Ranesh was a Nokia fan for a long time and had owned few Nokia’s including an E70. But he made the transition to Verizon for a decent deal on a Voyager two years ago (because he likes qwerty keyboards and that was the only one he liked at the time). Ranesh couldn’t wait for a decent Nokia device to hit the market he liked, so he took the plunge. When he tested out the N97, he was terribly disappointed with the overall OS and decided to hold out for the Christmas season of this year to see what was around the corner and settled on the Motorola Droid running the Android 2.0 OS.

Nokia is readying the release of their flagship handset, the N900. Unfortunately, Nokia posted it’s first loss in 10 years.(We know Nokia Siemens Networks was to blame.) The problem wasn’t lack of phones worldwide but the Chinese “bandit” or known as “shanzhai” manufacturers eating away at Nokia’s bottom line. Several of these manufactures including Shenzhen Evien Co., Ltd., SZ Telstar Co Ltd., T-Link Industrial Development Company Limited, ZTE Corp., Lenovo and Huawei Tech have already infiltrated the Chinese market with a variety of cell phones. This doesn’t include big boys like HTC and Dell, among others that are making a splash into the worldwide market.

Nokia is the largest mobile phone manufacturer but is feeling the confined spaces of the Mobile market more than ever. RIM’s Blackberry (the business mainstay), Apple’s iPhone (of course) and Palm’s Pre (and soon to be Pixi line), have all cut into Nokia’s overall market share. Not to mention Google’s Android is having huge success with HTC building some great quality phones and across other manufacturers too. While still fighting off fierce competition in the high end cell phone range, Nokia has to contend with middle and low end all at the same time. A feat never before performed for his Helsinki, Finland company.

Step in Maemo: Nokia decided to strike back with the flagship N900 which runs its latest OS based off of Linux called Maemo. This new handset is set to change the direction for Nokia in the mid to higher end device range. Nokia began shipments on November 10^th and are expected to hit retailers shortly, for an estimated price of EUR 500 ($746.00 USD).

Will Nokia be able to break through the obstacles of intruders into its once dominant domain? The N900 comes packed with plenty of features WAY ahead of phones in its class: ARM Cortex-A8 processor, up to 1GB of total application memory. widgets, contacts and shortcuts all on the desktop,. Pictures and videos taken with the 5Mpx Carl Zeiss camera automatically are tagged where they were taken, SMS and IM, standard built-in 32 GB storage is big enough to store up to 7,000 songs or 40 hours of DVD-quality video, and it can be expanded up to 48GB with an external microSD card.

Image Courtesy of tnkgrl

The phone is amazing and packs an MMA like punch compared to other phones in the market place at this time, but Nokia will have to bring the beautiful Maemo OS down to the mid and perhaps even lower range handsets to regain what market share has already been lost. If anyone can do this, Nokia can and with the N900, where they proved that they are listening to the consumer.

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Qt is a UI Application framework and follows the wrote once and run anywhere approach. Developers can target Nokia N-series devices including the N900,Symbian, Windows Mobile and embedded Linux. Sounds cool isn’t it.Maemo mobile applications cam also be ported to the desktop on Windows, Mac and Linux. Its a great move by Nokia it demonstrates the power of Linux and the greatness of a Community driven project. The port has been released as a initial Technology Preview and the final version will be out in Q1 2010. In the current mobile ecosystem a certain OS from a specific vendor can’t dominate the market as consumers want variety.  Android is going to be pretty big by 2012 according to analysts.

Geeks and developers can download the Qt port to Maemo 5 technology preview

• Nokia Rover (RX-51)/N900 Pictures and Specifications!
• Nokia N900 can be Customized by Operators
• Video : Maemo Linux 5 on N900
• N900 Short Video Walkthrough
• Win a N900 by Hacking it at Push N900

These are the pictures of a LIMO powered Samsung phone under the Vodafone network. This phone has been leaked ahead of the Vodafone release schedule. Rumours say that this might be the Samsung Riedel i8305.

The handset is powered by LIMO which is Vodafone’s own Linux variant. The handset has a great brushed metal finish which houses an OLED Touchscreen. The touchscreen size and design looks similar to the Samsung i8910 OMNIA HD. It may even turn out to be a region specific OMNIA HD variant. The handset appears to be quite slim and is rumoured to sport an 8 Megapixel camera.

Further details are not known. Announcement should be on 24th September if sources are right.

Source

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Going there seemed worthwhile too, as we got meet a whole lot of other bloggers and also the Samsung team of Ankur and Sarfaraz, both important men within the scheme of things at Samsung.

A demo of the Samsung Jet, aka the S8003 was given by Sarfaraz, Product Manager,India at Samsung. He said that Samsung wanted to create a ‘touch’ leadership globally. So whenever someone thought of a touch phone, Samsung would be the first that would spring to mind. There was also a contest for us bloggers, yes even we have contests! where the lucky winner to tweet the answers stood to win a brand new Jet.

The event was planned very nicely and was more of a fun session than a presentation or a launch.

Onward now to the Jet, which we will be reviewing soon on Fonearena. The Jet has a 800Mhz processor which is geared to give the best performance when it comes to applications, and priority is given to applications by the processor in such a way that core functions of the device are not sidetracked. Widgets, which Samsung is pushing for all it’s touch based devices through the TouchWIZ layer is found on the Jet too, and we were promised that widgets were being ‘Indianized’ and we will see India specific widgets very soon. Gesture control was also a big plus point for this phone, meaning that the phone can be controlled via gestures, this feature is not available, in the manner Samsung has, on a Nokia phone.

A lot of interesting bits of info also pointed to Samsung’s proposed direction. When quizzed about Ovi and Samsung App Store, Sarfaraz stated that ‘Nokia is two steps ahead of us, but we will have an answer in a year or so’. Does that mean an Ovi like service is being developed by Samsung too? your guess is as good as ours…

When Fonearena asked them about their Linux based OS and their many OSes that they have for their devices, Sarfaraz said, ‘yes it is a thought, which is why Linux!’ well at least it’s official now that Samsung is clearly out for Nokia’s throat. When the question about Social networking came up, Sarfaraz said that Orkut will be coming to Samsung devices real soon, this means that the API for Orkut will be officially accessible to Samsung.

During the meet we did get to learn that 2 new touchscreen devices will be launched in India soon, we can only guess it is the Pixon 12 Mega Pixel camera phone and the Corby, due to be launched at Mobile Asia this November.

Overall the event was really good and organized quite well by the Samsung team. With more such events being planned in the future, looks like Nokia’s marketing card, is no longer going to remain exclusive to them anymore. It’s definitely going to get exciting for the customer and us bloggers now.

We also got a one on one session with Ankur Sharma, and we will be publishing it soon.

• Samsung Jet Review

In less than 48 hours of completion of Nokia World, The Nokia N900 is already up for sale in USA and is now available for preorder directly from the Nokia USA Online store.

As discussed in our Nokia World coverage, Nokia N900 is going to be the first Nokia mobile phone to run the Linux derived OS, Maemo.

Nokia is going to be available via T-Mobile for $649 which we think is a very good deal considering the amazing phone Nokia N900 is.

What do you think? Are you going to preorder Nokia N900 or play the waiting game a little more while? Do Pass on your comments.

(via)

• Nokia N900 Live Pics
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• Nokia Rover (RX-51)/N900 Pictures and Specifications!
• Video : Maemo Linux 5 on N900

Yet another video featuring the N900 from Maemo HQ . This one shows Maemo Linux 5 in action on the new internet tablet. We can’t wait to check out this phone. The way in which the tabs are switched makes us feel real jealous !

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We are certainly excited about this device – not because its linux but this device is a prelude to a new series of phones built on a platform other than Symbian and yet has beefy specs. We are planning to bring you a first hand account of this device live from Nokia World 2009 . Got any questions ?

Read

• Nokia Rover (RX-51)/N900 Pictures and Specifications!
• Nokia don’t Forget to Launch the N900 in India at a Realistic Price
• Nokia brings Qt port to Maemo5 , shows it off on N900 on Video
• Rumor: Nokia to launch new handset lineup C series
• Nokia N900 Official Pics

Well here is something good for you Linux fans out there. Nokia recently leaked their Nokia N900/RX-51 Rover which runs on the Maemo (Linux) Platform.

It now seems that Samsung are also wanting to try out Linux on their phones and here’s the end result. The Samsung i8320 is a Linux Based smart-phone which is in the final stages of production. The phone supports touch pad.

The phone appears to be a full-touch screen phone devoid of any hardware keypad. But the sketch shows things which look like hinges at the top of the phone. So it could be a flip phone too. But we cant say anything for sure. No other features are known. But the handset should be announced pretty soon.

We will keep you up to date on the information of the handset.

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Earlier we brought to you some information and lots of pictures of the Nokia Rover (RX-51) Internet Tablet.

This time we bring you lots of pictures again but with lot more of information. Eldar Murtazin and his team over at Mobile Review have managed to get their hands on the Nokia Rover (RX-51) which will be commonly known as the Nokia N900. Its is the direct successor to the N810 and successor to the N800 and 770 Internet Tablets.

Here are some of the features of the Nokia N900 confirmed by Eldar:

• ARM Cortex-A8 CPU
• 5 Megapixel Camera with Autofocs, Dual LED flash and lens cover
• Maemo Linux OS
• 32GB Internal Memory, Hot Swap micro-SD Card Slot upto 32GB
• 1320maH BL-5J Battery
• micro-USB port, 3.5mm Jack
• TV-Out, Kickstand

UPDATE:

This is just a preview of what Nokia is going to announce at Nokia World on September 2-3. Another important thing is that there are rumors that Nokia has decided to change it’s platform from Symbian S60 to Maemo (Linux Based). But Nokia has confirmed its love story with Symbian will continue. Maemo is just being offered as another offering .

Read

• Nokia N900 Rover Official Press Pic Leaked
• Nokia brings Qt port to Maemo5 , shows it off on N900 on Video
• Video : Maemo Linux 5 on N900
• Nokia N920 Internet Tablet Leaked!
• Nokia don’t Forget to Launch the N900 in India at a Realistic Price

The handset powered by Google Android  operating system will retail at $199 , the same price Apple iPhone3G

8GB is available with AT&T.

The Gphone  is manufactured by Taiwanese phone maker HTC

We will try our best to get our hands on this phone as it is  going to be available in USA starting this October

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