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Today, Nokia stands at a fascinating fork in the road. Let's consider the facts: first, and most unavoidably, the company is the largest manufacturer of cellphones in the world by a truly sobering margin. The kind of stark dominance Nokia has built over its competition certainly isn't toppled overnight, but what might be the company's biggest asset has turned out to be its biggest problem, too: S60. In the long term, running two platforms threatens to dilute Nokia's resources, cloud its focus, and confuse consumers, which means it could take another direction: break clean from Symbian, develop Maemo into a refined, powerhouse smartphone platform, and push it throughout the range. Our goal here is to test the N900, of course, but fundamentally, the question we tried to keep in the backs of our minds for this review is this: could Maemo ultimately become the platform of Nokia's future? Let's dig in.

The Nexus One. In the modern climate of hyped (and over-hyped) smartphone launches, Google's official entry into the phone-sales game has excelled in a department where many find difficulty: generating legitimate excitement. Of course, long before the name Nexus One or the recent bounty of pictures and details existed, the very concept of a "Google Phone" had been ingrained in the public conscience, predating even the Open Handset Alliance and Android itself; the company dabbled in the concept of direct sales through its offering of the Android Dev Phones 1 and 2 (alias Ion), but this time, it's a public retail ordeal, not a couple of one-off developer specials. The genuine-article Google Phone is finally here -- for better or worse.

The year is 1999. Bill Clinton is the President of the United States, gas is 94 cents a gallon, Bondi Blue iMacs are a staple in dorm rooms across the country, and Microsoft is trying to bring the desktop Windows experience to the pocket, pushing its Palm-size PC concept (after Palm had quashed the original "Palm PC" branding) on a world still feeling jilted by the failures of the Apple Newton. 3Com subsidiary Palm and its heavyweight licensee Handspring have figured out something interesting about the still-nascent PDA market, though: people like simplicity. If an electronic organizer does what it says it's going to do, keeps your information in sync with your PC, runs for forever and a day on a single set of batteries, and does it all with a minimum of fuss, people will buy. It's an exciting, challenging, and rapidly-changing era in the mobile business.