Lord of the Web

With there now being enough information on the N900, it is time to compare it with the N97, the phone that the N900 will replace as the most high end phone from Nokia. With the announcement of the N97 mini and also the hype surrounding the N900, the N97 is bound to lose its sheen and become more of a failure, despite the great promise that it showed initially.

When it comes to hardware, the N900 beats the N97 easily, and that is no mean feat. The N97 is an example of hardware excellence. The N900 comes with an OMAP (generation 3) 3430 processor running at 600MHz while the N97 has a ARM11 processor running at 434MHz. The N900 also boasts of graphics acceleration, something that the N97 was lacking and something that many criticized Nokia for. Both the phones have 3.5″ screens but at 800×480, the N900 has a much better screen resolution than the 640×360 of the N97. The display of the N97 was stunning and the N900 can only be better.

Memory would be something that many people would be closely monitoring, as mobile applications continue to become as powerful as the Desktop ones. While the N97 had a paltry 128mb of RAM, the N900 comes with 256mb of RAM plus 768mb of virtual memory, giving it a total memory size of 1GB. This is not the same as having a 1GB RAM, but is a whole lot better than having just 256mb.

The software is where the more prominent discussions, on both the phones, will be. The N97 comes with the Symbian Fifth Edition OS. In front of the Android, it seems like a mockery. And this is coming from one who has been in love with Symbian for the last five years. Symbian, a great OS on non touch phones, comes out wanting when it comes to the touch arena. The new OS has touch capability added, but is still works like one that had a non touch interface in mind. It is not intuitive and it is not as capable as the Android ( or the iPhone.) The N97 had the hardware, but couldnt face the giants when it came to the software. And like the iPhone has shown us in the last two years, software is king.

This is where the promise of Maemo comes in. Here is an OS that can atlast match the power and wow factor that has made the Android and the iPhone what they are. And with the exceptional hardware that the N900 boasts, this phone has one great software-hardware combination, something that the N97 promised, but missed.

The analogy of Vista-7 and N97-N900 seems all the more appropriate. The N900 is the phone that the N97 should have been. There was nothing really wrong about the N97, but it was not as great as it was promised and hyped to be and people just started hating it for what it could have and should have been.

Of course, all this is based on what the N900 is on paper. When the device is released, it could be much better or much worse. We have the N97 as an example. So lets keep our fingers crossed and hope Maemo will kick both Android and the iPhone OS.