How does the iPhone compare to sibling site NokiaExperts.com’s two platforms, trusty Symbian S60 OS as seen in the N97 mini and the next generation Maemo OS of the N900? That’s the question I’m looking to answer in TiPb’s first week of the 3rd annual Smartphone Round Robin
I’ll confess from the start that I wasn’t terribly familiar with Nokia’s platforms coming into this review. They dominate the rest of the world, of course, but for a variety of reasons they haven’t made much of a dent here in North America yet. Lucky for me, the SPE network has reached across the pond to Seattle (hey, there must be ponds between Montreal and Seattle!) to bring Matthew Miller to the table this year. His tremendous knowledge and enthusiasm — along with the incredible help I received from the NokiaExperts community — are the only reason this review was able to happen. So to him and to them; thanks.
(Speaking of the NokiaExperts community, remember you can still jump on that thread and each day you reply, you’re entered to win your choice of Nokia smartphones, including the two reviewed below!)
Now let’s get it on… after the break!
Hardware Design
Nokia is often — and rightly — praised for their hardware. Heck, any company that can make stainless steel smartphones and still get great radio reception knows the
And that’s one of the first thing to note about this year’s Round Robin and our platform-centric, rather than device-centric mandate. Decidedly unlike the iPhone, Nokia (and every other entrant) fields multiple models and form factors every year. In Nokia’s case specifically, maybe too many (though they’ll reportedly be cutting back in 2010). Luckily for me, both the N97 mini and N900 (can I call it maxi?) are horizontal sliders.
Last year I had some misgivings about the sliders as they generally felt “squeaky” and unmistakably two parts even when closed together into one. Nokia’s felt solid (so solid Matt had to help me open them up the first time). If physical keyboards are a must for you, and you love the landscape, this by itself gives both one huge advantage. (Big fat camera lens with blinding LED flashes gives both another.)
Where the Nokia devices differ is that the N97 mini is a slender candybar when its keyboard is stowed. Nokia really trimmed off the sides when they slapped on the mini, and while the d-pad was lost, the arrow keys and right-aligned space bar made the smallish physical keyboard perfectly fine to type on.
The N900, by comparison is a beast. It’s exactly Nokia’s internet tablets past with a phone thrown in just for the fun (and future) of it. It wasn’t the biggest slab in this year’s slobber-knocker (we’ll get to the HD2 in coming weeks) but that’s not for lack of trying. If the BlackBerry Bold 9000 remains the Cadillac of smartphones (and keyboards) this thing is the F150 truck — pure power. If a netbook is still too big for you, here’s an alternative. Seriously.
Neither, however, have the iconic singularity of feel or sheer solidity of the iPhone (not that any slider could). The N900 especially keeps design out of the way, but where the iPhone is the pure sex of glass and chrome and plastic so tough it really, truly, does not blend, Nokia’s devices manage to be equally black and shiny, though undoubtedly less iconic. Also, having no slider makes the iPhone much slimmer and more pocketable than either Nokia device.
