MUKOYAR

Having released a series of solid, but unexciting handsets in the last couple of years and seen the HTC Hero, Pre and (particularly) the Apple iPhone 3GS, grab market share and the tech lovers’ imagination, Nokia needs a big handset success and fast. The N900 eschews Symbian for the open-source Maemo 5 OS and despite a few gripes; it’s the best handset Nokia has produced in a long time. At 18mm deep, the N900 is chunkier than you’d expect, but feels solid and well built. There are no buttons on top, the 3.5-inch screen slides back to reveal an excellent full QWERTY keyboard. One thing you’ll notice straight away is that with the exception of making calls, it only works in landscape mode, making it near impossible to operate one-handed, potentially putting some people off. Marvellous Maemo Maemo 5 is based around open source Linux technology, which means developers are free to create apps for it. Intuitive and flexible, it makes Symbian look antiquated. Swipe through four home screens, ...