Your personal take on the N900's look and feel depends almost entirely on how you approach it. As a phone, it can only be described as beastly -- but as a dedicated internet device, it's one of the smaller, sexier, and more practical devices in this tweener category to come to market. Physically, anyone coming from anN810 will immediately notice what Nokia has done here -- they've essentially traded height and width for thickness, probably a fair swap now that the latest model has made the leap from a pure MID to a smartphone with MID tendencies. After all, as a phone, it has to fit in your pocket without much drama, and shaving over 17mm off the width and 12mm off the height certainly helps Nokia meet that goal.
That said, it really can't be overstated: the N900 is thick -- thick enough to put a bulge in even the loosest pocket. Carrying it around reminded us of toting our trusty N95 back in the day, and a quick lookup confirmed that they're nearly the same thickness -- the N95's actually a couple millimeters beefier, believe it or not -- so if you're used to carrying something of that girth, it could actually be a pretty smooth transition. On the other hand, owners of most modern WinMo devices, iPhones, and even Nokia's own 5800 and N97 will have more of an adjustment period.
For better or worse, the N900 carries over some very uniquely Nokia-esque elements, notably the spring-loaded slider for toggling standby mode and the power button mounted dead center along the top edge. They're complemented by a volume rocker, 3.5mm headphone jack (doubling as a TV-out), two-stage camera button, and micro-USB port along the sides. Oh, and of course, there's a stylus tucked in the corner for actuating the resistive display. It's decent -- you won't find any metal bits or mind-blowing design here (HTC typically does a better job with that), but more importantly, it's long and comfortable enough to nearly resemble a standard writing utensil.
You'll notice in the last paragraph that we refer to the right edge of the N900 as the "top" edge. That's because the device is very much landscape-oriented -- a throwback to its Internet Tablet roots and the evolution of Maemo, which predates today's trend toward full-touch handsets that are fully functional and equally usable in any orientation. We'll talk about this a bit more in the software section, but for now, bear in mind that the controls are generally placed in a way that favors landscape use.
Tearing off the back gets at another Nokia quirk -- you really do have to tear it off, like so many Nokias before this. It doesn't slide at all, you just dig your fingernail in there, pull, and hope for the best. That's fine, we suppose -- generally speaking we're uncomfortable about doing anything to our gadgets that involves tearing at a fastened cover, but as long as it's designed to do that and it doesn't break, we're cool. Underneath you've got direct access to the microSD slot, meaning that you can technically access it without pulling the battery. Speaking of the battery, it's a BL-5J, the same 1320mAh unit employed on the 5230, 5800, and X6. Underneath you'll find the SIM tray, and those three nooks and crannies are about the only reasons you've got to be in this area of the device.
Going back to the resistive display: all things considered, it's not bad at all. It's certainly not the brightest we've seen, but we found it bright enough to use in every situation we threw at it. Interestingly, we never really noticed the phone's ambient light sensor working, but maybe that's the best-case scenario for an automatic brightness adjustment mechanism -- you should never have to think about it or let it disrupt you as you use the device, as long as the screen's bright enough to read without getting blown out in dark environments. In our earlier Preview of a pre-production N900, we had issues with sensitivity that we didn't seem to have here -- in all likelihood, we owe that more to the fact that we've simply re-learned how to properly use a resistive display than any material change in the final retail unit's screen. Put simply, you'll be fine here as long as you remember to stick to your fingernail and the stylus; Maemo 5's UI elements are more or less exclusively large enough to be finger-friendly, and we found the experience a good deal more satisfying than what you get with S60 5th Edition. Unless we're using a drawing app, we'd almost always prefer being able to reliably use our fingertip to a fingernail -- capacitive still wins for ease of use -- but Nokia seems to have done the best it could here.
Sliding the N900 open reveals a full QWERTY keyboard comprising three rows of well-domed keys. Unfortunately, we've seen countless better mobile keyboard designs -- we really don't have a good explanation for why Nokia did it this way. The first problem is that the N900 only slides about 40 percent of the way open, a far cry from something like the Touch pro 2 which ends up closer to 75 or 80 percent exposed in the fully locked, tilted position. That explains, in part, why they've only gone with three rows here when four gives you considerably more layout flexibility. The next issue is that the space bar is pushed all the way over to the right side, making the learning curve unnecessarily steep; the N97 and N97 Mini are both configured the same way, so we suppose Espoo has no intention of addressing this in the short term for whatever reason. For most of our time with the phone, we found ourselves typing "M" when we meant to type a space; don't get us wrong, we're certain you can get used to it, but the question is why should you have to? We weren't terribly happy with the slider mechanism itself, either; it felt beefy enough and it'll probably survive through a typical user's abuse, but it didn't have the smooth, gliding, beautifully spring-loaded response -- nor the satisfying "click" -- that you feel on many higher-end portrait QWERTY sliders these days, including Nokia's own N97.
How about battery life? 1320mAh isn't too shabby for a device of the N900's specs, but we came away with mixed results. Moderate data and light voice use while connected to both WiFi and T-Mobile 3G consistently yielded a solid day (as in a full 24 hours) for us in the States, and we were thinking that a heavy user wouldn't have much issue making it through a day -- but a second review unit connected to T-Mobile Netherlands was consistently managing about 13 hours with middling use. Of course, the N900 charges off a standard micro USB port and BL-5Js are relatively easy to find, so you've got options if you need extra juice midway through the day.
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