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We’re tired of talking about potential iPhone killers. It’s been three years now and no one has come close enough to challenge the Apple of our eye, so while the new Nokia N900 has finally been officially unveiled and looks like the best bet so far, we will hold of on being soothsayers till the phone is actually in our hand.

In terms of hardware, the Nokia N900 matches or betters the iPhone in every segment, other than the thickness due to the physical Qwerty keyboard, which stands at 18 mm as compared to iPhone’s 12.3 mm. The height and the width of the N900, though, are lesser than Apple’s flagship device: 110.9 x 59.8 mm to 115.5 x 62.1 mm. 

The screen size remains the same at 3.5 inches, but the N900’s resistive touchscreen offers a much better resolution of 800x480 pixels. In a video preview by the Nokia press team, the screen seemed to be quite responsive to thumb-based navigation, which has been a point that a lot of Nokia users have complained about. Perhaps it’s the Maemo interface, but either way, it looked quite good. Still, it’s a public relations video, so we will wait till we have the actual device in our hands before we believe the hype.

Other features include:

OS: Maemo 5 

Camera: 5-megapixel, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, Dual LED flash, video light, geo-tagging; WVGA (848x480 pixels) at 25fps

Storage: 32GB, expandable up to 48GB via microSD

CPU: ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX graphics; 256MB RAM

Connectivity: 3G, Wi-Fi, EDGE, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, microUSB

GPS: GPS with A-GPS support, Ovi Maps

Others: Physical Qwerty keyboard, 3.5mm audio jack, Stereo FM radio, document viewer, multimedia player, digital compass

The preview video of the N900 also served to showcase the wonderful new Maemo 5 operating system. Have a look:

The idea of panorama desktops, which is basically five or six virtual desktops, goes down very well with us. Simply flicking your finger across the home screen will take you to different desktops, such as one for Internet, another for multimedia, one more for contacts, etc.

 

What’s more, the true power of the Linux-based platform shows through in its multi-tasking capabilities, where all your programs or windows are kept open at the same time. Since you never have to close a window, the phone runs quite a bit faster than any other we have seen.

 

And Nokia has taken a page out of the Mac OSX by including an Expose-like feature called Dashboard, whereby pressing a button throws all your open windows into a thumbnail grid to easily select the one you want.

 

Browsing the Internet, especially, seemed brilliant as the phone can render a Web page just like that on a regular PC screen. Zooming in and out has been finally innovated into a single-finger function: Making a circling motion with your finger in the clockwise direction zooms in, while circling anti-clockwise zooms out. Nice!

 

As for the camera, it seems to deliver good pictures and comes with a whole array of photo-editing options, including adding tags. And you can always upload any picture very quickly to the Internet through the set of onboard tools.

 

All in all, the Nokia N900 and Maemo 5 combination is seeming very, very promising indeed. We can’t wait to get our hands on this iPhone-kil--- doh!

For a device which claims to provide the best internet browsing experience, support for Flash is essential, and yet the iPad shuns Flash. This does more to hurt the iPad than it does Flash. For an internet centric device which boasts of 3G and WiFi connectivity, the lack of suppot for the full and rich interent experience is a blunder. A large sumber of cloud applications rely on Flash, and it is not just restricted to web-video. While shunning Flash from the iPhone might have worked out fine since no one expects a full interent experience on a phone, however when you are buying a device which is supposed to bring the "best web experience" you expect more. 

Better than a netbook really? The iPad fails to be better than even an iPhone. 

So here are 10 reasons why I think the iPad sucks, if we haven't made that clear already: 

Even so, the iPad has a chance for success, and for many of the same reasons that the iPhone is a success. It is a beautiful product, with a dedicated developer community which just won't give up dispite the constant abuse. It has hundreds of thousands of applications which give it an edge over new platforms which have lesser applications. The iPhone continues to be a favourite of many because it is a pleasure to use despite its many flaws. Apple may not have done anything new here, but just given a more of the good old stuff that they already know works.

After the success of the iPod and iPhone, much hype surrounded the release of Apple’s secretive new tablet PC project. The device called iPad was revealed in the US on Wednesday night by Apple’s head honcho, Steve Jobs.

“We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary product,” said Jobs.

The iPad has a 9.7-inch colour screen and resembles an oversized iPhone. It is 1.3cms thick, weighs less than a kilo and comes with 16, 32, or 64 gigabytes of memory. The cheapest iPad model, with Wi-Fi connectivity and 16GB of memory, is $499 (Rs 23,000 approx), while the most expensive – which includes 3G connectivity and 64GB of memory – costs $829 (Rs  38,000 approx).

Apple said it would start shipping the WiFi version, which has a virtual keyboard but can also dock with an external keyboard, in late March in the US. The 3G version will reach the US markets in late April.

Dressed in his trademark blue jeans, black turtleneck and sneakers, Jobs walked around the stage and sat on a couch at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts Theatre as he showed off the gadget.

He demonstrated various features which include browsing the Web, checking email, working with spreadsheets and charts, playing videogames, listening to music or watching video. Jobs also said they were launching an online “iBookstore” for the device and touted its abilities as an electronic reader for books, newspapers and magazines. But online rumours say the device may not feature ebooks on launch outside the US.

The device is also not without some serious flaws, like a lack of an HDMI adapter and a native USB port (the iPad requires an adapter to connect a USB device) that had some people fuming.

Technology journalist Mihir Patkar said: “No multi-tasking. No Adobe Flash. No USB port, and an adapter is just a pain! No HDMI to connect to a TV. No Web cam. The only way for fast text input is when you keep the device on your lap, with your feet raised – and the virtual keyboard will still take up over one-third of your screen! Apple just took the Touch, gave it a gave it a larger screen, and is trying to pass it off as a ‘revolutionary new device’. It could just as well have been called iPod Touch – SuperSized!”

Others accepted the device as it is. “Despite its negatives, I think the iPad is a pretty good device. It certainly replaces the netbook in my mind and possibly my iPhone, even though the two are different product categories,” said Tushar Burman, an iPhone enthusiast who followed the launch online.

When asked about an Indian release schedule, a local representative for Apple said that they were not informed about release dates for the Indian market but it won’t make it to our shores for a while.