Why is Nokia N900 generating so much excitement?

According to a senior Nokia executive, the company is still waiting for feedback from developers and will not take any risk as it is the company's first smartphone to operate on Linux software 'Maemo' and feature a touch screen and a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

Peter Schneider, who heads Maemo (Nokia's Linux version) Marketing, Nokia Corporation, said N900 is a "game changer" and the company is closely working with open source developers and waiting to get feedback from them before the phone's official launch as Nokia was "committed to the best user experience."

When contacted, Nokia spokesman Joseph Gallo said that N900's hardware was finalized, and the company was simply waiting to get more feedback from developers as it fine-tuned the device's software.

But why is N900 generating so much excitement?

Well, to begin with, N900, which is being billed as the world's first internet tablet device with a phone built-in, is seen as key for Nokia's future in the high-end of the market.

N900, which is also Nokia's first smartphone to run on the latest version of open source Linux-based Maemo 5, is powered by the powerful TI OMAP 3430:ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz processor and promises amazing multimedia performance, thanks to its dedicated PowerVR SGX graphics card with OpenGL ES 2.0 support.

The quadband GSM-based N900 also boasts of a 3.5-inch WVGA resistive touchscreen display with 800x480 resolution; a world-class 5-megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss optics, Tessar lens, 3x digital zoom, autofocus, dual LED flash and multiple capture modes); WVGA video recording (@25fps); Adobe Flash 9.4 support; support for multiple audio and video playback formats; GPS with A-GPS support; Ovi Maps; geo-tagging; TV-out; 3.5mm AV connector; microUSB connector and infrared port.

N900 is also road-ready for mobile internet use thanks to HSPA 3G, Bluetooth 2.1, GPRS, EDGE and WiFi support.

The smartphone also features a slide-out full landscape-oriented Qwerty tactile keyboard, full Qwerty onscreen keyboard and support for Mail for Exchange, IMAP, POP3, SMTP.

N900 also promises to perform "PC like" multitasking (a feature it shares with iPhone rival Palm Pre) besides providing some compelling "desktop" (mobile-top?) personalization features.

Other features include 256MB flash memory, 32GB internal storage and 16GB additional storage (thanks to microSD card slot); FM Radio; MP3/MP4 player; hands-free stereo speakers, accelerometer sensor (a crucial sensor that take advantage of tilting - and allows great gaming and use of the phone in landscape mode); document viewer; photo editor; and the revolutionary Maemo browser (which is Mozilla-based, can run Firefox 3.0 add-ons, and can handle any webpage with ease, including the extremely Flash-heavy Webkinz page).