With Nokia jumping into Maemo for their future device offerings, there is certainly a lot at stake in terms of closing the UX gap between their competitors as well as enfranchising developers with an open and performance-able platform they can grow their Ovi store offerings on. And with the Nokia N900, they do not disappoint. The device is a huge leap forward in terms of usability and a pleasant device to use and develop for. Nokia used to throw around the term “mobile computer” when describing offerings like the N95 and the N97. This is the first device where this really seems to hold true. The update and firmware repositories in terms of both available content and frequency of updates has been superb. They are truly nimble in this way for the first time, a trend that must continue as they go forward.
One thing that sticks out is that this particular device still caters to the hacker, or maybe what was the early adpoter smart-phone users of the mid-2000’s. The folks who were okay with hacking, installing, tweaking etc… If they mature this platform with this device and bridge the learnings onto a future (and a little thinner 😉 ) mass-market offering, they have really positioned themselves well in the future. Bravo Nokia, great phone!
RobToole.com 