Recently Nokia updated the N900 to the so-called “42-11″ firmware. As before, the kernel version is 2.6.28 compiled for OMAP (ARMEL). It seems that Nokia has done some great improvements in power saving to this kernel. There were also a few software upgrades included in this new firmware, however on my review unit there are still some things that hopefully will be working soon on the units that are shipping.
The battery life has been extended quite a bit, and to my surprise the N900 battery seems to be outlasting my N810 (with a 1500mAh battery versus the N900′s 1350mAh). With this upgrade to battery life, Nokia has one more thing to show off to it’s competitors.
There have also been a few improvements 
to various software applications, most notably Media Player. Now when browsing your albums, you’re greeted with the album art instead of just the album name.
One of the things I’ve been hoping to see before I have to turn in my review unit, is USB-OTG host mode. However the software that was written to make this possible, has not yet been ported (successfully) to the N900. One of the things that makes the Maemo platform (and Linux in general) so successful is that most of the software written for it is open source. That allows developers to look at and use the programming code from similar programs. Doing so means that development work happens relatively quickly since programmers don’t have to start from scratch each time they create a new application. Once the N900 is available to the mass market, I expect there to be an explosion of applications.
