Maemo 5 operating system is new to to wide range users, all users that have chance to use or using N900 are positively surprised about his simplicity. N900 is the best smartphone that Nokia has produced till date. Here is comparison details between Nokia N900 and his hardest rival Apple iPhone 3GS. In many things iPhone 3GS advantages compae to some rivals like memory, speed, web browsing are not real advantages when comparing to Nokia N900.
| Nokia N900 | iPhone 3GS | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Amazon |
Amazon | |
| SIZE | |||
| Height | 4.37 inches (110.9 mm) | 4.5 inches (115.5 mm) | |
| Width | 2.35 inches (58.8 mm) | 2.4 inches (62.1 mm) | |
| Depth | 0.77 inche (19.55 mm) | 0.48 inch (12.3 mm) | |
| Weight | 6.38 ounces (181 grams) | 4.8 ounces (135 grams) | |
| HARDWARE FEATURES | |||
| Color | black | black and white | |
| CPU Speed | 600 Mhz | 600 Mhz | |
| RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB | |
| Storage | 32 GB | 16 or 32 GB | |
| Storage Expansion | microSD slot (up to 16GB) | no | |
| Maximum Storage | Internal 32GB + Expansion 16gGB = 48GB | 32GB | |
| Computer Connector | Micro-USB | proprietary connector | |
| Removable Battery | yes | no | |
| Display Size | 3.5″ (88.9 mm) | 3.5″ (88.9 mm) | |
| Display resolution | 800 by 480 pixels | 480 by 320 pixels | |
| Accelerometer | yes | yes | |
| Camera | 5 MP – Carl Zeiss optic, autofocus, Dual Led Flash and video light. | 3,2 MP – autofocus, touch focus | |
| Front-Facing Webcam | yes (VGA) | no | |
| Ambient light sensor | yes | yes | |
| Kick-stand | yes | no | |
| SOFTWARE FEATURES | |||
| Operating System | Maemo 5 Linux based OS - open source! | iPhone OS (Mac-OS) - closed Source with open source components. | |
| Root Access | yes | no | |
| Flash Support | yes | no | |
| Browser | Mozilla based. Supports: WAP 2.0, xHTML, HTML and RSS feeds protocols (Thanks to the Flash Player 9.4 on it). | WebKit based Supports: HTML protocol | |
| Video | 25 fps/WVGA (848 x 480) | 30 fps/VGA (640×480) video geo-tagging | |
| 3D Graphics | OpenGL ES 2.0 | OpenGL ES 2.0 | |
| Skype | Integrated | “There’s an app for that” | |
| SIP | Integrated | “There’s an app for that” | |
| Widgets | yes | no | |
| INPUT METHODS | |||
| Physical Keyboard | yes | no | |
| On-Screen Keyboard | yes | yes | |
| Stylus Input | yes | no | |
| Multi Touch | no | yes | |
| CONNECTIVITY | |||
| Wi-Fi | 802.11b/g | 802.11b/g | |
| GSM/EDGE | 850/900/1800/1900 Mhz | 850/900/1800/1900 Mhz | |
| 3G | 900/1700/2100 MHz | 850/1900/2100 MHz | |
| Bluetooth | 2.1 | 2.1 | |
| MULTIMEDIA | |||
| Speakers | 2 (Stereo speakers) | 1 | |
| Music playback | MP3, WMA, AAC, M4A, WAV | AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV | |
| Video playback | H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 | H.264, MPEG-4 | |
| Ring tones | WAV, MP3, AAC, eAAC, WMA | purchase through iTunes | |
| TV Out | yes | yes | |
| FM Transmitter | yes | no | |
| FM Tuner | yes | no | |
| NAVIGATION | |||
| A-GPS | yes | yes | |
| Compass | no | yes | |
| Maps | Ovi Maps | Google Maps and others | |
DISPLAY
iPhone 3GS has TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors multi-touch display. Nokia N900 has high-resolution TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M-color WVGA screen virtually unmatched by other smartphones. What technology of touchscreens are better – capacitive and resistive, you can see here. Here with these models booth technologies are working great. Booth models have accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and proximity sensor for auto turn-off, iPhone goes little more further because of multi-touch input method and scratch-resistant surface. N900 lcd is 800 × 480 pixel resolution @ 225 ppi, because of that you can view web pages or other things just like on your desktop without much zooming and panning. iPhone has only 480 x 20 pixel resolution at 163 ppi.
DIMENSIONS / DESIGN
Dimensions and weight you can see and compare in table. iPhone is lighter, when you visually comparing N900 looks bigger because of depth. When describing N900 there is great built quality and full black design. iPhone has different unique design and because of that visual component draw lot of users.
iPhone 3GS vs Nokia N900 size comparison
MEMORY
iPhone 3GS has two models with 32GB and 16GB capacity of internal memory. No card slot. N900 has up to 1GB of application memory (256 MB RAM, 768 MB virtual memory) Vs 256 mb only on iPhone 3GS. Nokia N900 has an internal memory of 32GB and is expandable with a 16GB micro SD card to make it a total of 48GB. The iPhone has enough memory to store all your favourite music and videos but N900 even exceeds that limit with its whopping total of 48GB. At the market, N900 vith its memory capaciti is on the very top.
CAMERA
N900 has 5 MPcamera (2576×1936 pixels), Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, geo-tagging, video light, dual led helps to capture good clarity photos even in low light conditions. iPhone has 3.15 MP camera (2048×1536 pixels), autofocus, geo-tagging, when capturing you can use touch focus. When comparing photos taken with N900 have better quality. N900 – video recording at up to WVGA (848 × 480) up to 25fps pixels, iPhone – VGA(640×480) up to 30 fps. Sumarum: The n900 records at a higher resolution although the fps is lower.
SOFTWARE / APP
The Nokia N900 is currently the best smartphone that Nokia has ever produced (smartphone + internet table + phone functions= mobile computer). N900 leading brand new segment of “mobile computers” and its OS Maemo, Nokia’s smartphone future seems a lot brighter than it is with Symbian OS. No comparison is complete without a mention of Apple’s App Store. iPhone is the easiest platform to develop application for. This is why there are thousands of developers developing millions of applications for the iPhone. The N900 comes with preloaded Ovi store to easily pick up any apps. You can also pick up any programmes from wherever you like online unlike iPhone which lets you choose applications only from Apple’s own application Store. And what I do know is that the Maemo community is very active. Though the Apple is not open like Nokia but still the amount of applications that are available for iPhone makes it a winner in this category. Aplications for N900 you can find there.
MULTIMEDIA
On 3GS there is no flash. It has build-in multimedia player and supports: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps,
Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, mp4, and .mov file formats. There is no doubt that iPhone is wonderful music mobile phone. But take look under the surface of N900. The Nokia is capable of playing DVD-resolution videos. (wow!) But video files have to be properly sized and compressed to take advantage of the device’s screen and decoding capabilities. Video playback formats: .mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, and H.263. Video streaming formats: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, Divx, WMV, H.263 in .avi, .mp4, .wmv, .asf and .3gp containers. Now we see that N900 in these segment have advantage. Better CPU power on N900 allows this.
CONNECTIVITY / GPS
Voip calls (skype, gtalk etc.) can be made using the N900. iPhone has gtalk and skype but the major problem is with multi tasking – you cannot use the phone for anything else, you have to keep the app open and not try to open/use any other app or some other feature in phone. On the N900 you can just keep them open while you do your work and will be notified of a call or IM when you get it. Booth devices have GPS enabled but significant difference is pre-loaded Ovi Maps application on N900 – You don’t need to have an active internet connectionto use the gps for routing.
WEB BROWSING
Maemo browser is powered by Mozilla technology with Adobe Flash™ 9.4 support, In iPhone is Safari browser without flash. Browsing on N900 is just like on your desktop PC.There is no need for additional clients. This is useful for many of the flash video sites like youtube. We remind you – there are millions of flash games that you can load directly andv play on the browser. Java script provides you to see and use the desktop version of all google services like gmail, calender etc.
