Nokia Thursday announced that it will start shipping its Linux based Cell phone from October, a move to establish itself in the smartphone market dominated by Palm Pre and iPhone.
“I’m sure this will help us in the market situation with iPhone,” Nokia Executive Vice President of Markets Anssi Vanjoki told Dow Jones Newswires. He also made this clear that the new Nokia N900 phone, wasn’t created to directly challenge the iPhone.
Nokia has dabbled with Linux since 2005 using it in Internet tablets sleek phone like devices used to access the Web that have failed to gain mass market appeal in part due to their lack of a cellular radio.
Nokia N900 is loaded with features like
- Runs on a Maemo Linux-based OS
- Fast 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor (the same chipset the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS utilise)
- A huge WVGA touchscreen
- A 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics
- OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration
- Huge App memory up to 1GB
- 32GB of storage (expandable to 48GB via a microSD card)
- HSPA and WiFi
Despite all this, a few details are still missing at present: size and weight are obviously major considerations and so too is battery life. I’m chasing these up. As for real world availability, the Nokia N900 will launch as soon as October with a sim free price of 500 euros (£440). As yet no telecom partners have been announced or subsidised pricing, but that may change soon.
Nokia N900 will launch as soon as October. Pricing in Europe will be similar to the N97’s on launch at 500 Euros ($712). Nokia’s specs betray plans to bring the N900 to T-Mobile in the US and show 3G support for the American carrier’s 1,700MHz band as well as the needed 850MHz support for GSM and EDGE.
Tags: cell phone, linux based phone, maemo, megapixel, nokia n900, opengl