Nokia N900 - Looks friggin sweet

The iPhone is a little over two years old now, and has had several upgrades in that time. The iPhone however has been announced for almost three years, and a rumour for longer than that. How is it, that it has taken Nokia all this time to finally come out with something resembling a competitor, in the form of the N900. The N900 looks like it finally has something that can compare to the iPhone, and in many ways surpass it. First off, look at it:

Nokia N900

The N900 even has a full QWERTY keyboard:

Nokia N900 - QWERTY

For me, that's a killer feature. I own an iPod Touch, I've used it to type e-mails, search the web, I do not like the touch screen keyboard. The lack of any tactile response bothers me. I know these are promotional shots, but the phone really looks fantastic:

Nokia N900 - Headphones

The resolution on the screen is significantly up on the iPhone, giving 2.5 times the screen real estate to deal with (from a pixel perspective). I'm a fan of high resolution, and already on record with the low resolution on Apple laptop screens bothering me.

The N900 also has a built in FM transmitter, which is great for me, since I don't want to splash out on a new radio just to hook up my iPod, or in this case N900!

I would dearly love to try out an N900 for a few weeks, really get a feel for it. The list of pros for this phone are high; it takes what works in the iPhone, and adds the a keyboard, higher screen res, plus some misc other stuff. But, you also lose iTunes sync (and filling that 32GB of storage by hand would never happen, Nokia better have a simple media sync, preferable one that uses the iTunes library file to get it's information). I would lose out on all the Apps I currently use and love on my Touch. That is a big issue, the App store has huge traction right now, despite the *many* and varied flaws it has. Nokia has the Ovi Store, of which I know very little. Based on my quick play with it (and with none of the apps, seeing as I don't have a Nokia), there are a few interesting looking apps, but it doesn't have the momentum and indie developer boost that Apple has. It's hard to say how these apps will work on the N900, at the moment only two apps are listed as compatible (the phone isn't released yet, so not really a fair criticism).

I really want to like the N900. Apple needs a competitor that can genuinely be compared favourably with the iPhone. It will not be an "iPhone killer", most likely there never will be, the iPhone will fade as other phones come along, the same as 99.99% of products, but it might stop this blogger from going the Apple route; and returning to Nokia.

Photos from: http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n900-pictures-2917.php