2009-10-12

The Future

Nokia N900

I've touched it. Nokia N900 is awsome. The shape and size is that of a large phone, like the early Symbian smartphones. But it is very slick and is packed with features. It has a slide-out keyboard, a camera with a sliding cover, a leg to stand on the table, a Micro USB connector for power and data, a hardware key lock, several hardware buttons, etc.

The software side, Maemo 5, is also awesome. Looks very slick, feels responsive and ergonomic. And polished. But it's an open platform, based on Linux, X11, QT, GTK+, D-Bus. It looks like head-on competition to iPhone. Reminds me that companies the size of Nokia have the resources pull off almost anything. But it's really great that Nokia is doing it right -- in a way that is Open Source, community based, and iterative.

3 comments:

Donatas G. said...

Great. But. how about localization in N900? Is the interface available in Lithuanian? Can you change keyboard layout to Lithuanian? How many variants of Lithuanian layout are available, if any?

Albertas Agejevas said...

I'm not sure, I don't have the device.

Donatas G. said...

Oh, but it is open, so it will be modifiable...

my Sony Ericcson K530i is not exactly a smartphone, but has useful features, like browser, email client, possibility to install java programs, etc. But much of it is rendered useless, since it does not provide Lithuanian keyboard and its email client does not understand windows-1257 encoding (displays message „unknown charset“ and no content), so in Lithuania it is not usable...