The next generation of N-Series is here, the diamond in the rough, the jalapeno of the mobile world. Why a jalapeno you ask, the bane of the spice world? Is it a chilli or a pepper, neither for it is both it is THE chilli pepper, in the same way that the Nokia N900 is not your regular smartphone nor is it an internet tablet, it is a powerful fusion of both, creating one of the best mobile Internet tablet phones around.

From the offset, you can tell the N900 follows the same vein as the N86, N97 and the Mini. But, don’t be fooled, for this is no ordinary N-series handset. Take the jalapeno, the name alone causes difficulty, pronunciation is the problem normally down to lack of knowledge, the Nokia N900 isn’t all too dissimilar. You see the big N, and automatically think of its predecessors, and that’s the biggest mistake right there, because if you take the time and do your research you will find out that this is the N-series revolution, Nokia have taken this party to the next level.

Before we delve into the fiery underbelly of the Nokia - Maemo union, we need to address the standout feature, its size. The Nokia N900 comes in at a 110.9 x 59.8 x 18mm, that’s a bit chubbier than the N97. Weighing 181g it’s definitely not one for the weak, but you know what they say, Big is Beautiful. Once you’ve got the Nokia N900 in your hand, the chunkiness becomes part of its charm. The sleek design and simplistic styling deceives even the keenest of fat-phone haters. The matt plastic coupled with glossy front screams sophistication, until you get the fingerprint messiness, but that’s sorted with a quick swipe of a cloth, or sleeve! Taking top spot as the head of the N-series clan calls for suitable improvements, the first Nokia handset to have a wide VGA display should do it, along with being only the second smartphone to support 16m colours. Yep that’s a good start.

And so we move on. As we do so often with our friend the jalapeno we look past the smooth, inviting flesh and leap into the scorching seeded pit. Here we find the biggest difference between the N900 and its fellow N-series buddies, the operating system. Nokia has opted for Maemo 5.0. It’s simple to use and revolves around the idea of simplicity and usability. There are 3 levels, the homepages, of which you have 4 to play with. Each is fully customisable, leaving plenty of space for widgets, bookmarks, favourite contacts and RSS feeds. Naturally, there’s the menu bringing you all the apps that you haven’t chosen to splatter across the homepages. Unlike so many smartphones nowadays, the menu has no scroll feature, but there is a ‘more’ option to access those apps that Nokia deemed less important and put on a second page. Finally, the go-between, task manager, desktop viewer, what ever you want to call it. It holds all the windows that are active on the phone, whether it’s the music player, half written message or web browser it stores them here so you don’t forget they’re open.

Next stop multimedia. The Nokia N900 is no one trick pony, nor is it a multimedia masterpiece. What it offers is a decent performance across a range of different areas. The 5megapixel camera is standard inventory, its Carl Zeiss certified, and has loads of different settings to help capture the perfect image as well as dedicated modes for shooting. The image quality is pretty good, placing it firmly in the middle of the 5mp rankings. The music player does what it says. Perfect if you want a no-nonsense player without all that battery draining, distracting eye-candy. The FM radio transmitters a quirky feature, allowing you to stream music from the phone to an fm radio at a frequency of your choice, the signal strengths pretty good too. Where the N900 does excel, is in the video department. When the Nokia eggheads began creating the multimedia section, movie playback was at the forefront of their plans. The N900 can handle a number of different file formats, including DivX and XviD. There’s even a kickstand at the back providing optimum viewing on the VGA widescreen. Better still, you can even catch up with films outside, as images on the N900 are ridiculously clear, even in sunlight.

Finally, we get to the core of the Nokia N900 hidden deep within the sizzling centre is the main priority, connectivity. The N900 is all about the crossover between Internet tablet and mobile phone. With this in mind Nokia has crammed every connectivity option into the handset including, Infared, Bluetooth, Wi Fi, USB, GPRS, EDGE, 3G with HSPA. There’s also a memory card slot, which we expect to be used predominantly as a connectivity option, what with the N900 already offering a whopping 32GB of onboard storage. The next tablet achievement is the web browser. The Mozilla-based browser provides the closest thing to a desktop experience and renders every website perfectly. The pan and zoom functions are easy to use with a simple tap or swipe and multiple pages can be opened in new windows – all of which are stored in the task manager. Saving the best ‘til last, the most important feature… Full Flash. The N900 comes with full Adobe flash 9.4, and get this there’s even an upgrade on the way for Flash 10. It’s the web surfers dream.

The Nokia N900 is unlike anything else that’s currently on the market. It’s the first Nokia handset to really stretch the boundaries between Phone and Tablet. Which category it falls into is still unknown; it’s the same with our spicy friend, what is the jalapeno? Scientists say fruit, consumers say vegetable. Tech junkies want a tablet; consumers will go for a phone. Either way, the Nokia N900 definitely has something for everyone.