Shootout: Nokia N900 versus iPhone and the winner is…(1)

But first, why is N900 generating so much excitement and what does it feature?

Well, to begin with, unlike other smartphones which are designed as phones with "smart" functions added on top and around, N900 feels the opposite - like a teeny-weeny portable computer with a phone functionality added on top.

N900, which is being billed as the world's first internet tablet device with a phone built-in, is seen also as key for Nokia's future in the high-end of the market (smartphones are the most profitable segment, a key issue at a time when Nokia's margins in its mobile phones division are put under pressure).

N900, which is also Nokia's first smartphone to run on the latest version of open source Linux-based Maemo 5, is powered by the powerful TI OMAP 3430 ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz processor and promises amazing multimedia performance, thanks to its dedicated PowerVR SGX graphics card with OpenGL ES 2.0 support.

The quadband GSM-based N900 also boasts of a 3.5-inch WVGA resistive touchscreen display with 800x480 resolution; a world-class 5-megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens, 3x digital zoom, autofocus, dual LED flash and multiple capture modes); WVGA video recording (@25fps); Adobe Flash 9.4 support; support for multiple audio and video playback formats; GPS with A-GPS support; Ovi Maps; geo-tagging; TV-out; 3.5mm AV connector; microUSB connector and infrared port.

N900 is also road-ready for mobile internet use thanks to HSPA 3G, Bluetooth 2.1, GPRS, EDGE and WiFi support.

The smartphone also features a slide-out full landscape-oriented Qwerty tactile keyboard, full Qwerty onscreen keyboard and support for Mail for Exchange, IMAP, POP3, SMTP.

N900 also promises to perform "PC like" multitasking (unlike, say, iPhone), can keep lots of applications running at the same time, and switching between tasks and accessing content is as simple as navigating through the completely customizable dashboard.

Other features include 256MB flash memory, 32GB internal storage and 16GB additional storage (thanks to microSD card slot); FM Radio; MP3/MP4 player; hands-free stereo speakers, accelerometer sensor (a crucial sensor that take advantage of tilting - and allows great gaming and use of the phone in landscape mode); document viewer; photo editor; and the revolutionary Maemo browser (which is Mozilla-based, can run Firefox 3.0 add-ons, and can handle any webpage with ease, including the extremely Flash-heavy Webkinz page. Simply put, it is almost a full fledged, touch optimized Firefox browser with complete HTML, Flash, Javascript and other web standard support. And, websites on N900 look the same (if only with a smaller symbols and elements) as they would look on a desktop PC with 800 pixel wide resolution display).