About a month ago I was contacted by WOMWorldNokia who wondered if I would like to try out the Nokia N900 for a few weeks. Apparently, someone over there took a liking to my posts on the N97 mini and my problems getting WordPress installed on the little devil and thought I might give the alternative a go. Now, I’m not a professional product tester but I’m not gonna pass up an opportunity like that and so – just a few days later a stressed guy in an unmarked Mercedes van pulled up, flashed his DHL badge and presented me with a small, yellow bag containing the little toy.

As a unwrapped the little devil I soon came to realize that this thing was everything but little. About the size of half a brick (no kidding!) my thoughts were brought back to the time I unwrapped my 9110i communicator. Since I was on the go I didn’t have much time to play around with the thing so all I had time for was a quick look, touch and feel and it felt big. And heavy. Now, big means two things. Bulky to carry, nice to handle and watch. The screen is gigantic and you can easily fit both hands on the unit without getting your fingers entangled and wrists crooked.

My first reaction to the keyboard, when trying it out without power, was that I had no feel for when the keys were pressed. It felt very much like a cheap plastic board, but later when I set power to the thing everything changed. Writing was no problem, all the keys depressed nicely and unless you are writing blind (i.e. without looking at the screen), its not a problem at all to feel when the keys are pressed and not. The layout of the keyboard was a bit different from what I’d gotten used to with my N97 mini, but that was probably because the N900 was a UK model and my N97 is a Nordic model.

The thing that convinced me that this is a serious phone was the screen. It was crystal clear, even in bright sunlight. And using the pen it was fantastic to point and click. The little “jerk” and click-sound the unit gives off when a click is registered was just right, and I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the screen at all.

Now, there are some less positive sides to the N900 as well. As I have already mentioned it is huge, heavy and bulky. That can be compensated for with a belt pouch, but the thing that makes this a pro model and not a consumer model is the user interface. It is very different from any other phone I have tried. It operates several different virtual screens or “windows” that you change between by dragging the screen right or left. You can have different shortcuts and applications running at each virtual screen, and switching between them is no hassle. No wait worth mentioning, and the user actions to change between apps and screens are easy once you get the hang of it.

The real downer though is that though this phone comes with an awesome camera – 5MP Carl Ziess – it does not come with an MMS application. You have to download one. Now, I was told there are several out there, but I didn’t bother to try any out. For me, a 2010-model phone with a camera should come with MMS capability built in. Period! The pictures came out perfect though.

After some searching, trial and error I also got the Twitter app “witter” running smoothly. Witter is still in beta and I don’t think it will ever come out in a final version, but it is loaded with functionality and with some playing around a pro user isn’t going to have any trouble setting it up. Remember: Google is your friend!

All in all the N900 is a great phone – in more ways than one. I would easily recommend it to a fellow geek or any other advanced user with some degree of technical knowledge, but for a “regular” user or a non-technical business user this is not the way to go. Yet! With some updating to the software this could easily compete with the rest of Nokias N and E-series phones, as well as any Blackberry, Android or iPhone.