Nokia N900 video shows off 3D gaming, YouTube shenanigans, and more
By Donald Melanson 
posted Oct 9th 2009 11:31AM
posted Oct 9th 2009 11:31AM
Not satisfied with a video of the Nokia N900's browser, an in-depth look at its Maemo 5 operation system, or even a glimpse of it playing the odd SNES game? Then fear not, 'cause the device is on the scene at the now-happening Maemo Summit, and it's thankfully been caught on video once again for those not lucky enough to be in attendance. Highlights this time around include a look at the device's 3D gaming capabilities (demoed with a Marble Madness-type game called Bounce Evolution), and a demonstration of the device not only playing YouTube videos in a browser, but within a thumbnail in the Maemo interface -- not exactly the most practical thing in the world, but it sure is impressive on a mobile device. Head on past the break to see the whole thing for yourself.
[Thanks, Welly]
[Thanks, Welly]
STOP TEASING NOKIA RELEASE THIS THING IN AUSTRALIA ALREADY!!
+542643264642464
Is there anything this phone can't do?
Yeah, get released in a timely manner here in the US. Lol.
Fails next to PSP.
@Kurian
Sure, the PSP is renowned for its call making ability.
The article is about 3D gaming. No God of War, Tekken, Motorstorm = No weightage to "3D" gaming ability.
The fact that they even have to call it "3D" shows its bullcrap.
Yes Its lacking 85,000 apps n games, plus can't be docked to my $900 surround sound.
iTunes .plus this $750 phone can't connect to my $1400 pioneer car stereo 7" touchscreen n play any of my 18 2 hour movies thru every screen in my suv. In other words it doesn't transmit iPhone video to car stereo screen n it doesn't allow to be charged via the iPod 30 pin connector., Nice try but still nokia falls short when it comes to sTusfy us 330 million americANs. I'll stop now.
Honestly, check this Truth dudes post, they are hilarious!!! In one of the posts he claims earning $6600 a month, not bad for an illiterate punk. Oh btw he "hates" Apple and iPhone for $49 is the gift from God!
It can't make Apple fanboys shut their dumb faces.
The game looked nice as far as polygon and textures go but its framerate was bad bad bad. Youtube looked choppy, too, and there wasn't even a lot going on except a finger sliding across the screen. I don't want to know how bad something other than a finger slowly moving would perform.
There's no denying how awesome the UI, OS and potential is, but that video was not too hot.
C'mon , your comment was so unfair. You don't even know for sure what was going on on the device. There could be various different possible reasons for the youtube choppiness that are not the device or OS' fault. I've seen other demos of the N900 with youtube running desktop-smooth. Maybe they should have done a scripted demo of the device under optimal conditions to make people like you happy?
@WickedEast: Source please? Do you have an url to a video with silky smooth Youtube on the n900? I've watched most videos about it and I haven't seen any.
lmao how am I low ranked, anyone with eyes sees what I said is true. Delusional.
yea, its not like those other phones that play youtube content directly from the browser while other applications are running in the background. man those phones are sweeet!
So just because something can do it, we shouldn't care how well it's done? That's some crazy hypocritical logic.
This is a dream phone for many here, I get it. But why are we pretending that the video showed no flaws what so ever. It's a video. It's proof. It's not unfair, it's not automatically better than everything else.
Sorry, I forgot to turn off logic when I stepped into the comments. Anything commenters collectively love is perfect despite proof of flaws, no matter what the iPhone does or influences it's complete crap and it's cool to hate Engadget despite continuing to come here everyday.
@jayjay: Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUCc2C4JPJE&feature=player_embedded
It's smooth, once the initial buffering is sufficient and once the dude stops panning around.
But really Nokia should take a page out of Apple's marketing book and stop showing demos under less than optimal conditions. They are foolish for showing pre-release devices doing tones of stuff and pushing it near its limits. And everyone will be happy and excited.
Calm down... we don't know if the 3D driver is legal (if it's closed source, it's illegal in a GPL kernel like Linux)
It's OpenGL ES, yep it's legal... http://www.khronos.org/opengles/
Eh? That's not true at all. You can have closed source applications/drivers on a GPL kernel... Hell, the ATI drivers for Linux are closed source and they're certainly not illegal.
The closed source driver is illegal only if the driver is using coded under GPL.
It is difficult to maintain a closed source driver in a desktop environment because too many version of linux out there (different kernel ..etc)
This won't be a problem for a handheld device.
am not sure what was happening with the YouTube video there, but I have seen it perform better - desktop like performance.
AS far as games go, I am not too concerned about it.... The last game I played was.... Crash Bandicoot on PS1 like ...... 10 years ago lol
You also have to consider the device was running several other processes while playing the game
And that game's graphics look as good as if not better than the Wii. ... just sayin...
Did you see those shadows!
You must consider they are pushing this for multitasking and showing it off to the media and therefore what you see is what you get.
I am really excited for this phone... but what was up with the choppy 3d graphics? The first bounce video blamed the graphics on the recording camera, but I didn't see any of those artifacts here. It was also jumping around enough to make him miss the bridge.
Also, what was up with it not holding a 3g connection? It bounced around 2g, 3g, 2g, nothing... not a good sign.
Yeah, no other phone under any indoor circumstance would ever jump between 2G and 3G.. only this one..
Perhaps you should go back and see how often it did it... with FULL BARS.
Phones nice n all. But will ut be. Major success n revolutionize? That is the real question.
Who in the heck gonna buy this $750!!!???
When Americans can get iphone3 g for $49.
I mean though Americans are broke people with ok jobs will still choose iPhone, right?
Fir example I make $28 hr. I still chose iPhone for $49.
No understand difference contract or retail?
Revolutionize? Bitch please, I just wanna unlocked phone. Do people actually buy phones to say "Hey, my phone is selling more than yours! Ha!". For your information, I'm about 580 on amazon and 649 on their mainpage. The iPhone cost $49 because of a little thing called subsidizing, and the I will be available at a cheaper price at T-Mobile because of aformentioned subsidization, so that argument is a fail.
The iPhone 3GS unlocked is, well...check this out http://www.buy.com/retail/usersearchresults.asp?querytype=home&qu=iPhone+unlocked&qxt=home&display=col.
But the cheapest unlocked iPhones I've seen is the 3G starting at $399. Everyone wants to get the iPhone at a cheap price, but it's about area coverage, my friend, not to mention monthly data plans.
I don't think nobody is waiting big succes from this in America as North America=contract phones. And of course N900 there's no carrier for N900 at least for now in states.
it can still succes worldwide like all other Nokia phones for past 10 years ;) Thought don't think it will be N95 like(that had 800 euros unlocked price in start) with over 17 million sold.
It's still a first try for a Maemo phone and it sure looks promising when you think someday Maemo might get as much attention as Symbian from Nokia. Waiting big things from harmattan/maemo 6 too.
and people thought nokia was dead HA! i have never seen such a in depth feature packed OS say wat you want but this might not be the final build of the phone or OS which could be attributed to choppiness/slow don here and there and this is DEFINITELY REVOLUTIONARY
Well you do get what you pay for..
And I'm just happy they did go through with adding T-mobile US 3G bands.
Most unlocked European phones dont bother adding US 3G. I give this super phone 2 Thumbs Up.
So...give it up already! Release it , release it!
That's what she said.
I'm growing tired of seeing all these videos of the N900 and it not being available for purchase.... this is starting to suck. I'm getting close to withdraw my pre-order. It's not like there is a lack of contenders coming to market (Samsung, HTC, etc...) so why keep my $$ committed to a company that is taking its own sweet time to release to market but yet flud it with teasers... in translation, Nokia is the teaser girl and I'm getting blue balls here... sorry to the ladies for the imagery.
It's not an official Nokia-released teaser, it's some guy playing around with an N900 after the presentations. I suspect it will be out soon following the summit, as the community is using it as an opportunity to hack together the final release versions of software &tc.
@krystoo,
I believe as someone had pointed out in the other online forums that he had pre-ordered and expects to receive N900 on OCt 21 accd to his dealer. ( I don't remember which country he was from).
Stop teasing, and start shipping, pretty please?
Me want.
Just hope there's a 850 or quadriband version of this, since my carrier only operate 3G in that frequency around here...
Here is some band information. Hope it helps:
2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network HSDPA 1700 / 2100 / 900
If you want more info on specifications, you can check it out here: http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n900-2917.php
@N900....I bet you've been having a nerd-gasm waiting for this article
A $750 phone that can't be docked!!!
How sad,,,,nokia just doesn't get it.
It will never figure out how to kill iPhone in America.
$582 on amazon.
You're right, Truth. However since they kill it pretty much everywhere else I don't think they care that much.
Nokia OWNS the mobile market. Why should they care about US and iPhone?
N900 is a computer with a GSM transmitter glued to it. A completely different league.
@ Truth
God, it's like.....well, let me quote someone from a past article:
"markalvarpeck @ Oct 7th 2009 10:25PM
I can't stand ignorant Americans like you... Nokia has 38% global market share, the largest of all manufacturers, read some facts before you make statements like that. Nokia doesn't give a shit about the USA because we have one of the most anti-consumer, anticompetitive mobile industries in the world. The enforced relationship between mobile devices and services that exists in the USA is ILLEGAL in most other first-world countries and prevents Nokia from selling there hardware here directly to consumers in mass the way they do in the rest of the world. Because of this, Nokia doesn't bother bringing new or advanced devices here because Americans are arrogant assholes like you that know nothing about the rest of the world and think that mobiles should be served to them on a silver platter via advertising, branding and subsidization."
When have people EVER bought phones just for docking...seriously?
@N900
I couldn't have said it better myself! Amen!
This phone is great, I love my 5800 in all of it's old school symbian "non user friendly" but super utility goodness, but this... this is the ultimate phone for the Nokia lover (or really anyone into an ultramobile lightweight connected platform). Were finally getting close to being able to converge our media player, cell phone and portable browsing device into one easy to use unit.
This may not be perfect, but just think, this is really a gen 1 product (the past N8xx ect were tablets not phones), look how much the Iphone improved from the original to the 3G. Were also looking at preproduction software ect.. I think it's unfair to judge this device from some unofficial videos. We know what it's specs are, and we know what other phones using that hardware can do. Is there really, honestly any doubt in an intelligent persons mind that this phone can play youtube just fine?
I'm so pumped to think I can leave the laptop in the bag for minor browsing... screen sizes and resolutions are getting really close (especially with zoom technology) to allow you to do some real web browsing and the inclusion of a hardware qwerty (a requirement for any true mobile workhorse imho) just makes this sweeter. I think it's as close as the market has to a mobile computer that people would actually use.... Not some gadget we think we need, but end up never using/leaving on our desk because it isn't practical.
Now, if only they would release it with GSM 3G bands for the only telco with a real nation wide 3G (gsm) network. Tmobile is a decent company, but their 3g coverage is nonexistent in most the country, and I think it would be an atrocity to have this device and not be able to enjoy HSDPA goodness.
Give me this with ATT bands and I will buy this right now... Hell.. it would take no effort to put somemore frequencies on this, please Nokia... please!
Docking?! Is that the new "cool" trend with mobile devices in the US? LOL