Nokia
N900

The N900 built on Nokia’s Internet Tablet range of devices which it had been experimenting with since May 2005, when it launched the Nokia 770 at the LinuxWorld summit. The N900, which cost €599, had a 3.5 resistive touchscreen and a slide-out three-row backlit qwerty keyboard. It used version 5 of the Linux-based Maemo operating system (based on Debian) and it incorporated cellular connectivity and computer-like capabilities into a small device. Defining what kind of device the N900 was proved difficult at the time. Its design heritage lay in Nokia's experimental Internet Tablet devices (770, N800 and N810) and it fell into a category somewhere between high-tier phones and low-end PCs. When the N900 was unveiled, there was widespread attention and interest in both the software platform and device. Views on maemo.nokia.com exceeded 12 million in just a few days and the N900 was among the top trending topics on Twitter at the time. For several years Nokia had attempted to address this market with high-end Nseries devices like the N95 and N97, which used the Symbian operating system. Unfortunately Symbian's ageing architecture, combined with the shortcomings of the S60 user interface had left users frustrated. These frustrations were underlined by the introduction of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android operating system which were in a different league to Symbian / S60. The N900 has an extensive set of features and adhered largely to well-established open Web principles (such as OpenGL and WebKit). It seemed that Nokia's primary goal was to get developers to use the N900 as a test bed to establish what was possible on a computer-like mobile device. Ultimately N900 was a niche product that was primarily be purchased by early adopters. Its uninspiring design reflected its experimental nature and this underlined the fact that the device was more software platform than the hardware.