Apple iPhone Top 5 applications vs. Nokia N900

One of the key success factors for Apple iPhone has been the unprecedented volume of it’s application landscape. Developers have wholeheartedly embraced the iPhone OS by creating thousands of free and paid applications. As usually goes along with huge quantities, quality is often lacking and iTunes app store has its share of useless space wasting crapola, but there are some great gems in the sea of poop too.

Below we are listing five key applications for Apple iPhone and comparing their functionality to the Nokia N900 counterparts. Obviously there are no production-ready versions of N900 device or software available yet, but information is gathered from the launch sessions, hands-on videos and other sources in Maemo community. In case there are no clear counterpart existing yet on Maemo, we have elaborated on potential open-source & desktop Linux solutions.

This article is the first pass on our application comparisons between mobile platforms, we are planning to continue the storyline with e.g. Symbian, WinMo and Android application landscapes. Deeper and more detailed application analyses will be published when the N900 devices and software are shipping and available for daily use with real consumer experiences.

Another purpose for the future app comparisons is to help the herds of people now wondering whether to join the Maemo user community or not. If they move from e.g. Symbian to Maemo, what will they lose and what will they win? And what it really takes to move Your mobile life from one mobile platform to another.

TOP 5 Applications on iPhone

1. Evernote

Evernote was originally mainly a text-based note taking tool for desktop computers (tasks, todos…), leveraging the cloud by syncing your notes across all your computers. Since the humble beginnings, Evernote has added a plurality of features like capturing web pages and audio, e-mailing notes to self and/or common repository and scraping pictures for text to create searchable index (great for remembering that great wine you had at dinner (capture bottle label), or the name of the consultant who paid for it (capture business card)). This paradigm of capture anything and everything, index information and execute search has earned Evernote the “External Brain”-notion from the lovers of the application (beloved tech daddy Leo Laporte being one of them).

Evernote has currently clients for Mac and Windows desktop, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile and iPhone. The idea of capture everything and “remember” (index & search) fits perfectly the modern mobile citizen, since you have the mobile device always with you (along with the meat brain). As mentioned, iPhone has the Evernote client. Client usability and integration to e.g. camera is flawless. Evernote is one of the truly useful and must-have gems in the iPhone app landscape.

Currently there are no similarly powerful “external brain”-applications for Maemo. Evernote does have a web version tailored for mobile use, where you can search and browse earlier notes, email notes and edit/create new text notes. In other words, very limited functionality – mainly usable for viewing existing notes. But it is good to remember that N900 powered by Maemo is intended to have desktop grade web experience, which allows for using the full web-based Evernote client instead of the stripped down mobile version. You will be lacking the smooth integration to camera or audio capture, but you can always capture first, send as an e-mail to you Evernote account and go from there (as said, not slick but ok).

Naturally there are very rudimentary note taking and syncing methods available too, like syncing your notes with Mail for Exchange and I’m expecting the Ovi syncing will also include the syncing for text-based notes. Not your “external brain” by any means though.

2. Spotify

Spotify is a music streaming service allowing users to listen to the (very large) catalog of music (and audiobooks) either free with ads or without ads by paying monthly fee (10€/month in Finland). Until now Spotify has had only a desktop client and was differentiating itself from the likes of Rhapsody and Nokia Music with the very slick application and the option for free ad supported listening. Nothing too exciting as such, just a good option among the other similar music services in the market. But then came the game changing mobile client.

OK, maybe Spotify’s iPhone client is not yet a widely loved app for large iPhone masses (like Pandora or last.fm) since it was launched only this week in select European markets. But after a few days of active use, I can safely vouch that Spotify will be one of the TRUE KILLER applications for any mobile music lovers now or in near future. Ability to stream any songs in the catalog is nice, but the killer features are the syncing and sharing of playlists between all your Spotify clients and the ability to locally store your playlist music for offline consumption. In other words, no need to have online connection all the time to stream music, but you can load up your iPhone at home with fast broadband and listen the music anywhere without network traffic as if the songs have always been in your iTunes library. And do it all over again next day with different songs, or whenever you feel like to dip in the millions-strong catalog of Spotify. If your playlist starts to bore, you can always search immediately for new music, listen or add it your local cache wherever you have cellular or WLAN connection.

We haven’t heard of any plans from Spotify to create a Maemo based client, but they have published a first look for Symbian client. We can only hope they see the potential in Maemo platform and create the client for it too. While waiting for it, there’s still some hope for Spotify client to be built by the crafty Maemo developer community. The grunt work is done and a open source Spotify engine called Despotify exists, now public needs someone to port it for Maemo. Open source Spotify engine coupled with a slick UI would make me weep for joy. MaemoDespotify would likely become hugely popular and top the maemo.org download charts for long time.

Other Maemo means for filling the musical hunger in you are the traditional options:

- Move your own files to N900, listen with the media player of choice (Canola, built-in …)

- Stream your own files in local network, or over the internet if you have a handy home server running. Use streaming clients on the device (Canola, built-in, Streamtuner, Mediabox …)

- Listen to internet radios with built-in or 3rd party streaming clients

- As the new browser supports full flash, utilizing flash-based web players on music search sites is also an option (SeeqPod, Skreemr …)

3. Google Maps

No much need to elaborate why Google Maps is a great iPhone app. Smooth GPS integration combined with Google’s great service for maps, directions, searches and e.g. traffic information is gold for any mobile citizen. Lately there are also other mapping apps available for iPhone, TomTom being the best among them. Major caveat with iPhone’s built-in Google Maps is the inability for guided turn-by-turn navigation. It has only textual routing steps, but no real turn-by-turn navigation capabilities expected from a true GPS enabled mapping program. Getting this functionality by e.g. purchasing TomTom lightens your wallet by 99 euros (for Western Europe maps only).

N900 comes built-in with Ovi Maps. Functionality-wise it is at least on par with the Google Maps, while having also the true turn-by-turn navigation capabilities. Maps are free, but you need to purchase a license (on need basis for e.g. one day or week) for voice navigation. Often Nokia bundles one year’s license for free with the their devices, but this depends on the market and reseller/operator. In Finland, pre-order for N900 does not include navigation license, but you can move existing license from your earlier Nokia device.

4. Stanza

E-books are the future. At least when considering the amount of different e-book reader launches from various companies in the last months. E-book reading falls mainly in two categories: larger dedicated e-readers and e-reader applications in mobile devices. I personally prefer larger dedicated readers, currently having iLiad and Kindle in heavy use. But there are a large group of people reading books on smaller screens, iPhones or other smartphones. On the iPhone, best application hands-down is the Stanza. Free application with great usability and easy integration to desktop for moving the files between devices. Stanza has wide support for multiple file formats, including ePub (hopefully the future standard for all e-books), PDF, Mobipocket and MS Reader. Interestingly enough, Stanza does not support Kindle format even though Amazon bought Stanza earlier this year. For Kindle format books, you still need the Kindle app for iPhone, which is ok but not Stanza quality. Kindle app has one great feature though, syncing between the Kindle Reader and the Kindle app: read a book on the big Kindle, continue from the same page automatically in the Kindle app on iPhone

On Maemo, there’s one e-book reader above all: FBREader. A ported application with support for multiple file formats like ePub, html, plain text, fb2 and others. Usability is not great, but no major issues either. Gets the job done and has lots of devoted users. Major functionality gap is the lack of support for any DRM, so the commercial sources for e-books are limited.

5. Tweetie

Twitter is all the hoot now. And for good reasons too. People need to twitter whenever or wherever they are, and thus there’s a great need for good mobile client. On the iPhone, there’s dozens of clients, most famous trio being Twitterific, Tweetie and Tweetdeck for iPhone. Current leader of the pack is Tweetie, but as new client versions are released continuously by all vendors, top spot is changing often. Twitter as such has quite limited set of features and thus the quality of the client depends more on the UI, usability and integration to 3rd party apps like URL shorteners, picture and video services for Twitter.

Good news is that on N900, your tweet feed will not trickle down. Mauku is the current top client for twitterholics in Maemo community. I’m also expecting many new clients to arrive at the scene, exploiting the capabilities of the new Maemo dashboard, notifications and “always-on” features. Probably the best Symbian application ever to-date, Gravity twitter client, would be very welcome on the N900! And it is always good to remember the desktop-grade performance of the N900 browser, so utilizing great web-based twitter services like Seesmic Web is always an option.

Which popular iPhone applications or their functionalities would You like to see on N900 and Maemo from the day one? Which services or applications are fundamental for Your mobile citizenship? Please share your thoughts.

Are You a Maemo developer with exciting applications ready or in development, please share with the readers either in the comments section or directly contacting us at MaemoNews.com.