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Tag: n900

  • Firefox Goes Mobile

    Mozilla announced that Firefox is now available for Nokia’s Maemo platform. The browser is intended and optimized for use on the Nokia N900. It can also be run on the Nokia N810 and N800 Internet Tablets, but Mozilla don’t recommend using its product on these devices because they are "significantly less powerful.”

    Firefox for Maemo is built on the same engine as Firefox 3.6 for desktop (Gecko 1.9.2) with some extensive under the hood work to optimize for mobile. It includes the new “TraceMonkey” JavaScript engine, an advanced JIT (“just in time”) compiler using tracing technology.

    New Mozilla’s mobile browser comes with Weave Sync that enables to sync tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords with desktop Firefox, Location-Aware Browsing, which gives you maps and information relevant to your location, offline browsing and one-touch bookmarking.

    It’s the first mobile browser with add-ons support. There are currently more than 40 Firefox add-ons available for mobile, like popular AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides, to name a few.

    Initially, Firefox for N900 does not support browser plug-ins. “Due to performance problems using Adobe Flash within Firefox on many websites, especially those with multiple plug-ins on them, we have disabled plugins for Firefox for Maemo 1.0.,” states Mozilla.

    “We plan to provide a browser add-on that will enable you to selectively enable plugins on certain sites, because some sites, like YouTube, work well.”

    Mozilla is also working on a mobile version of its browser for other platforms. Firefox for the Windows Mobile is in Alpha (yet optimized for Samsung Omnia II, AT&T Touch Fuze, HTC Touch Pro), the company is currently investigating development for Android.

    They do not have plans to build Firefox for iPhone – due to “constraints with the OS environment and distribution”, Blackberry – due to “its Java-based operating system and the inability to build native components”, and Symbian.

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  • Nokia Unveils N900 – The New Company’s Flagship Handset

    Nokia has finally launched the N900 – running on the new Maemo 5 latest company’s smartphone, which has evolved from Nokia’s previous generation of internet tablets.

    “The open source, Linux-based Maemo software delivers a PC-like experience on a handset-sized device” says the company’s announcement.

    Nokia N900 packs an ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz processor, up to 1GB of application memory and 3D graphics accelerator with OpenGL ES 2.0 support. The result is, as the company promises, “PC-like multitasking, allowing many applications to run simultaneously.”

    New Nokia comes with a 3.5-inch 800×480 pixel touchscreen, the full physical slide-out QWERTY, internet connectivity with 10/2 HSPA and WLAN, Wi-Fi 54Mbps data transfer, Mozilla-based browser and full Adobe Flash 9.4 support.

    To get the most out of the 5MP camera, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash and 800 × 480 resolution video recording, Maemo software and the N900 come with a new tag cloud user interface.

    The device also features GPS with pre-installed Ovi Maps, Bluetooth 2.1, FM transmitter, TV-out and 1320mAh battery.

    The panoramic homescreen can be fully personalized with shortcuts, widgets and applications. Maemo software updates happen automatically over the internet.

    N900 has 32GB of storage, which is expandable up to 48GB via a microSD card.

    "The Nokia N900 shows where we are going with Maemo and we’ll continue to work with the community to push the software forward. What we have with Maemo is something that is fusing the power of the computer, the internet and the mobile phone, and it is great to see that it is evolving in exciting ways," said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Nokia.

    Nokia N900 will be available in select markets from October 2009 with an estimated retail price of EUR 500 and will be displayed at Nokia World, Stuttgart, on September 2.