I just got a Nokia N900, smuggled into Nicaragua by a friend. I have had it for less than half a day but I want to toss out my first impressions. Wow!

My wife has a 770 and I had an 800 until it disappeared. I want to say stolen but I can't figure out how so disappeared is better. Both were impressive. They are well-built and do what they say they are supposed to do. But, the N900 is a whole new ballgame.

It is the first to be a regular phone as well as a Linux-based computer with WiFi. If you just want a phone, it is too big and has too short a battery life. But, if you want a phone, a PIM and a Linux-based computer that will connect to most anything, it is a very cool unit. Yes, it is bigger than a phone but it is not bigger than a PIM and it seems to be all three things very well integrated into one package.

Just going to the package manager (called an applications manager) and looking at what is available for it right now is impressive. It starts on the low end with an applet that lets you use the flash LEDs as a flashlight, for all of you who want a not very powerful $500 flashlight, and goes up through big applications familiar to Open Source software users such as mplayer. Additionally, the interface to look for and install these applications is a no-brainer.

Before I bought it, the on thing that bothered me was that they went back to a micro-SD card for additional memory. The reality is that the system comes with 32GB of flash with about 25GB available for user storage. That really should be enough for a while and with USB connections to the outside world, backups are downright easy.

The software looks really good but, even if it sucked, that can and will change. The important thing is will the hardware do the right thing. Having used the 770 and 800, this guy just looks like perfection. For example, the 800 had a pop-out camera that could be rotated to use to take photos or as a web cam when you were chatting. The N900 has two cameras. One low-res one pointing at you and a high-res one with flash for taking photos. It just looks and feels cleaner.

One of my concerns was whether it would have any problems working here. Well, I carved the SIM chip out of my $20 Nokia phone (yes, Enitel here glues them in which makes zero sense) and stuck it in the N900. It came up in Spanish (clearly from something in the SIM from the Enitel network) but localized for the US. A couple of clicks later it was in English, localized for Latin America. Worked like a phone as expected.

Just for laughs, I pulled up the web browser. It connected to Enitel using GPRS. Not thinking, I started downloading some stuff and quickly ate up my C$100. I forgot that Internet usage is not by time but by byte. But, it worked. Now I need to get myself prepared to go to Enitel and try to get postpaid phone and 3G service rather than my current pay as you go, phone only service.