VoIP and IM in Nokia N900

    Nokia N900 is a geek smartphone both in essence and in positioning. Outside of IT-Tusovsky, few have heard of him. I won’t say for the rest of the countries, but the companies in the Russian representative office didn’t spend a penny on its traditional promotion — outdoor advertising, TV commercials, etc. Moreover, the company, in principle, is not interested in significant sales of the N900 - it is important that the device is only for those who need it. The following models will be more massive, but for now, the manufacturer needs to expand the community and finally bring the “smartphone” Maemo to mind.

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    The small circulation of the N900 allowed Nokia to run one very interesting thing on it - the deep integration of VoIP and IM services in the device’s software. In my opinion, this is perhaps the most interesting in this device for the average advanced user (developers and infernal Linuxoids do not count).

    To begin with, a few words, why VoIP at a "low" level is impossible in another, more massive, Nokia device (and, in principle, any major smartphone manufacturer). Vendors - maybe they were glad. But no operator will undertake to sell such a phone - they really do not like VoIP, especially popular ones like Skype or Google Talk. And if it’s not “taken”, the operator can still be offended. And since the telephones on their networks are sold by operators, how much - it’s completely impossible for manufacturers to quarrel with them. If the user really wants to, let him install the application and enjoy any VoIP health. But to preinstall something is sedition. (Yes, in Nokia smartphones on S60 SIP has been supported since time immemorial - but you should first dig it out, and then try its mood). Someone goes even further: Microsoft, for example,

    From the point of view of the operators, the Nokia N900 is worse than the dual-sim phone. The N900 out of the box supports Skype, Gtalk, SIP, Ovi chat, Jabber (the set can be expanded - more on that below) - but these services are not implemented as separate applications that need to be launched from the menu, but as standard system components that boot at startup, and are always ready to go, along with traditional voice and messaging services. Moreover:

    1. All VoIP and IM accounts are created and edited in one section of the “Settings”.

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    2. A single center of activity and status is provided for all services. You can enter a status message and enable the display of coordinates (accurate to the city, district or street). The N900 keeps connecting to all accounts at once.

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    3. During dialing, you can select the type of call: cellular or VoIP.

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    4. When connected to a service (for example, Skype), the N900 loads a list of contacts (along with avatars) and displays it in the main notebook. Next to the contact, his status is displayed ("online", "offline", not available). Contacts from different services can be filtered in the "Groups" tab. User accounts (UIN, ID, etc.) in all services can be added to his main contact - so that there is no mess. (True, I have not yet checked whether these fields are sucked in when synchronizing contacts).


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    5. All IM chats are displayed and stored in the general list of messages along with SMS.

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    6. The standard set of services can be expanded using plug-ins. I installed the Pidgin protocols plugin for Conversations and Contacts (AIM, GaduGadu, ICQ, MSN, QQ, Sametime and Yahoo) and the Twitter plugin for Conversations and Contacts (you can’t write regular tweets, you can only reply, but it loads a list of followers and all replays).

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    7. When activating an Ovi chat account, the smartphone also launches the Ovi Share content exchange service. By the way, it’s very convenient.

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    Of course, with the N900 you can not only make VoIP calls, but also receive calls.

    Unfortunately, it is impossible to launch multiple accounts of one service (for example, two SIP accounts) at the same time on the N900. In addition, the smartphone does not support video chats in any of the services. Well, and the battery is eating it all up - Mama Do not Cry.

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