One of the key focal-points of the N900, and one it does better than any other smartphone I’ve seen to date, is the browsing experience. Fast, reliable and supporting a full flash plugin on an 800×480 screen with finger-focused controls it tries to do what desktops do, in a fraction of the size.
Like other small-screen browsers it has the same screen real-estate issues where pixels don’t help. Fingers cover large areas of the screen when browsing. Top and bottom toolbars hide 30% of the content area and standard web fonts require a zoom to read and reduce the size of the effective window even further. Until we get to the stage where expandable screens become thin, cheap and reliable enough to design into a pocketable device, the issue will remain.
Given the constraints, Nokia, the Maemo teams and partners have done a good job. It will get better too as Fennec becomes available next year and includes features like slide-in/out toolbars, synchronization features and plugin support and then, in 2010, better again when Flash 10.1 is introduced and enables 3D and video playback improvements.
Here’s the situation today though. In the video you’ll see standard web sites, flash, javascript and embedded video working well.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:26 am
New article: N900 Web Browsing (+Video) http://cli.gs/UMpMe
October 11th, 2009 at 9:30 am
RT @chippy: New article: N900 Web Browsing (+Video) http://cli.gs/UMpMe
October 11th, 2009 at 9:32 am
RT @chippy: New article: N900 Web Browsing (+Video) http://cli.gs/UMpMe
October 11th, 2009 at 9:40 am
N900 Web Browsing (+Video) http://bit.ly/IJos1
October 11th, 2009 at 9:43 am
やっぱりブラウザが最大の売り。 RT @allaboutmaemo: RT @chippy: New article: N900 Web Browsing (+Video) http://cli.gs/UMpMe
October 11th, 2009 at 10:01 am
RT @chippy: New article: N900 Web Browsing (+Video) http://cli.gs/UMpMe
October 11th, 2009 at 11:39 am
RT @chippy: New article: N900 Web Browsing (+Video) http://cli.gs/UMpMe
October 11th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
A 12 minute Nokia N900 Web Browsing video from @Chippy http://bit.ly/j0Ewp
October 12th, 2009 at 12:17 am
Very impressive, especially for a pre-production device!
The only looming worry I have is the battery life. I haven’t the slightest idea what the platform power consumption might be and I wonder if the final product comes with that 4.9 Wh BL-5J battery as well. I’m eagerly waiting for the live session.
October 12th, 2009 at 11:12 am
This phone is the closest thereis to Tegra… especially the UI with the active browser windows next to each other… Very impressive…
But I was turned off by Google Reader not running. I guess I’ll wait for Tegra though…
Also, how do the recent 1 Ghz Windows Mobile phones handle Google Reader? Is it as good as the Archos Android?
TareX Reply:
October 12th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Also, Tegra handles HD Youtube fluently (it has hardware accelerated flash), which is a bit revolutionary considering my laptop can’t always handle YouTube HD as smoothly…
Carl Reply:
October 12th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
All of the top ARM chips (OMAP3, i.MX5, Snapdragon, Tegra, and Samsung’s Cortex A8 family) support hardware acceleration. It’s just a question of whether or not people write software that use that part of the chip.
Just as a lot of desktop computer software doesn’t make good use of video accelerators, smartphone and MID software are the same.
Patrick Reply:
October 12th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Tegra has ARM11 cpu processor and is not in the same league with Cortex-A8 cores. Tegra with Cortex core should(could) come next year but by then Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Marvell, Samsung et.al will have Cortex-A9 flaghsip processors in mass production.
As for what kind of processor Archos 5 Android has, it’s almost same OMAP 3 processor that N900 has.
Carl Reply:
October 12th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Qualcomm won’t. They’ve chosen to walk their own path with a processor that’s not fully compatible with the ARMv7A ISA. At least nVidia is keeping their CPU cores compatible, even if they’re behind the curve a bit.
Dans Reply:
October 13th, 2009 at 2:48 am
Hmmm…. I’ve just checked reader.google.com (the normal, not mobile, version) and I worked JUST FINE. I haven’t experienced ANY problems. The page loads instantly and everything works as expected.
[Michal Jerz]
October 15th, 2009 at 1:31 am
i just saw a video on youtube about loading the desktop version of google wave. thats fine and all but i require google docs. just wondering if you can load the desktop version of google docs. can you edit and write a regular document? please let us know thanks.
March 5th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Sweet…. This is what I’m looking for