I’ve been a happy owner of Motorola Ming (A1200) for 2 years now. Running on Linux and supporting J2ME, you have a list of endless applications to put on your already powerful cellphone, and you can tweak till you freak too. That’s why I’ve never given any thought to iPhone. Ever.
Now, with the release of Nokia N900 and Motorola Droid (sold in Europe as “Milestone”. Is that the most pompous name for a mobile phone ever or what), I’m seriously thinking about replacing my beloved Ming. I compiled a comparison chart (taking sources from Nokia, Motorola and Wikipedia) as follows. I was surprised to find that N900 has no MMS support (Droid does), but has an Infrared port that they don’t even bother to list on the specs. Lack of OGG support on N900 is also kinda disappointing. None of the phones have Java Support, and Droid has no TV Out. If you are interested in Droid/Milestone, you should know that according to Wikipedia, “The stock Android operating system restricts applications from being installed outside of onboard memory, in this case limiting application and OS size to a total maximum size of 512MB.”
See the chart below. Note that release date is not definite. If I screwed anything up please leave a comment.
| 2 Linux Smart Phones: | Nokia N900 | Motorola Milestone (Droid) |
| Promo | ||
| Availability in Europe | November 30, 2009 | November 16, 2009 |
| Retail Price | 599 Euro | 499 Euro |
| OS | Maemo 5 | Android 2.0 |
| CPU | ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz | ARM Cortex A8 550MHz |
| Operating Frequency | GSM 850/900/1800/1900 WCDMA/900/1700/2100 |
GSM 850/900/1800/1900 WCDMA/900/2100 |
| Flight Mode | Yes | Yes |
| Dimension | 110,9 x 59,8 x 18 (19,55) mm | 115.8 x 60 x 13.7 mm |
| Weight | 181 g (with battery) | 165g |
| Display | 3.5″ | 3.7″ |
| Resolution | 800x400pixel | 480 x 854 pixel 16:9 widescreen; PPI 267 |
| Touch Screen | Yes | Yes |
| Autorotate | Yes | Yes |
| Ambient Light Sensor | Yes | Yes |
| Haptic Feedback | Yes | Yes |
| Multitouch | No | Yes |
| Proximity Sensor | Yes | Yes |
| Graphics | PowerVR SGX 530 GPU 3G Graphics acceleration support for OpenGL ES 2.0 |
PowerVR SGX |
| Virtual Keyboard | Yes | Yes |
| qwerty keyboard | Yes | Yes |
| Backlit Keyboard | Yes | Yes |
| Word Prediction | Yes | Yes |
| Pen Input with Stylus | Yes | No |
| Voice Commands | No | Yes |
| MMS | No | Yes |
| Internal Memory | 256MB RAM | 256MB RAM |
| Storage | 32 GB eMMC (2GB /home,768MB /swap) External Memory MicroSD 16GB (max.) |
512MB Flash memory, MicroSD 8GB preinstalled (The stock Android operating system restricts applications from being installed outside of onboard memory, in this case limiting application and OS size to a total maximum size of 512MB.) MicroSD 32GB (max.) |
| GPRS | Class A, multislot class 32 max.107/64.2 kbps | Class 12 |
| EDGE | Class A, multislot class 32 max.296/177.6 kbps | Class 12 |
| WCDMA | max. 384/384 KBit/s | ? |
| HSPA | Down 10 MBit/s, Up 2 MBit/s | ? |
| WLAN | WLAN IEEE 802.11b/g | WLAN IEEE 802.11 b/g |
| Web Browser | Mozilla | Webkit HTML5 |
| Flash Support | Adobe Flash Player 9.4 | Flash Player 10.1 Ready (not yet released) |
| AJAX support | JavaScript 1.8, XML | ? |
| Bluetooth | v2.1. HFP, HSP, A2DP, AVRCP, FTP, OPP | v2.1 + EDR.HFP, HSP, A2DP, AVRCP, OPP, PBAP |
| Infrared | Yes | No |
| UPnP Support via WLAN | Yes | No |
| Headphone Jack | 3.5 mm | 3.5 mm |
| Integreated Stereo Speaker | Yes | Yes |
| TV Out | Nokia Video Connectivity Cable | No |
| USB | microUSB v2.0 | microUSB v2.0 |
| USB Charging | Yes | Yes |
| Back Camera | 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss autofocus camera with dual LED flash (4:3 and 16:9 ratio) | 5 megapixel, dual LED flash |
| Autofocus | Yes | Yes |
| Digital Zoom | 3X | 4X |
| Camera Image Format | JPEG/EXIF | ? |
| Video Recording | 800 x 480 pixels/25fps (max.)(mp4: MPEG4, AAC) | 720×480 pixels /24fps (max.) |
| Video Playback Format | mp4, .avi, .wmv, .3gp; codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 | H.263, H.264, MPEG-4, WMV9 |
| Video Streaming | H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 in .avi, .mp4, .wmv, .asf and .3gp containers | Yes |
| Front Camera | 0.3 megapixel, 640×480 pixels | No |
| Music Playback Format | MP3, WMA, AAC, M4A, WAV | AAC, AMR, eAAC, MIDI, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA, WMA9 |
| Max. Bit Rate | 320 bps | ? |
| Ringtone Format | Wav, MP3, AAC, eAAC | eAAC+, MP3, AAC+, eAAC, AAC, OGG |
| FM Radio | requires headset to be attached | No |
| GPS | Integrated A-GPS receiver | A-GPS, S-GPS |
| Java | No | No |
| Battery | BL-5J 1320 mAh battery | 1400 mAh removable lithium-ion battery |
| Standby | ? | up to 350 hours |
Comments (12)
I’m not 100% on this but i’d be very suprised if the n900 doesnt feature the HID bluetooth profile allowing you to use external bluetooth keyboards (all previous Maemo devices have, as well as most nokia symbian). Android doesn’t have this yet though they will apparently get round to it sooner or later. Not a game changer for most, but I type up lecture notes on my phone and need a full size keyboard option. Other internet tablets also allow USB host/otg modes, not sure if either of these contenders will though. Just some feedback, because you asked
didnt mean to rant, its a nice and very useful page 
Thanks very much, keep up the good work, and post to let us know which way you go and how you find your choice works out! All the best
Thanks for the feedback, Jon. The specs were lifted directly from Nokia’s website, but I did some googling and found this datasheet:
http://www.areamobile.de/handys/1679-nokia-n900/datenblatt/datentransfer
Bluetooth-Profile (Y means feature is supported)
Y Advanced Audio Distribution (A2DP)
Y AV Remote Control (AVRCP)
* BIP (Basic Imaging)
* BPP (Basic Printing)
* DUN (Dial-Up Network)
Y FT (File Transfer)
Y Headset
Y HFP (Handsfree Car-Kit)
* HID (Human Interface Devices)
Y OPP (Object Push)
* PAN (Private Area Network)
* SAP (SIM Access)
* SPP (Serial Port)
Y Sync
Seems HID support is disabled by default, but can be enabled by tweaking the /etc/bluetooth/main.conf file:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_Unsupported_Bluetooth_profiles
Many discussion forums have confirmed that USB Host/OTG mode is not supported by N900 at the hardware level (although it is supported by N810?)
I have to admit that I’m partial to N900 from the start!:) Will miss the OGG support though!
Nice review page!
Call me a technological dinosaur if you’d like. But this is my first time in the market looking for a smartphone (I’ve sat out through the Symbian and Windows Mobile “eras” after negative trying-out experiences with both). Would any of the two platforms shown here be good for general productivity work (i.e. the usual pdf, powerpoint, word document, etc.)? Also, have had any chance in physically trying them out yet? If so, how is the build quality like on each of them?
http://tuomas.kulve.fi/blog/2009/09/03/wishlist-for-n900-ogg-support/
Ogg’s supported: It’s just not installed by default. Maemo’s Debian base means a far greater percentage of basic system-level software such as codec support is going to be left out of the stock install, if for no better reason than that so much more is available for it.
@Kelvin: Can’t speak for Maemo5, but Maemo 4 and below all kind of sucked at handling office documents. PDFs were fine, but not awe-inspiringly simple to manage. Android seems to have a number of available commercially produced office suites, but sadly doesn’t seem to be tightly integrated with Google Docs et al. Given that you’re just accessing them through the browser (albeit in a customized way: http://androidforums.com/android-news-talk/3686-google-docs-new-features-android.html ), it probably isn’t any better or worse than the N900.
You can add to Milestone’s specs that it has an integrated FM radio/transmitter (inbuilt in TI WL1271 chip – the same one that Nokia has) – it’s not listed on the specs and there’s no pre-installed app for it, but it’s there.
Besides apps can be installed to flash card as well in Motorola (little hack needed).
That’s it I believe.
Th Nokia design isn’t inspiring; it’s a gadget for th geeks. Th Motorola looks a genuine business device.
Anyway, i’ve used phones from both brands, and have decided that th ownership experience of a Motorola phone is usually very good.
You forgot to mention that the most important feature of the Nokia N900, namely the Firefox browser and how it syncs with the desktop browser. Finally the very best feature of N900 which makes it the b
most unquie at this time, is that it has a full flash 9.5.
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Nokia is right when they refer to this device as a Mobile computer. I’ve been using it for almost a week and it surpasses all my expectations, and bear in mind that Nokia will be pushing updates to the OS to make it even better.