The app is called Mobile HotSpot, and its still in it’s stages of infancy and is presently available as a free download in Extras Devel repository. What features does it offer and how does it compare to JoikuSpot? Find out after the break.

Well, Mobile HotSpot is pretty simple to use with a very simple and effective UI. You can set the network name and WEP key to restrict the access to your ad-hoc network (highly advisable). There is a huge Stop button to pull the network off the plug anytime you want. JoikuSpot in comparison has a more streamlined UI with more features like a customizable WLAP IP address among other things, but all those features come at a price of EUR 9 (USD 11.55) for a single license. If that price is too steep for you, Mobile HotSpot offers almost the same features for free. I am sticking with Mobile HotSpot for now and I hope it gets better when it graduates from Extras repository.

Video Review-

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZDQBV-JKC0

Well, thats pretty basic as such, you can check the full review at their website here. Well I do totally agree with their Linux Geek phone part but I beg to differ from their verdict saying that the device is not yet ready for  a casual smartphone user. True, it’s not as optimized as some of the other mobile platforms today but it’s not that complicated to call it unsuitable for a casual user.

Another interesting thing to note from this review, is the absence of mention of anything worthwhile on the browser, which as you know is the killer feature of N900 with no mobile browser coming nearly as close to it when it comes to rendering websites which are not designed for mobile usage. This is another reason why I chose to differ from the verdict of the review. True, N900 is not as market-ready as say the iPhone but we shouldn’t forget that iPhone reached the iconic status only when the second generation version was released and the entire iPhone app boom started sometime after the second generation device was released. What we should learn from this is that we need to give the nascent Maemo 5 platform, a year or two to evolve into a market-friendly platform.

One may argue that Maemo was never targeted at the mass market segment but when a manufacturer like Nokia merges it’s Internet tablet and smartphone segments in one device and calls it it’s flagship unit, it kinda makes sense to make it ready for the everyday smartphone user. Don’t get me wrong, Maemo has some of the coolest features that you can find on a smartphone today but it still needs some optimizations to appeal to the masses, and make no mistake: smartphones are no longer the toys of geeks, just take a look around and I promise you will find atleast 6 or 7 out of every 10 mobile phone users, toying  around with a smartphone. So yeah, I have already hinted at what am driving at, Nokia did get somethings right and some wrong with the N900. Just what are they? Hit on the read button to find out.

The GOOD

Multi-tasking

Though this is not the first Nokia smartphone to bring multi-tasking to the table, it’s definitely the smartphone which can very well take the crown for the best multi-tasking portable device. Not only does it multi-task, it does so in style: inspired by Mac like (exposé) application switching this smartphone makes multi-tasking so easy, that you feel you are using your desktop computer. Quiet rightfully, Nokia calls their flagship device a mobile computer and not a smartphone.

Physical QWERTY Keyboard

Touchscreen is the in-thing, but there is no real substitute for a full QWERTY keyboard on a smartphone. Nokia is a pioneer in the genre of full QWERTY equipped smartphones with its legendary business series E90 communicator setting the trend for feature rich smartphones for business users. While the 3-row keyboard on the N900 may not be as user-friendly as one would expect it to be it’s mere presence is bound to calm many a touchscreen dreading smartphone user (of which I know many).

Browser

The Micro B browser on the N900 is probably the best mobile browser in business today. As found in my earlier comparison with iPhone’s Safari and Android browser (both HTC and Google branded versions), none bring a feature set as diverse as the browser on N900. The full flash (and not mobile flash) means you can experience the web as you would on your desktop/laptop meaning you can now watch live streaming services like Hulu, on the move. As a blogger, N900’s browser is what I always dreamed of with blogging on-the-go being my dream and MicroB let’s me do just that without having to compromise on any of the blogging tools for the browser can render everything that my desktop browser can. The amazing browser can be put to it’s best use via webapps like Hahlo for twitter, Google Docs for Office suite and a host of other web apps, which are mostly free.

Conversation, Contacts and VoIP Integration

This is another killer feature of this wonder device from Nokia: seamless integration of all conversations (IM, SMS) in one single conversation window and the icing should be the out-of-box skype integration within the Maemo 5 OS. Irrespective of whether you are on Wi-Fi or 3G, you can make VoIP calls using skype from the same UI. A lot has been talked about the so called best phone-iPhone’s inability to make VoIP calls over 3G (I am referring to the clean un-jailbroken iPhones here), and the very fact that N900 provides this feature out-of-box and makes it look so damn simple should silence the critics of this flagship device from Nokia.

The BAD

Crampy Keyboard

Didn’t I just mention the presence of QWERTY keyboard in “The GOOD”s of N900? Yeah, I did, but the keyboard design is something I wish the Nokia had given a little more thought to. 3-row QWERTYs are a pain and more so is the N900’s keyboard: the top row is frustratingly close to the screen, making thumb operation of top row keys a painful and annoying experience. The N97 had a better design, with a pop-out keyboard, making more room for comfy typing. If one takes a look at the side view of the N900, it can be seen that close to 40% of the bottom plate forming the keyboard is hidden by the screen. Thats waste of precious real-estate which could have otherwise been used for a proper 5 row QWERTY keyboard on the lines of HTC Touch Pro and Nokia’s very own communicator E90.

Apps and Games

While Nokia has been spot-on with its hardware-specs (for most part of it) for the N900, it is yet to create a sustainable eco-system of apps around the N900. This is something it gotta learn from Apple which set the benchmark with its iTunes App store for the N900 is no doubt capable but there aren’t just many apps that can really stretch the hardware features of the smartphone. The most disappointing of all is the gaming scenario, where there are hardly any 3D games, even when N900 boasts of a 3D graphics accelerator with  Open GL ES 2.0 support! The Ovi store for Maemo is still under works and the Maemo repositories are not as happening as the ovi store for symbian and needless to say not even in the same book as iTunes App store (forget same page!). I just hope developers wake up to the capability of this smartphone and Nokia needs to get its act right atleast for the Ovi store for Maemo, after having received lukewarm response to its ovi store for symbian so far. Being open source and being as close to Linux as possible at this juncture of time does give Maemo 5 an edge when it comes to software tweaks, thanks to the active hacker community but these tweaks are just too complex to implement for an average smartphone user.

And The UGLY

Resistive Screen

Nokia’s infatuation with resitive touchscreens is understandable with the extreme cold weathers in Finland making it next to impossible to use a phone with bare hands (which is a necessity for capacitive screens). However the Finnish giant needs to realise that temperature are far more bearable in most parts of the world, where commoners are bare-handed for most part of their daily life and there is no harm in releasing a capacitive screen model in these parts of the world. True, Nokia did release its first capacitive screen equipped device-X6 worldwide late last year but their flagship still gets the resistive treatment which is just not as responsive as the capacitive screen.

Absence of MMS

As much as I love the conversations and contacts integration with VoIP accounts, I just don’t understand why Nokia chose to leave out MMS from their flagship phone. Most of their smartphones, forget smartphones even their dumbphones (phones with proprietory non customizable OSes) released over the latter half of the last decade have had MMS support out-of-box but no so for their first Maemo 5 device! I hope Nokia fixes this via a firmware update and if they don’t, am sure some enterprising developer will come up with a decent solution bringing MMS to N900s (a couple of them are already in beta testing now).

The Bottomline

Well, as you can see there are lot of +s and -s going for and against the N900 and mostly the positives outweigh the negatives. There are a lot more positives which I haven’t mentioned here like: out-of-box DivX support, customizable homescreens, above par camera performance, and FM and IR transmitters which can be used in n number of ways and so have I overlooked some of the minor nuances like: absence of portrait mode for all apps (which am sure is going to be fixed soon), slow transition between portrait and landscape mode for the phone mode etc. While I have highlighted my top positives and negatives of N900 here, do let me know your side of the story by leaving a comment here.