Nokia's fight-back

It’s been the best of times, it’s been the worst of times. For Nokia, this Dickensian cliché couldn’t ring truer — on the one hand, it stands tall among cellphone manufacturers with the sheer numbers of its installed base and on the other, it is the geriatric member of a smartphone race dominated by young ‘uns like Apple and Google.

Part of the problem lies with Nokia’s insistence in persisting with the not-made-for-touch S60 5th Edition, and the products, the N97 for example, have been half-hearted attempts at smartphone market share.

Could this be the cue for the new Nokia N900, with its refreshed Maemo 5 operating system, to make its entry? More importantly, is Maemo the way forward for Nokia? Let’s find out!

Straight off, the first thing you notice about the N900 is its size. At 110.9mm x 59.8mm x 18mm, the N900 is big and bulky and at 181g it isn’t going to take pride of place in your shirt pocket. It’s really which way you look at it — as a phone, it’s heavy and bulky, but as a dedicated Internet device with phone capabilities, it’s one of the more petite devices around.

Think of it more as a supercharged-internet miniature-PC. If you come to terms with this nuance, the bulk seems practical and the heft inspires confidence. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard is solid and sturdy, and Nokia’s dropped the regular Call/Menu/End buttons to make room for a bigger screen, which might upset some button aficionados. Thankfully, dedicated buttons for the camera, volume, standby/lock still figure, and the keyboard is largely usable except if you have a lot of numbers to type (these are accessed via a special function key).

But since the device is so clearly dominated by the screen, it deserves a closer look. The N900 features a 3.5-in resistive touch screen running at a very usable 800 by 480 pixel resolution, and with the pixel density of 270 pixels per inch, it is almost like the new iPhone’s ‘retina display’.

It’s not the brightest screen, but it does show off the Maemo platform in a good light. But… and it’s a big but — this is a Rs 30,000 device, and really, the resistive display just doesn’t cut it in terms of sensitivity. Nokia’s bundled a stylus along for more precise use, but this is 2010 — a stylus is so… archaic. Does it come in the way of using the device? Most certainly. When the competition has been using the more finger friendly capacitive displays for years now, there’s just no excuse.

Having said that, Maemo 5’s user interface elements are infinitely more finger-friendly than what you get with S60 5th Edition, and the platform is really why this device is so important for Nokia. On the N900, Maemo 5 has one of the most customisable home screens of any mobile device we’ve seen so far, so you can drop widgets (mini apps like weather etc), bookmarks, contacts, applications anywhere you want on the four panels.

Once you get used to the screen, the N900 is a breeze to use, a testament to the lightweight nature of Maemo and the processing power of the N900. Applications zoom and fade as you open, close and minimise them, and the phone is fun to use without the lag one would associate with such beautification.

I loved how the N900/Maemo handled multitasking. Tap the icon on the upper left and you get a miniaturised card view of all your open applications in one place, and each card shows you live views of what’s happening in the app. Pretty neat. Plus the system notifications — new SMS, emails — are very nicely executed. The browser is very capable, and the innovative“swirl to zoom” gesture works really well, almost as good as any other mobile device.

Yet, at the end of the day, Nokia claims that the N900 is for geeks, and is not a smartphone for the mass market. Maemo 5 shows sparks of brilliance, but is a little rough around the edges, so yes, their assessment may be accurate and just plain playing safe, really.

If you’re looking at a pocket internet device — a pocket mein rocket, if you will — that you can play around with and customise to your heart’s content, the N900 may be for you. For regular folks looking for Nokia to deliver the ultimate reply to Apple and Android, this ain’t gonna be the one.

Rating: 7/10

Price: Rs 30,639

URL: http://www.nokia.co.in/find-products/products/nokia-n900

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If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And by Apple’s estimate, the 2009 vintage MacBook Pros really aren’t broke, given that there is next to no design change for their 2010 MacBook Pro line-up. Not a half bad thing, to be honest, given that their aluminium-unibody design is still the benchmark by which laptops are measured. The edges are still too sharp for comfort, and the offering of ports will leave you asking for more, but such is the price one pays for minimalism.

Peep under the hood, for this is where the real upgrades are. Not only to do you get 2010-spec processors — our review unit had the top end 2.66 GHz Core i7 processor — but you also get the latest laptop-grade graphics cards from NVIDIA. Under fairly heavy use, say multiple tabs on our favourite browser along with some mass photo edits, the Core i7 stands up tall to the task, and has grunt to spare.

What’s interesting is Apple’s use of their proprietary automatic graphics switching technology, which looks at whether an application needs to use the dedicated graphics card or whether it can use the onboard graphics to perform the task. Net benefit? The battery lasts longer, lasting almost five hours under heavy processor and graphics use, and almost eight hours under regular light work like text editing/Internet browsing. This despite the more powerful processors and graphics is an acceptable tradeoff in my mind.

A worthy upgrade then? Most of the bump-ups are performance oriented, so if you need the extra power of the latest processors, go for it.

URL: http://www.apple.com/in/macbookpro/

Price: 15.4-in 2.66GHz Core i7/4GB RAM model - Rs 1,29,900 (all inclusive)


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