“Maemo 5” Articles

Augmented reality is a technology that overlays computer generated information over a users view of the real world. The possibilities of this technology have been demonstrated on many occasion, and now we have a cool new demo using the Nokia N900.

Qt is part of Nokia’s future when it comes to user interface. Check out these images giving you a few ideas on how it might look. If you have the ‘Extras Devel’ catalogue on your Nokia N900, you can find HyperUI (shown on the standby screen, the Application Launcher, the dial pad and contacts), Weather (current weather previews), MyBudget (for personal budget in several categories of expenditure) and ShopList (a shopping check list with several categories).

Nokia has just released the first major firmware update PR1.1 – v2.2009.51-1 for the Nokia N900 following the minor update that was released earlier this week. The new firmware brings along a host of new features and usability improvements including full compatibility with certain SIM cards from service provider 3. Mail for Exchange has been updated with support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, and Ovi Maps sees improvements made to the search performance and route calculation. If you already installed the first update you will automatically receive a notification that a new update is available for their device. If you prefer not to update to the 89.5 MB firmware via FOTA (Firmware-Over-The-Air), you can also install the update using NSU (Nokia Software Updater) on your PC. Note that updating your device via NSU may delete some data so ensure you make a back up your device. Check out the long extensive changelog after the break.

The Nokia N900 is a great device for multitasking. With its 600 MHz processor and Maemo 5 OS, the device can handle a ridiculous amount of open applications and switch between them seamlessly. All the applications remain active during multitasking, and I have made a short clip using two accelerometer based applications, Angle Meter Touch and Level Touch (now available to download from the Ovi Store), to demonstrate this feature. Check out the video after the break.

The Nokia N900 has just recieved a new minor firmware update taking it from v1.2009.42.11 to v1.2009.44.1. This is the first firmware update that has been released for the Nokia N900 and although it is a minor update there has been quite a few noticeable changes which include a re-designed Application Manager. I have also noticed that an Ovi repository as been added in the application catalogues. This indicates that the Ovi Store for the Nokia N900 should be opening any time now. The new firmware update can be downloaded either using the built in application manager or the traditional way using NSU (Nokia Software Updater). Unfortunately, there is no Ovi Suite support and the UDP (User Data Preservation) details are fairly ambiguous, so we recommend a full backup before you update. After updating I noticed that my Contacts, Conversations, Calendar Entries, Notes, Music and Videos, all remained on the device. However my email accounts, access points, homescreen widgets, applications were not preserved. According to MaemoWorld, if you update it using the application manager all your data will be preserved.