Back in March I was made a Forum Nokia Champion. That’s very cool as it gives me access to some features in preview. A VERY good way to stay in touch with Nokia and see what is coming.
Another very cool benefit that keeps the geek in me happy is that I got to pick a Nokia device and get it for free. I had a few interesting options, but soon my list was restricted to three and each of them had something that attracted me. In alphabetical order:
I liked the N900 because it’s Maemo, I got to play with a late prototype and really liked the interface. At the time the Ovi store for Maemo was not available (yet) so I could not try other apps, but the application switching is very cool and the GPS is excellent (accuracy and most of all speed). As you would expect from a Nokia phone, the camera is really good too (hello Apple??). The main downsides are that the browser is not a webKit, hence slightly different from iPhone, Android and all Nokia’s Symbian phones and it does not have the Nokia WRT (WHY??).
Second option was the N97 mini, proper Symbian device with WRT and webKit browser. I had mixed reports on this, a colleague at dotMobi is very unhappy especially with the synchronisation, a friend recommended it as one of the best Nokia devices.
Third option was the X6, recent device release, differently from the other two is a candybar with all touch screen. This makes it a bit thinner. Like the N97 Mini has the webKit browser and the WRT. Also, being in the X series I expected the media player and camera to be really good. Apparently, though, different browser versions were shipped with different firmware releases (check out the User-Agent strings on DeviceAtlas) and that got me nervous I might get an old release that would not be up to my expectations.
It’s been a very tough decision to make and you know how much I care about a mobile device and its browsing capabilities. I eventually decided to pick the N900 and bet on the Maemo platform and its “hackability”.
All this dissertation to say that this morning a DHL courier knocked at my door to deliver the phone, as soon as the ashcloud has gone. EXCELLENT! Some gadget playing is ahead of me 🙂
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