Nokia In-Depth Demo Shows Off N900's Web Browsing Capabilities (And A Little More)

We've always considered ourselves fans of Nokia devices. In fact, we're not even ashamed to admit that we used one of those Nokia candybars back in the day (you know, one with 'Snake'), and we'd probably still use it today if not for things like "web browsing" and "Twitter." As times have changed, so have the engineering efforts at Nokia. The company's newest smartphone/mini computer is the N900, and with that device will come an all new mobile operating system to rival Google's Android, Palm's webOS and Apple's iPhone OS.

That operating system is Maemo 5, and while there's still no way to truly tell if it'll be a runaway hit, we get the feeling that it'll do quite well amongst the cellphone multitaskers out there. One of the biggest problems the modern day smartphone has it accessing the Internet in a way that closely resembles the desktop Internet experience. With a desktop browser, loading Flash sites and complicated sites are generally no big deal. They may take a few seconds to load, but in the end most everything pops up as expected. However, on the mobile front, only Apple's iPhone comes close to delivering a true "web experience," but without Flash support, even the mobile version of Safari is seriously lacking.


Nokia is hoping to make Maemo 5 the go-to mobile OS for those who value a good web browsing experience on a mobile device. A recent overview of the N900 and the aforesaid OS shows the five main points to delivering a desktop-like browsing experience on a mobile device, and of course, it shows how the N900 accomplishes that. We have to admit--Maemo 5's web browser looks really promising from the video. Of course, this is a Nokia video, but we still think there's more to it than just marketing hoopla. Have a look at the video below for a tour of Maemo 5's Mozilla-based browser, and see if catch the Easter Egg located in the first half. No cheating! (Oops!)