Introducing Maemo 5 (Part 2): Media on the Nokia N900

One more thing that Maemo 5 handles very well, is Media.

And this makes the Nokia N900 a media powerhouse.

Why do I say this ? Read on to know.

Tap on the “Media Player” icon on the Maemo 5 Main Menu, and this is what you’ll see :

With 32 GB of onboard memory, you can really fill these sections up. There’s a Music, Video and Internet Radio app, and a shortcut to Shuffle all songs.

You’ll also notice at the bottom of the screenshot, you’re able to connect to any Computer via Wifi, and play Media from there too, if you’re allowed to access it.

Let’s look at each of them, shall we ?

Music :

Maemo does a great job at handling Music. It supports a whole bunch of Audio formats such as MP3, WMA, WAV, eAAC+ (and I’m pretty sure there’s Ogg support either coming or available with 3rd Party). Not too bad, eh ?

Tap on the “Music” icon and this is what you’ll see. By Default, Maemo 5 sorts your Music according to Album. But you can change this to sort it byArtists, All Songs, Genres or Playlists.

I prefer Albums as my default, because it nicely shows off the Album art.

Tap on the Album, and you’ll see all the songs you have listed under that Album name (or under that Artist if you’ve sorted by Artist).

I only had one song by Madonna called “Celebration”. If you have more, you can choose to play them according to the order they’re listed, or shuffle them to play randomly.

Tap on the name of the song, to play it.

When it starts playing, you’ll see the screen above.

As you can see, the Album Art for the song is nice and large towards the left side (there’s a default Image for no album art). At the top you’ll see the number of the song (if it’s part of a playlist or album), the Name of the Song, a progress bar (which allows you to drag it to listen to the song at any point of time), time elapsed and time left, name of the artist, and the name of the album.

At the bottom of the screen is the usual Media icons. Play/Pause, Forward/Rewind. Next to it is the Shuffle Icon, Repeat Icon and the Volume Icon. You can adjust the volume either by tapping the icon, or using the Volume keys on the N900.

You can go back by tapping the “back” icon on the top right of the screen.

There are also more functions available if you tap on the center bar at the top of the screen.

As you can see, you can choose to start broadcasting this song via the N900′s built in FM Transmitter, Clear the Playlist, or Save the current Playlist.

Coming to the FM Transmitter specifically, the N900 does allow you to broadcast music. You can choose an FM frequency (between 88 to 107 MHz) and tune your radio into that frequency to listen to it.

This is very useful in some situations. Say your car only has a radio, you can load up your N900 with tunes, broadcast and tune into it on your car radio.

Of course, it goes without saying, that since the N900 is such a Multitasking monster, you can leave the Music/Media player in the background while you do other things.

Not a problem at all. Very cool if you prefer to have your music playing in a game, or something along those lines.

There’s also a cool Homescreen Widget that allows you to use the basic functions of the Music Player right from your Homescreen.

Play/Pause, Next, Back. The basic stuff.

Video:

Maemo 5 has out-of-the-box support for RealVideo, MP4, AVI, and XviD/DivX video formats. And they play back pretty effortlessly. I dont know why Nokia doesnt highlight this, but I was pleasantly suprised when the N900 played a 624 x 352px Xvid Video with absolutely no lag or loss in quality. Very Impressive.

Tap on the “Video” icon in the Media player and you’ll see something like the screenshot above. All the videos you’ve taken with your device, or downloaded/transfered to your device, are listed here in a Grid pattern with their Thumbnails.

You can also choose to arrange them by date or by catergory.

At that point all you have to do is tap on a video to play it.

The video plays fullscreen but tap anywhere on the screen once, and you’ll see the media controls appear. You’ll see the basic rewind, forward and Play/Pause icons on the screen. At the bottom are Share, Delete and Volume Icons. And a Progress bar letting you know how much time has gone by, and left.

As you can guess, the Share Icon allows you to share your video by Bluetooth, Email or Upload it to a service, etc.

Internet Radio :

The N900 has an FM Radio but you’ll need to install a 3rd party app to use it. But Maemo 5 has an Internet radio application built in too.

As you can see, there’s a whole load of Radio stations that you can listen to, provided you have a stable enough Internet Connection.

You can also choose to broadcast this using the FM Transmitter, or Bookmark a Radio Station if you like it.

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Here’s a short overview video of Media on Maemo 5 :

So as you can see, Maemo 5 can really handle Media.

Have any questions about Media on the N900 ? Something we missed ? Do let us know in the comments y’all !