With the announcement of the Nokia Booklet 3G fresh in our memories a few days ago, today Nokia announced their new Linux-based smartphone; The Nokia N900. The Nokia N900 will be the first Nokia phone featuring the Meamo OS and when we’re looking at the specifications of this device we may conclude that these look very promising.

With a 600MHz ARM Cortex Processor, 1GB of Application Memory and 3D graphics accelerator with OpenGL ES 2.0 support the device has at lease nice hardware specs. The internal storage of 32GB should be enough to store enough music and movies. This storage can be expanded by an Micro-SD card.

Some other interesting specifications:

• 5-megapixel digital camera
• Carl Zeiss optical lens
• Touch-sensitive screen
• 3.5” WVGA display ; 800 × 480 resolution
• Assisted-GPS receiver
• 3.5G and WLAN connectivity
• Flash 9.4 support
• Full-screen browsing
• Slide-out Hardware-keyboard

A shot introduction to the Nokia N900 and Maemo

About Maemo

On the Nokia Maemo site, Nokia describes Maemo as:

“An advanced Linux-based operating system designed to run on high-end Nokia mobile computers. As this is an open-source platform, it enables the Maemo community to freely modify and continually develop software as part of a shared goal: to bring added value to all Maemo users.”

The N900 will have some maemo applications pre-installed like Maemo Browser (powerer by Mozilla technology) and Maemo Media Player. Very good to know is that the Maemo OS supports the Mail for Exchange software when you’re connecting your device to an exchange server.

Other applications for Maemo will be provided through the Nokia Ovi-Store. Mweather, Skype and Mauku (a microblogging application) will be some of the applications available soon for the Maemo platform.

Thoughts and Wrap-up

As of price and availability Nokia mentions that the N900 wil hit the markets from October 2009, and it is -at the moment- unknown which markets will be the first to have the N900

The Nokia N900 will be available in select markets from October 2009 with an estimated retail price of EUR 500 excluding sales taxes and subsidies. The Nokia N900 will be displayed at Nokia World, Stuttgart, on September 2. More information on Maemo is available at http://maemo.nokia.com.

I think the N900 could become a very popular device. The Maemo-platform directly competes against Google’s Android platform, since both are open-source. But not only the Google platform is a competitor. The 32GB internal storage (wich can be expanded with an MicroSD-Card) and the 3,5″ touch-screen will for sure be competing against Apple’s 32GB iPhone 3GS as well, Although the N900 will be significantly cheaper than the iPhone 3GS.