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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Connectivity on the Nokia N900 is beyond par - we can't think of anything else that should have been included. First of all, as we've mentioned countless times before, the N900 is great at sniffing out networks, meaning if you need data connectivity when out and about, you're likely to get it.

Data connection is OK as well, although it does drop out a little too often - however it rarely failed when we needed it most, so that makes it a positive point in our book.

Nokia n900

The fact the Wi-Fi kicks in whenever you enter your home network is a real boon, as you suddenly find that internet browsing has increased in speed quite considerably when using it.

GPS is a similar beast, although we're not sure how accurate it is, as we mentioned earlier in the copy, because the phone seemed to rely on aGPS a little too much for our tastes - however geotagging is an odd one as we couldn't find a way to add it to photos beyond tagging it with the city you're in at the time - doesn't feel very intuitive to us.

Nokia n900

We're fans of the Bluetooth on the N900, as headphones connected up nicely to the device, as well as being able to transfer files wirelessly to your PC in a fairly speedy fashion.

Connection to the PC is performed by a microUSB cable, much as is becoming standard on all mobile phones these days. It allows you to use the phone in mass storage mode and on the PC suite, but nothing else.

Nokia has also taken the odd decision to use Nokia PC Suite 7.1 with the N900; meaning limited options when it comes to things you can actually do with the phone.

This means although you can reformat video files for the phone and back it up to the PC, (although in both cases it's not necessary, with all manner of video supported and backup possible to memory card) it's a little redundant when these days all you want to do is pull content on and off a phone.

Nokia n900

Ovi Suite is a lot more advanced and offers some more compelling software too, so we'd rather have seen that bundled instead. However, being able to use the phone as a modem is a boon we didn't expect to get with the N900, so it's not all bad on the PC connectivity front.

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.