Soon it may start raining Windows applications on the N900! Yeah, the dearth of good apps/games on the platform has convinced a certain Damion Yates to get the Wine running on his N900. Windows applications and Wine! What’s the connection? Well, for the uninitiated, Wine is a program which brings Windows libraries to Linux and is widely a part of many a Linux distros doing the rounds on the desktop platform. Coming the mobile platform, where our Maemo and N900 stretch their wings, unfortunately Wine is not compatible wit ARM processors, which is at the core of our N900 hardware. Thanks to Damion though, who figured out a way around this limitation by using QEMU emulator. The project is still in its stages of infacy and the full tutorial is not out yet. Till then, lust on this video showing Notepad running on Wine, via a stastically compiled ARM QEMU binary, which you can catch 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.
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.
Now that there are a few hundreds of apps/games for our N900, managing them kinda gets into our nerves at times. Well there are 4 home-screens to keep the frequently used apps handy but at times we just run out of space on our homescreen or may be we just need a faster way to access our favorite or rather most commonly used apps. This is where our handy little app-Quick Launch pitches in, by bringing easy access to as many as 5 apps from the quick launch menu. Find out more about this little app, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
There have been a lot of rants and raves about the navigation experience on N900 via the default Ovi Maps for the Maemo platform. One constant nagging issue has been the absence of offline maps, a feature which has been the USP of Ovi maps on symbian platform, so much as to push it to the top spot in the favoured navigation device in Europe.
However, the very feature which catapulted Ovi Maps to the top position has been missing from the maemo version of the application on N900. But all that is history, as Nokia have now updated the Ovi Maps loader with support for Maemo version of Ovi Maps, meaning you can now download and save maps on your N900 and be able to use the app in absence of data connection. Catch more details on this after the break Read the rest of this entry »
The N900 Hackathon continues! After Android and Windows 98, it’s now the Mac OS X 10.3 aka Panther, which has made an appearance on N900. Thanks to Finnish hacker Toni Nikkanen, who takes the distinction of successfully porting OS X on to a mobile device.
While there are plenty of Mac fans out there who would just love to have this OS on their mobile phones, the present port is of little to no practical use for an average user. But, that’s not gonna stop enterprising geeks from trying this hack, now does it? Before, you take the dive into the hack, do take a look at the demo video. Read the rest of this entry »
Are you wondering where is all that battery juice of your N900 disappearing? If you have to plugin your N900 after like every 6-7 hours, then let me tell you that you are bitten by one of the software bugs either of one of those applications you recently downloaded or those in Maemo 5 itself!
A number of users have been complaining about less than average battery performance on their N900 and was wondering what was all the hype about, when I was able to get about average battery performance from my trial unit of N900 from WOM World. So I headed straight to the abode of Maemo 5: Maemo.org and the N900 forum there infact had all the answers to my queries.
Before I dwell into the battery tweaks of N900, let me add a few spoilers here so that you can skip the read, if you have already made these tweaks on your N900. Tweaks related to Wi-Fi settings and disabling some of the data intensive widgets on the homescreen. If you haven’t, then hit on the read button to know more about these tweaks. Read the rest of this entry »
If you have been using the Ovi maps or any of the GPS based applications on the N900, you would have realised by now that it takes frustratingly long time to get a GPS lock. Is it the fault of the GPS radio onboard the N900? That’s what I first thought but then the Maemo community suggested this little setting tweak, which unleashed the true GPS capabilities of N900.
Do you have to code or type a few gibberish commands in the terminal? Obviously not, unless you prefer doing so! It’s a simple setting where-in you need to change the location server from the default of supl.nokia.com to supl.google.com. And where exactly do we do the change? Find out, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
If you have been trying to access that Ovi store from your N900, you know thats it’t not live yet. But guess what, folks at talk.maemo have found their way around it and caught Nokia offguard who it is now known were testing the store among their inner circles.
Even you want some hands-on feel of the Ovi store? Head to store.ovi.mobi from your N900 browser and you can very much see for yourself, what am about to show you guys here. As long as you don’t try to download anything, the ovi store experience will be no different from that on any symbian phone. Here comes the tricky thing, download option is not yet available off the store, but there is a way around it, which though not advisable for Linux newbies, the junkies will adore. Find your way here, while I give you a screen-shot tour as I walk through the ovi store on N900. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the most important things you expect your smartphone to be capable of doing is to function as an efficient email client for you. While BlackBerry’s Push E-mail is the market leader in providing email-on-the-go services, competing smartphones are not lagging far behind with their email clients either. The only faux being the absence of a true push email services from any of the competitors. While Nokia does have its Nokia Messaging service, its not as widely available as the BlackBerry’s.
Coming to N900, I was delighted to see how easy it was to configure an email account on Maemo 5’s default email client. Very much like the email setup on iPhone, you don’t have to bother about SMTP/POP server names if you are syncing one of the popular email services like that of Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Ovi mail etc. Infact its so simple, I wish my outlook functioned in a similar fashion. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the screenshots that I took as I configured the ovi mail account, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »
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