When Nokia and Intel announced their strategic partnership to forge their open source platforms: Maemo and Moblin into MeeGo, during the Mobile World Congress that concluded last month, I was excited and disappointed at the same time. Excited as it meant the availability of a wider range of applications but disappointed as I was afraid N900 would be left out of the domain of MeeGo devices.

Nokia PR didn’t help much over the next fortnight, refusing to divulge any details on the possibility of N900 getting MeeGo and I was losing hope over seeing some Moblin apps on N900 but then, the official MeeGo blog was put-up and Valtteri Halla of Nokia, made it clear that the MeeGo repository is infact headed to N900 and that too as soon as towards the end of this month! What does it mean to your N900s? Find out after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Missing that Rubic Cube of your childhood or whatever age you were in when you toyed with it? Now, thanks to Offscreen Technologies, one of the best known names in games and applications for the Symbian platform and now in the Maemo platform, for this amazing adaptation of the popular puzzle into the touch platform.

Rubic Cube as you may know is a 3D mechanical puzzle and is so popular that there are world championships held every year and world rankings are maintained by World Cube Association. There are all sorts of variations of Rubic cube with people playing blindfolded, feet etc and the cubes come in different grid sizes as well ranging from 2×2 to 7×7. Enough of introduction now, let’s now dive into Cube Touch on N900:

Screenshots-

Offscreen Technologies are sticking with the most popular 3×3 grid size for this version of Cube Touch and frankly speaking this is best suited for the screen size of n900. Since our N900 is no cube or not even square, anything more than 3×3 will be a difficult implementation. Not surprisingly, Offscreen have restricted this version at 3×3 and they have done a great job indeed. Sliding across the faces is intuitive and easy and so is sliding individual plates. The bottom line is this one addicting game and you are gonna spend hours on this one.

The world record for 3×3 Rubic cube is around 7 s. How close can you get to it? Better, if anyone can beat it!

Our friends at Nokia have been keeping up with the good work as evident from the third firmware update for our dear N900s. The fact that the third update comes just a month after the second update goes on to show the commitment from our friends in Espoo in improving the already impressive feature set of the device.

While the official changelog is not out yet, it is highly recommended that you update the firmware as firmware updates generally contain bug fixes and optimizations necessary for functioning of device software. Find out how to update, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are one of those N900ers who are praying day in and day out for portrait mode on your N900, I have some good news for you. Contrary to earlier attempts, you don’t need a bug to enable the portrait mode on your N900, but just a soft touch of a short-cut key(s) to enable portrait mode on your N900 browser. Yeah you read it right, it’s built-in and just wasn’t known to the N900 community as such. Thanks to MaemoCommunity for digging this out of nowhere, but seriously Nokia: Why did you leave such an important function out of the official changelog of PR 1.1? Yeah, the new firmware unlocked this feature on the N900 browser.

Needless to say, the advantages of portrait mode for one-handed operation are innumerable. Now only if all the applications were to function in portrait mode, would the N900 community breathe a sigh of relief but having got the best feature of N900 working in the portrait mode is a big consolation for ardent N900 fans. So guys before I spill the beans on short-cut key(s) that enable portrait mode on microB on N900, take a look at this demo video below, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »

2010 is here and as expected there are new entries in the smartphone bandwagon but surprisingly this one is from none other than Google! Alright, we knew it was coming, when the first rumour on the Google branded phone appeared on Twitter in the week preceding Christmas but with Google now going official on its foray into mobile retailing, it makes sense to pit the so called Google’s Superphone to our very own gladiator aka Nokia N900!

For a head-on comparison, check this link which should give you a component wise comparison between the two devices. Ofcourse I know, that wouldn’t whet your apetite and thats why I pulled this hands-on shot from the web, showing the mighty 2 devices next to each other. More on that, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Need an extra wireless controller for your PS3? Instead of shelling out 50 bucks on a dual shock PS3 controller, you can as well use your N900 as a PS3 controller, harnessing the bluetooth connectivity of PS3 and N900. Sounds to good to be true, right? Just don’t take my words on it for you can check for yourself in the appended video, after the break.

Well, I have been maintaining that a true linux platform like the maemo is every hacker’s dream and with Nokia being spot-on with their choice of hardware for its N900 (except may be for its resistive screen), hackers and developers are unleashing the hidden power of N900. I can go on and on,  glorifying the Maemo 5 platform and the N900, but lets check the PS3 controller capabilities of our N900 first. Read the rest of this entry »

Its Christmas time and if you happen to be looking for some Christmas goodies for your N900, let me tell you that you have landed at the right place. I have been looking for some christmas themed apps/wallpapers etc for my N900 but till now the search was rather futile with not much quality content to be found on the web. But guess what? What’s the Maemo community for? I found this amazing collection of Christmas themed wallpapers from a website which has been designed and hosted just to compile high quality N900 wallpapers.

All set in native 800×480 px resolution, the wallpapers have been designed just for N900 and is by all standards the best collection of N900 wallpers I have seen so far on the web. The wallpaper on the left is just an indication of what the website has in store for you and before you head straight to check that amazing compilation, let me run you through a few of my personal favorites from the collection, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were to ask me what’s one thing I miss badly on the N900, I would have no second thoughts in that, it would definitely be lack of Last.fm app. Well, looks like I am not the only one complaining about it for Vagalume have now launched v0.8 their app , which is now compatible on N900.

For a N810 user, Vagalume would probably need no introduction but unlike most of the other last.fm apps on the N810, Vagalume has extended its support to Maemo 5 and hence N900. Further with Libre.fm support, you can now stream other Last.fm compatible server streams.

Now let me throw some light on the new features of Vagalume:

• Implemented the Last.fm Web Services API v2.0
• Support for Libre.fm and other Last.fm-compatible services
• Support for Maemo 5 (Nokia N900)
• New logo and other UI changes
• Sleep timer (i.e. stop playback after X minutes)
• New configuration setting to download free tracks automatically

And yeah, I almost forgot to mention about the new icon designed by Otto Krüja. At first glance, I thought it was the new logo for Pixelpipe but later I realised it was the new icon for Vagalume. It blends in well with other icons in the N900 menu and I am now waiting for the next update of Vagalume, which should fix the UI which is presently not optimized for Maemo 5/N900.

[via Alberto Gracia's Blog]

After pitching- in Hahlo and Mauku in a twitter showdown, we did see Hahlo beat Mauku hands down in all of the three rounds but yet with the white screen of death still plaguing the Mini B browser, tweeting from N900 continues to be not as smooth an experience as on my iPhone. Just when I was thinking of just using the twitter  site for all my tweeting from N900, I landed on this latest twitter app-Witter.

Witter is still in its stages of infancy with its developer, Daniel having just released the beta v0.1.1-2 and is available in the extras-devel of the Maemo repository. The latest version of Witter brings threads, auto-refresh of feeds, support for multiple search terms separated by commas etc. Are the new features worth the shift from Hahlo? Let’s find out, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are in the UK and stil haven’t got your hands on a N900 and are probably heartbroken, that the Nokia store on Regant street in London is about to pull its shutters, I have some good news for you. Ofcourse I didn’t convince Nokia to keep theirs doors open on the Regent street but yeah I did stumble upon something that would put a smile on Vodafone users in the UK.

Vodafone UK has now officially announced that it will be indeed getting the device starting next year and interested users can register for updates at the official Vodafone UK N900 web page.

While there has been no official word on pricing and subscription rates on any N900 specific plans from Vodafone UK yet, please do refer to my earlier post , covering the subscription charges as well as the handset price for N900 on O2 and Orange in the UK. This should give you a comparative idea , before you jump on and sign a contract with Vodafone UK.

You can find the official release from Vodafone UK on the N900 here.