10 Awesome Features Of Maemo5
Right after the Nokia N900’s announcement, Nokia Conversations posted two videos of the interface on the Nokia N900, with some really cool features that will rock the mobile world. Nokia has a history of not really advertising the best features of its devices, so it’s no surprise that we sort of discovered these nuggets of gold on our own. We’ve embedded both videos at the end of this post, so you can enjoy them, too.
1. Live multitasking -- not only does the 256MB of RAM inside the Nokia N900 make multitasking easy, but it also supports live multitasking. This means if you have a video playing (or a file downloading) in one application, you can switch to the task manager and see everything still running. It’s alot like the new Aero Preview in Windows 7, and we love it.
2. Panorama Homescreen -- Like most other Linux operating systems, Maemo5, on the Nokia N900, allows you to have up to 4 different homescreens, and easily switch between them by swiping your thumb. Other touchscreen systems, such as Android, have a similar feature, and the ability to place widgets and shortcuts anywhere you like on these homescreens is something we’re definitely excited about.
3. Full Mozilla browser -- rather than the Microb browser we’re used to on previous editions of Maemo, Nokia was smart enough to put a Mozilla browser on board, with full Flash support and an interactive mode, where you have a standard mouse pointer, for copy/paste and other normal features. The only thing it’s missing, as far as I can tell, is support for Firefox Add-ons. Now *that* would rock. Update: closer inspection of a Maemo 5 documentation reveals tihs is, unfortunately, still Microb. Boo. (Thanks GeneralAntilles for the correction).
4. Divx/xVid playback -- the Nokia N900 is capable of playing full-size Divx/xVid videos out of the box -- no conversion needed, and no additional applications to purchase. That’s awesome, and something that really makes this device stand out as the ultimate media consumption device.
5. Multiple Calendar Support -- whereas previous versions of Maemo had extremely poor calendar support, Maemo5 includes extensive calendar options, even the ability to manage multiple calendars! You can color-code each one, and even synchronize with an Exchange server, if that’s your thing. No word on Google Calendar, though.
6. Messaging -- messaging is now a much more integrated experience, with SMS and IM combined, so you can more easily keep track of the conversation, rather than the message. You can also view real-time availability of your contacts on Maemo5, which will be awesome. Skype is also integrated, so you can easily make VOIP calls.
7. Killer camera with sharing features -- If you used the camera applications on the N800 or N810, you realize how lame they really were. To be fair, the camera on those devices was designed for video calling, not for taking actual photos. The N900’s 5 megapixel camera has autofocus and a host of sharing options, as well as a processor powerful enough to not crash when you snap a photo.
8. Ovi Maps integration -- earlier versions of Maemo5 had a decent mapping application, but it was entirely disconnected from the rest of the phone. Ovi Maps on Maemo5 also includes weather information, which is pretty cool, and allows you to navigate to a contact, if you have their location.
9. Nokia Messaging with full HTML support -- Nokia Messaging makes it easy to setup access to nearly any web email service on the Internet, as well as many ISP email accounts. Previous versions of Maemo required you to download a new email application, and even then, the experience was rather poor, with cumbersome user interfaces. Nokia Messaging will make this much easier. Update: Again, thanks to GeneralAntilles, it appears as though this is just a Nokia-branded version of Modest email.
10. Built-in accelerometer -- when you rotate the Nokia N900 into portrait mode, the phone application automatically launches, so you have quick access to make your phone calls. This will also rotate the entire user interface, so you could simply close the phone application and then browse your Google Reader in portrait mode, for instance (something I’ll be doing regularly). Update: further clarification from Nokia confirms that this is indeed limited to the phone application, which definitely sucks. Hopefully they’ll fix that before release.
Whew! That’s alot of new stuff -- what other interesting things did you catch in the videos and other information about the Nokia N900?
