First came Windows 98 and then the Android and even Mac Os X paid a visit to our N900, but now it’s the turn of none other Ubunto Mobile the popular Linux distribution for mobile devices, to boot on the N900.
First attempted by YouTuber lifenexus, this is one of the most complete attempts at loading a foreign operating system on the N900. It’s fully functional and more importantly there is no lag, even when the OS is booted from the memory card. Now that must have gotten some Linux geeks excited out there, so this one goes for you guys. Catch the demo video after the break.
Demo Video-
Doesn’t that look cool? I just love the LXDE desktop and the fact that there is no lag means you can as well use Ubuntu as the main OS. What a pity, that there isn’t room for phone functions in this OS, which otherwise looks very promising as a mobile OS. So Linux hackers: can any of you get some phone functions on to the Ubuntu Mobile? Not that we are complaining about Maemo 5 but having options is always better and plus it pushes the competition to come up with better solutions.
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 »
While it has been said like umpteen times here and elsewhere N900 is a Linux hacker’s dream phone and adding more weight to this statement is PC Magazine’s (Middle East edition) latest review on N900. The review, though not an exhaustive one goes on to declare the flagship device from N900, an “Ultimate Linux Geek Phone”, mostly for it’s open source infrastructure allowing users to customize the phone from command line (also). Catch the highlights of the video review and my take on it, after the break.
Video Review-
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.
As expected, Nokia launched the Ovi store for N900 today and the store looks promising, though it needs a boost of apps and games from third party developers. The content that I saw today is basically the same, I saw when I sneaked into the ovi store a couple of months ago, the only difference being that the applications can now be directly downloaded from the store without having to punch in a few lines of code in the terminal window. So now we know what the minor firmware update was all about.
Application downloads are handled by application manager to which every N900er is familiar by now. At the moment, the store is pretty light on content and is expected to pick up momentum over the next few weeks. The store as such is a great start for the N900 community and before you head to store.ovi.mobi, take a look at the Mark’s demo tour on Ovi store on N900, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Now that the N900 has been on the hunt for over a couple of months, you would have seen hundreds of unboxing videos doing the rounds on the web. Infact the unboxing videos have become so common that many of us can now tell the contents of the retail unit of N900 even while we are half asleep! That’s exactly the reason I refrained from making an unboxing video of my own, when WOM World guys shipped a trial unit of N900 to me. But, guess what? Nokia like to tease the blogosphere with its gimmicks and I gotta tell you that they have a couple of tricks up their sleeve.
It appears that Nokia has been sending out hackerboxes, housing N900s to bloggers across the web, who apparently had no idea on the contents of the hacker box. Now, only if Nokia had sent me one, would I have been able to give you guys the first hand account of it, but then let’s see what the guys who were lucky enough to be chosen for the hackerbox prank have to say about their hacking experience, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »
If you have been following the web technologies, chances are you would have heard about HTML 5 and WebGL, which are like the next generation technologies on the web and guess what you can get a feel of these, very much on your N900s, thanks to Mozilla’s Firefox Mobile, also known as the Fennec browser which is still in beta for Maemo 5.
So now you have one more reason to turn to Firefox for your browsing needs on the N900. But what exactly do these fancy terms- HTML5, SVG and WebGL mean? Well, if you are not a developer, you probably won’t have to bother about these but as a user, you should know whats happening behind the web-page that you are reading. HTML 5 is the next version of HTML, th core mark-up language of the internet, which aims at getting rid of proprietory plugin based internet applications like Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight, meaning you dont have to bother installing these plugins on your desktops and more encouraging is the impact on mobile browser, a majority of which don’t support Flash as of now. SVG is a family of specifications of XML based files, used for describing 2D vector graphics, yeah I know it sounds all gibberish for most. But before you overlook, take a look at these demo videos from Firefox, after the break though. Read the rest of this entry »
You may be wondering what’s all the big deal about mobile browsers, but let me tell you that the mobile browser is one of the most important part of a smartphone. For one, the very concept of having a smartphone is to be in touch with the world and we need to access the web for that and that comes by via a browser. The hardware limitations imposed by the form factor of a smartphone is another roadblock in accessing web pages on smartphones which now come in screen sizes ranging 3″-4″ . Add 3G and Wi-Fi data reception hiccups to that and you know how many hurdles there are in bringing web browsing to the mobile platforms. But developers worldwide have been working on this for long and I must say they have come a long way for we can now access almost every feature available on a desktop browser on the Maemo browser on N900. But I also wanted to know how it measures up to the competition and hence the test and today I will give my verdict.
We did see some blood on the battle field yesterday and am now pitching them in a YouTube round to find out which browser packs the strongest punch. Which browser would you bet on? Safari? Maemo? Android?. I am afraid you will have to hit on the read button to see if you got it right? Read the rest of this entry »
A lot has been talked about the browser capabilities of the Maemo browser on N900 and that of its closest rival, Safari on the iPhone. Being an iPhone user myself, I gotta say that it accounts for one of the smoothest mobile browsing experiences, but the N900 browser’s capability to render the pages in desktop like resolution takes the competition to the next level, all by itself.
To zero in on a winner, I put them through several tests and threw in HTC Hero, which according to me is the best Android phone in market (as of now) and HTC G1, the legendary Google phone which gave the world the first feel of Android. Eager to know who is the winner? Hit on the read button to find out. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on : 25-11-2009 | By : bltzkri3g | In : Nokia N900 News
If you have been worrying about the battery life of the N900, let me assure you that you are in safe hands when it comes to power management of Maemo 5 and N900. Being powered by the same BL-5J battery that powers some of the most popular Nokia devices like the 5800 XpressMusic, battery life of N900 is something that has always bothered me.
Having played around with 5800 for almost a year now, I know that the battery drains at an alarming rate when one uses 3G and with the features onboard the N900, I just can’t imagine using N900 sans the 3G. I was hoping that Nokia would go for a higher capacity battery for there flagship device the N900 but Nokia’s strategies continue to baffle me! Even their previous flagship device N97 had a bigger 1500 mAh battery (BP-4L). However looks like the folks at Nokia Conversations are aware of these battery woes of N900 and have released this latest N900 Explored video, which you guys can catch after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
If you are a frequent user of the web , I bet you have atleast a couple of podcasts you follow religiously. For me, there are close to a dozen podcasts, without which I start getting withdrawal symptoms!
So obviously I started hunting for a podcast aggregator for my yet to arrive N900 and as always I headed to Maemo Select for my search and look what I found: gPodder. Its a gem of app, which makes following podcasts on your N900 so damn easy that you can install and start using one in less than 3os. Too good to be true? I have got video evidence to prove it. Read the rest of this entry »
First came Windows 98 and then the Android and even Mac Os X paid a visit to our N900, but now it’s the turn of none other Ubunto Mobile the popular Linux distribution for mobile devices, to boot on the N900.
Now that the N900 has been on the hunt for over a couple of months, you would have seen hundreds of unboxing videos doing the rounds on the web. Infact the unboxing videos have become so common that many of us can now tell the contents of the retail unit of N900 even while we are half asleep! That’s exactly the reason I refrained from making an unboxing video of my own, when WOM World guys shipped a trial unit of N900 to me. But, guess what? Nokia like to tease the blogosphere with its gimmicks and I gotta tell you that they have a couple of tricks up their sleeve.
If you have been following the web technologies, chances are you would have heard about HTML 5 and WebGL, which are like the next generation technologies on the web and guess what you can get a feel of these, very much on your N900s, thanks to Mozilla’s Firefox Mobile, also known as the Fennec browser which is still in beta for Maemo 5.
You may be wondering what’s all the big deal about mobile browsers, but let me tell you that the mobile browser is one of the most important part of a smartphone. For one, the very concept of having a smartphone is to be in touch with the world and we need to access the web for that and that comes by via a browser. The hardware limitations imposed by the form factor of a smartphone is another roadblock in accessing web pages on smartphones which now come in screen sizes ranging 3″-4″ . Add 3G and Wi-Fi data reception hiccups to that and you know how many hurdles there are in bringing web browsing to the mobile platforms. But developers worldwide have been working on this for long and I must say they have come a long way for we can now access almost every feature available on a desktop browser on the Maemo browser on N900. But I also wanted to know how it measures up to the competition and hence the test and today I will give my verdict.
A lot has been talked about the browser capabilities of the Maemo browser on N900 and that of its closest rival, Safari on the iPhone. Being an iPhone user myself, I gotta say that it accounts for one of the smoothest mobile browsing experiences, but the N900 browser’s capability to render the pages in desktop like resolution takes the competition to the next level, all by itself.
If you have been worrying about the battery life of the N900, let me assure you that you are in safe hands when it comes to power management of Maemo 5 and N900. Being powered by the same BL-5J battery that powers some of the most popular Nokia devices like the 5800 XpressMusic, battery life of N900 is something that has always bothered me.
If you are a frequent user of the web , I bet you have atleast a couple of podcasts you follow religiously. For me, there are close to a dozen podcasts, without which I start getting withdrawal symptoms!
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