Smartphone Doubles as a Netbook

"I'm not even sure what a smartphone is," said Samir Agarwal, head of Maemo operations for Nokia, as he introduced the N900 here in Manhattan last Friday night.

Agarwal's point is that the new N900, due in the U.S. later this month, is designed more to be a high-powered netbook that also happens to be a phone, as opposed to a being a cell phone with added computing capabilities. According to Agarwal, the N900 is enough like a full-fledged computer that "you can write right at the point of inspiration."

The device features a 3.5-inch touch-sensitive widescreen display with 800 × 480 pixel resolution, in addition to a full slide-out keyboard. It includes 1G of application memory and 32GB of storage expandable up to 48GB via a microSD card. It also boasts what Agarwal called a "kick-ass" processor — a 650 MHz ARM chip with a 3D accelerator. The Maemo software and the N900 come with a new tag cloud-friendly user interface that works with the 5-megapixel camera.

Agarwal noted that the Maemo browser is based on technology from the open source Mozilla Foundation, and added that it fully supports Flash 9.4 and AJAX, giving users the same cursor-based browsing experience as they get on a laptop or netbook.

The display screen actually includes four panoramic screens, each of which can be customized for different purposes, such as work, gaming or personal e-mail, and can run multiple applications simultaneously.

TheN900 supports Skype and Google Voice as well as the SIP protocol. For data transmission, the device is also EDGE, WCDMA, HSPA and WLAN IEEE 802.11b/g-compliant.

For e-mail, the device supports Mail for Exchange, IMAP, POP3 and SMTP. Mail for Exchange is obviously important for enterprise users, who Agarwal said are one of the target audiences for the device in the U.S.

Agarwal said Nokia already has a carrier for the N900, but won't reveal which one until later in the month.