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We figured we’d save the best for last with Web Browsing on the Nokia N900 as the final chapter in our Introducing Maemo 5 Series.
And boy, Maemo 5 can seriously handle Internet Browsing. Here’s a more detailed look at it.
Just to give you an introduction to it, the Web browser on Maemo 5 is powered by “Mozilla technology” and features full Adobe Flash 9.4 support and Full screen browsing. The browser is based on MicroB, which is basically the same as Firefox. Hence, any site that works on the desktop version of Firefox, will pretty much work on the Maemo 5 Browser too. It honestly is the most powerful browser I’ve used on any Mobile device. Which is really saying something.
As such, the N900 could handle any website I threw at it, loading the full website fine. No mobile version needed here folks. Ofcourse if you’re on a limited dataplan this might hurt a bit because websites do not serve mobile versions to the N900′s browser.
It also has full flash support, with no slowdowns or lag at all. This means sites like YouTube, Miniclip, Hulu, etc work fine.
Tap on the”Web” icon in the Main Menu, and that’s where all the Magic starts happening.
You’ll be greeted with the following screen by default.
By default the N900′s browser loads up your Bookmarks when you open the Web Browser, but you can change this to a Homepage if you’d want to.
You can choose to view details of any Bookmark if you’d need to.
And you can also import Bookmarks in, or move them around.
At this point you can either tap on one of the bookmarked sites to open them up, or start typing on the N900′s keyboard to enter in a website address.
You’ll see the website begin to load (pretty quick from our experience), with a tiny bar at the bottom toolbar as your loading progress indicator. You can tap the red “x” symbol to stop loading if you’d wish to.
A second or two later (depending on your Internet speed) you should see the full website displayed. Like here’s what ZCJ looks like in the N900′s browser.
The web browser automatically goes to fullscreen when a website fully loads, while the bottom toolbar disappears. Underneath.
You can touch and drag anywhere on the screen to move around the website. There’s kinetic scrolling everywhere too, so you can flick the screen in a direction to go in the opposite direction faster.
To get out of Fullscreen ‘mode‘ you can tap the screen once to make a tiny icon appear at the bottom right side of the screen. Tapping that icon, takes you out of Fullscreen.
As you can see, the UI is very clean and actually quite intuitive. More actions are accomplished using the toolbars at the top and bottom of the screen.
For example, the top toolbar has an icon to switch browser windows (or applications), a clock to tell you the time, connection and battery status indicators. There’s also the page title and an X icon to close the window. If you tap the Page Title, you’ll get more options.
You can choose to open a new window,reload (refresh) the page, find text, save the page, view any downloads, see page details, and open the browser options menu.
Downloads show you any on-going downloads.
Page details gives you more details…. about the page. The Browser options are worth checking out though.
You can Adjust your view, check out your Add-ons.
Clear your Private Data.
Or check out your Browser Settings.
Here you have a couple more intrinsic options for the Browser, such as Enabling Javascript, Password Saving. Or if you’d want the toolbars to be visible always, you can disable “Open initially in full screen“.
The Toolbar at the bottom has the URL entry field and a ‘plus’ icon which brings up some more related options.
You can choose to add the current page as a bookmark, subscribe to it’s feed, or set it as a shortcut on your Desktop.
This allows you quicker access to the website, if you’d want that.
There’s also a back button that opens a visual history screen similar to the one in the iPhone browser.
This is your recent browsing history though, and you can navigate from website thumbnail to thumbnail. You can also view your complete browsing history.
Here you can see a detailed list of what you’ve been checking out the last couple days.
Now coming to the page itself, when you first load a site, the browser fits the page to the screen width. This might be fine for some sites, but for most pages you will want to zoom in.
And there’s three ways to do that. You can either double tap a bunch of text, which zooms in on it and fit’s it to the screen. Otherwise you can also smoothly zoom in or out with the hardware volume keys on the N900.
But the more ‘fun‘ method, is to press and hold anywhere on the screen and rotate you fingertip clockwise to scroll in or counterclockwise to scroll out. The browser can re-flow text at any zoom level so that’s never a problem.
But that’s not the only gesture that works on the Maemo 5 Browser. You can also drag you finger from off screen on the right towards the screen to bring up the visual history. Likewise, dragging from off the screen on the left, towards the screen, will make an arrow icon appear in the bottom right corner of the screen indicating that you are in “Hover Mode”.
Hover mode allows you to “hover” over items, such as flash related games, etc that would require it. It’s also used to Copy-Paste text within or from the browser, but that’s a rather unnecessarily complex method.
Speaking of that, you can also Long Press anywhere on the screen. A long press is basically the equivalent of right-click on desktop computers. It brings up a menu that has different options depending on where on the page you long press. Things like saving the page, adding it to bookmarks, etc.
To make browsing even more easier on the N900, the browser does support a couple keyboard shortcuts like :
Also while you’re in Hover mode,
Ctrl + Shift + P Takes a screenshot (which can be used outside the browser too)
Then there’s the basics like :
Since the version 2.2009.51-1 N900 firmware, you now have a “secret” portrait browsing mode in Maemo 5. You can enable this by pressing Ctrl+Shift and the letter “O”. Once you’ve enabled this, the display will switch from landscape to portrait when you close the keyboard and orient the N900 vertically. But this mode, admittedly, does have a couple limitations, which is why it’s not “officially” there. You cant enter text, or view your history. You cant even go back or forward. Likewise you cant longpress, or use any of the gesture shortcuts.
But you can still tap and open links, and zoom in/out. Portrait mode is great for browsing one handed, when you’re in a crowd or situation where you only actually have one hand available.
Here’s a short video overview of Web Browsing on the Nokia N900. Just to give you a better idea :
You might have heard this plenty of times before, in other reviews of the N900. But we have to say it, the Nokia N900 definitely has the best mobile browser out there. No compromises at all. It’s this single fact that’s really gotten us to love Maemo 5 so much.
Have any questions about the Nokia N900′s Maemo 5 MicroB Browser ? Something we missed ? Do let us know in the comments section below y’all !
Clinton is currently based in New Delhi, India and is executive editor for UnleashThePhones. He is responsible for all editorial decisions, and covers all forms of Mobile and mobile-related accessories.
Cj is addicted to caffeine, social media, and technology. Always up for a good conversation, you can reach him through the contact form, his website, on Google Plus 
or on Facebook or Twitter: Follow @clintonjeff
I'm highly considering getting this phone, but can any1 tell me if you're able to download things from the maemo browser on the n900. Say from sites like rapidshare or mediafire?
[...] Introducing Maemo 5 (Part 12): Web Browsing on the Nokia N900 … [...]