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Nokia, the world’s largest cell phone manufacturer has finally decided to announce a new smartphone that doesn’t use Symbian S69 for the OS.  Today Nokia announced the N900, which will run Nokia’s Linux platform, Maemo.  This marks the first phone from Nokia that will run Linux, though it has been dabbling in the platform for some time now with its Internet tablets.

At first glance, the phone actually looks more like a smaller MID than a smartphone.  It boasts a 3.5” 800x480 resistive touch screen, 32GB of storage that can expand to 48GB with mircoSD, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, TV-out, FM transmitter and other standard smartphone features (Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth). 

What sets it apart is the OS.  Nokia is touting it as a “PC-like experience on a handset-sized device,” and with a powerful processor, 1GB of application memory and OpenGl ES 2.0 it could possibly match the functionality of a netbook.  The Maemo system also features a Firefox-based web browser that supports Flash 9.4, so watching Hulu or YouTube on the phone should be possible.

The N900 will be on display at Nokia World next week and will launch in various markets in October for €500 before tax and any possible subsidy.  What makes it even more interesting is the fact that the quad-band GSM/EDGE radio includes the spectrum that T-Mobile uses in the US.  If the N900 comes to T-Mobile with any sort of subsidy, it would be the first Nokia smartphone to get a US subsidy in a long time.  However, even if it doesn’t get a subsidy, it looks like Nokia is finally releasing a smartphone that more of us stateside can be very, very excited about.

Read [Reuters]
Read [Engadget]