Review and technology

Nokia's Big Baby
We do not mind devices with a bit of heft, but seriously, the Nokia N900 is a rugby fullback beside ballerinas. Check the new iPhone 4G: slim; the HTC Evo, slim; the SonyEricsson Xperia X10, slim. And we honestly would not make a huge fuss if the Nokia N900 was brilliant.

The Maemo operating system powering it is certainly quite smooth and responsive, but is also its biggest problem. Maemo unfortunately will not be used on too many Nokia devices; and while the Linux underpinnings of the device make it relatively easily to port applications between Maemo and Google's Android, the application environment for Maemo is currently quite weak.

And the N900 lacks multi-touch. Yes, the Firefox browser onboard is quite nice, but, at this price point, we could go in for a decent Android device. At least until the Nokia N8 comes along.

• Pros: The best Nokia device available today. Maemo operating system responsive.
• Cons: Big, bulky, overpriced, lack of applications
• Price: Rs 30,639

Loud and Clear!
Turn up the volume on this new television from Onida and it's like a jack-hammer inside your brain. A 1,000 watts of audio output is a lot, add a woofer and you're talking Boeing 747 take-off levels of noise. Well, almost.

On a positive note, the set comes with Onida's impressive 'iPLAYON' technology which plays back most digital formats, including Xvid and DivX. This should please those who scour the Internet for content.

It scores on other fronts as well— good contrast and picture, Full-HD playback and easy to set up.

• Pros: It's loud. And it plays back several digital video formats
• Cons: It's loud. Very loud
• Price: Rs 33,900

Application
An application that actually reads out your e-mail while you are at the wheel!

This application for Android, BlackBerry and iPhone devices is a text-to-speech convertor. If you are driving and get a text message or e-mail, it will read it out for you. Using technology developed by iSpeech, the application gives excellent voice quality and readout.

However, all this goes for a toss if you are receiving text messages with words in a regional language in them. Using it on an Android device is fairly easy, though the 'free' version has very limited capability and reads out only 250 characters per message — enough for most texts but not nearly enough for e-mails. The 'Pro' version costs $30 for a lifetime licence. It would have been nice if the application did a 'speech-to-text' conversion for you to reply.

You can, however, auto-reply using some pre-set messages. Do remember to switch off the application when you get to work or if you have company. You don't want certain texts being heard by everyone after all.