Nokia N900 review

Bulky and blocky – yet could this be one of the phones of the year?

The definitive Nokia N900 review
The definitive Nokia N900 review

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Battery life on the Nokia N900 is only so-so, we're sad to say. And the main culprit for that surely has to be the push email and constant Wi-Fi and 3G connection sniffing the phone performs so well.

We found that when the phone was charged up at noon on one day, it was dead by early morning the next. This is without excessive usage; that rate goes up when constantly browsing, listening to music, watching videos and generally poking the phone a lot.

Nokia n900

We'd imagine you could get through day to day charging the phone at night, but the 1350mAh battery bundled with the N900 could do with a bit of work in our opinion. It's the same battery used in the much less powerful Nokia X6, so that should tell you all you need to know really.

Nokia n900

Despite the presence of push email, we're not sure that the N900 really is a business phone. Take into account things like the office software being only offered on trial (you have to PAY for the full version, what an outrage) and the basic calendar, and you can see what we mean.

Nokia n900

We're not saying it's rubbish or anything, but the calendar could do with a bit of work. However, it not only syncs well with Outlook but it collates the birthdays of those friends you become a bit too obsessed with by adding in the date of their birth on your contacts list too. There's no Google Sync for Maemo as yet, but that will hopefully change in the near future.

Nokia n900

There's also a PDF reader, which does what it needs to do with aplomb - that's all we've really got to say about that, other than well done Nokia for popping that in there.

Notes are also offered, but there's no handwriting recognition here - we're talking plain old boring typing to help you remind yourself about something or other.

And there's a clock with an alarm - but it's a phone for crying out loud - of course it has that.

Nokia n900

If you've just bought the N900, we suggest you head online to check out the apps available to make your life richer - just don't get your hopes up that this phone will rival the iPhone and its relationship with the App Store.

One problem we did have is with File Manager - while it quickly zipped through the sublists in the phone, it sometimes couldn't find the on-board memory card, which was annoying when we were trying to shake the N900 into registering that there's a music file we want to be added to the library and listen to.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.