Video: Breaking the law with the Nokia N900 and Bit Torrent

Staska from Unwired View lives in Lithuania and the poor guy can’t get the latest TV shows and movies from America, so he has to resort to piracy. I do the same thing from here in Finland, but to be honest even when I was living in America I pirated the living hell out of everything since I didn’t have a TiVo. Anyway, back to Staska, he was one of the lucky ~ 300 people to receive a Nokia N900 from the Maemo Summit earlier this month. He installed Transmission, a bit torrent client, clicked on a link to a torrent file, downloaded it, and bada boom, he hit play and it worked.

There are a few bugs. In the beginning of the video he says that N900 has no unRARing software available. RAR files are what pirates at the highest level of the scene, higher than even top sites, use to share files due to their robust integrity checks. RAR software is free, open source, and available for all platforms, so why the hell isn’t it on the Nokia N900? Lots of the torrents I grab are nothing more than a collection of RAR files. Speaking of torrents: Transmission hauls ass, downloading at over 700 KB/s, even peaking at 2.25 MB/s, but you pay for this. When Transmission is open and doing what it does best, breaking the law, it makes the N900 almost unusable. He does all of this over WiFi of course, and it absolutely slaughters the battery: a single 380 MB episode consumed about 20% of the battery in roughly 30 minutes. Worst thing about all of this, Staska admits this is highly unstable, and at one point his N900 crashed so hard he had to pull out the battery. What’s good is that this can all be fixed in software, but how long will it take is anyone’s guess.

After all is said and done, one of the most beautiful things in the world happens: the Nokia N900 plays back an XviD file natively. It’s wonderful that all of this is possible, but really, are you going to kill your battery just to pirate something on the go?

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

matt

Well Transmission is still in a beta, I wonder if throttling it would help much?
Mr Bob Anon

Ok, now I’m annoyed buddy.

You ignorance shows you don’t know much about the N900 predecessors.

The N810 not only has BT applications, but also rar software aswell. AND it can play the 350mb files PERFECTLY.

It’s just a matter of porting it from the old meamo to the new one! Or from desktop linux to the meamo linux.

So please don’t complain, about such and such an application is missing!

If it is missing get involved in the community and help to create one!
Stefan Constantinescu

Thanks for the … update? Anyway, I review mobile phones, so you’re right about my lack of knowledge about the N900 predecessors. Maemo was never really interesting until now.
M

windows mobile also has torrent/nzb downloading with unrar software and xvid playback,
Chris P

As do all smartphones (well S60/Android).
M

android plays xvids?
that’s news to me
Waset

Its amazing !
,,,,,
Skyler

Meaemo wasn’t interesting until now??? I assume you mean the devices, since Maemo came out 2 years before the first iPhone. But even the devices (although not GSM connected) were still interesting. You still can’t video chat on the iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch (if you want to make that comparison), but the N800 had that ability (on Google Talk and Gizmo5). It also had the abilty to multitask, play FLAC files (for music audio purists) and could use your mobile phone’s bluetooth connection for 3G data over a DUN connection (something the iPod touch still can’t do). And even the first Maemo device (the 770) had a 800×480 display, while MOST every “smart” phone still piddles along with a QVGA (320×240) or WQVGA (400×240) display. To think Maemo was ever uninteresting is ridiculous.
JonLe3

You need to relax Skyler.

He stated a very clear reason. He reviews MOBILE PHONES not Nokia INTERNET TABLETS. What other mobile phone do you know runs Maemo? Previous internet tablets were not phones, they were tablets.

So therefore, yes, maemo did not interest him until now since it was never a platform for mobile phones until the n900 and he obviously reviews mobile phones.

Give him a break.
Aaron

So can the n900 play flac files then?
Stefan Constantinescu

No clue, anyone have a comment?
Tejs

S60v5(N97, N97-mini, Satio and more) doesn’t play xvid/divx.
Windows Mobile Phones can play those files with third-party software – N900 does it natively meaning out of the box.
Android doesn’t play xvid/divx.
Furthermore there is now subtitle support for the N900s mediaplayer which to my experience works perfectly.
Finally the N900 has tv-out which a lot of high-end phones are lacking these day. With the N900 it is possible to download an episode of your favorite tv-show and then hook it up to a nearby tv to share with the rest of the world. I my self have actually already used that a couple of times and I must say it it pretty amazing.
Pigsy

Flac? You need the Ogg download (from Multimedia category)
anymouse

You can add new repositories and technically any linux software can be compiled on it if needed since Maemo5 is a Linux distribution. This phone believe it or not is a very powerful tool.