Nokia N900 now giving Germany and Italy a way to pre-order

Now that Nokia's Maemo-powered N900 is looking mighty nice and official, the company's Germany and Italian arms have no problem going ahead and taking your hard-earned Euros in exchange for a pre-order. Both sites are actually listing it for €599 (US $860), or €99 more than what we heard yesterday. A pretty huge discrepancy, to be sure, but it's not unlike Nokia to have a flagship phone fluctuate in price. That October release date is a ways off, but if you're absolutely convinced this must be in your pocket by Halloween, you know where to go.

[Via Slashgear]

Read - Nokia Germany
Read - Nokia Italy

[Locuus Posted Aug 28th 2009 6:37PM]

Here is side-to-side comparison with the iPhone 3GS for the interested. Helps to get an idea.I found this on some website somewhere:

(Don't hate if it is not super lined-up.)

Phone N900 iPhone 3GS
OS GNU/Linux ? iPhone OS
root yes > no
Height 110.9 mm > 115.5 mm
Width 59.8 mm > 62.1 mm
Depth 19.55 mm < 12.3 mm
Weight 181 g < 135 g
CPU OMAP 3430 == OMAP 3430
CPU Speed 600 MHz == 600 MHz
RAM 256 MB == 256 MB
Storage 32 GB >= 16/32 GB
Expansion microSD > no
Battery 1320 mAh > 1219 mAh
Full Keyboard yes > no
Multi Touch no < yes
Display 88.9 mm == 88.9 mm
Resolution 800×480 > 480×320
3D OpenGL ES 2.0 == OpenGL ES 2.0
TV Out yes == yes
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g == 802.11b/g
GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 Mhz == 850/900/1800/1900 Mhz
UMTS/WCDMA/HSPA 900/1700/2100 MHz ? 850/1900/2100 MHz
Bluetooth 2.1 == 2.1
A-GPS yes == yes
Accelerometer yes == yes
Compass no < yes
Camera 5 MP > 3 MP
Flash yes > no
Video 25 fps/WVGA ? 30 fps/VGA
FM Transmitter yes > no
Color Black < Black/White

For values where smaller is better, the inequality signs are inverted.

[Locuus Posted Aug 28th 2009 6:40PM]

Ah here is the side, i got the info from - well aligned there.
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/9eyag/nokia_n900_vs_iphone_3gs_specs_side_by_side/

[Average White Boy Posted Aug 29th 2009 1:02AM]

The Nokia N900 has far better hardware than the iPhone 3GS. Anyone tech-head in their right mind can see that. The tech-geeks will jizz in their pants just touching it. But the sad fact is non-tech people won't give a damn and wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. They don't care if it can multi-task fifty apps at once time. It's not going to sell in quantity and that's all there is to it. Nokia is shooting their wads with high-tech hardware and they're just wasting their time. If Nokia can sell 500,000 of these things in a year, they'd better consider themselves lucky. Nokia is having such a hard enough time moving the N97, it's pathetic.

It isn't about hardware. The only things that matter are ease of use, cachet, customer service and 70,000 apps and Nokia doesn't have any of those.

If I'm called a damn fool that doesn't know shit, so be it. You'll see how many of those beautiful bricks Nokia sells in six months. I personally think the N900 is a really well-designed mobile device, but nice specs doesn't translate to sales.

[papari Posted Aug 29th 2009 5:04AM]

@Appleluvva,

"The only things that matter are ease of use, cachet, customer service and 70,000 apps and Nokia doesn't have any of those."

You are ignorant to claim they don't have any of those. With Maemo 5 they have even more.

It is Linux, so basically what you have is a desktop OS, with all the desktop apps. It's up to Nokia how much of those they want to turn into Ovi specific apps. The bottom line is, the amount of apps is just a useless number. It tells more about the users, and how the company tries to market the device, than about the platform itself.

What Nokia has here is a killer mobile interface on top of a killer desktop operating system. Compared to the iPhone OS, Maemo 5 (Linux) is from a different solar system. This is Nokia taking one step ahead of Apple in the touchscreen phones. It was only a matter of time anyway.

It doesn't really matter whether or not the N900 sells millions or not. This is just the beginning. Next year Nokia will roll out a whole armada of Maemo 5 devices. Nokia isn't planning to take on Apple with just one device, they can provide their customers with multiple different offerings.

It's more about whether or not Apple can keep up with the pace Nokia will move on from here. Many have tried and many have failed. Nokia's chain of logistics is unbeatable. They can move millions of devices a day. Nokia sells more than 12 mobile devices every second, they operate in more than 160 countries.

Btw, if you look at the worldwide user base Nokia is a much bigger service provider than Apple, and is already making a significant transition from luxury/entertainment services to more valuable areas, for example mobile financing.

[smover Posted Aug 29th 2009 5:41AM]

your wrong about your specs : the n900 have 1GB or RAM ! Not 256 ^^
No compass ? Are you sure ?

[MarkAnderson Posted Aug 29th 2009 7:06AM]

@Appleluva

You're wrong because Nokia's smartphones outsell the iPhone in every market outside the US. That's just the way it it.

Will this sell more individually? I don't know - Europeans tend to prefer smaller handsets rather than big PDA devices which is why the Nokia 5800 outsells the iPhone 3GS. This will appeal to some, not others.

As for 70K apps - no-one really cares. There are about twenty apps that are worth bothering about and they're pretty much platform independent. The rest is fluff or games and there's only so much you can do without a physical controller there.

[Locuus Posted Aug 29th 2009 11:26AM]

@smover:

The phone doesn't have 1GB of RAM - it has 1GB of application memory, which is:

Up to 1 GB of application memory (256 MB RAM, 768 MB virtual memory)

http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/

[aashish bhagya Posted Aug 28th 2009 6:57PM]

Does iPhone have 768mb of virtual memory??...I thank it will make a lot of difference in the end.And multi tasking is the big draw here my friend.How did u miss that:)?

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 28th 2009 8:47PM]

Cheers for the comparison link.

Does anyone know whether the A-GPS can function as a standalone GPS too (without a connection to a carrier)?

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 28th 2009 9:57PM]

"Does anyone know whether the A-GPS can function as a standalone GPS too (without a connection to a carrier)?"

I'm not sure about that device, but generally yes. However, my N95 takes more than 5min to get the location without connection. With connection it's usually 30sec.

The carrier connection is just needed to download the satellite orbital data and almanac which is about 5kB.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 28th 2009 10:00PM]

A-GPS needs to connect to a server on the internet - so you have to be online in someway

If you don't go online you are dependant on the usual satellite lock using GPS

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 29th 2009 5:13AM]

resistive might be more accurate but i hate using it...I got rid of the N97 and i just sent back my Touch Pro 2. The Iphone spoiled me and now the Mytouch, though too small has my heart.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 30th 2009 11:11AM]

just letting the author know that the price is actually correct: 500 euro pre-tax and subsidies is actually in line with an in-store price of 599 euro as VAT in Europe fluctuates around 20%.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 31st 2009 9:57PM]

So uh, how do you guys feel about a Mameo 5 update for the N97?


i think it would be epk win....

[JipHop Posted Sep 1st 2009 9:22AM]

List of full specifications is online at the Nokia site
http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n900/specifications