosting, calling for the top hacks for its first Maemo 5 device? This is one of the qualifying hacks and is in the run for the top spot. Catch more details of this project, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »