08.06.08
The N810 is seriously hard to beat
I love the Nokia Tablet!
The battery life is amazing and the applications I have installed enable a very rich and capable mobile experience. I am currently sitting in the Toronto airport enjoying a beer (or two) while connected to Boingo enabling me to post this while enjoying streaming last.fm, IM and Mauku.
There are few if any MID / UMPC devices with the power to weight ration of the NIT. I chose the power to weight automotive metaphor because that’s really a key variable. I am definitley interested in what’s happening on the MID / UMPC front, but so far none have appeared to deliver more than 2-3 hours of life in a form factor that fits in your pocket. The netbooks are also interesting devices, but I already have a 3lb laptop for work I carry most everywhere and am definitely not looking to double the weight of my existing ear bag for a less capable device.
The Lenovo X61 I use for work can get close to 5 hours of battery in careful use and that’s awesome, but it’s still too big for every day while mobile tasks. The N810 is intantly on, ready to connect to my phone or an available wifi connection and deliverss most of what I need for information consumption - and creation.
I’ve made this point previously here, but it’s worth repeating, the Nokia Tablet truly is an outstanding ultra mobile product. I find it to be the standard by which I compare new things. Additional CPU capabilities seem great on the surface, but to only be able to consider 2 hours battery life is a joke. The main thing I feel it lacks is an independent cellular connection. That would seriously add some flexibility to my connection options and offer that much more power to an already rocking system.
Technorati Tags: Maemo N810 “internet tablet” MID UMPC Nokia Boingo
Matthew Miller (aka palmsolo) said,
August 6, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Jonathan,
I couldn’t agree more and am “rediscovering” the N810 myself and really falling in love with it again. I was also very pleased to see that my Yahoo! Music unlimited subscription was transferred to Rhapsody so now I get Rhapsody along with Last.fm and think I found my new mobile music platform. The N810 has a lot to offer and I am enjoying it immensely.
Hanno said,
August 7, 2008 at 4:15 am
I remain unimpressed because of its lack of video playback. It has a 800×480 display and a CPU capable of decoding native DVD video, but it can’t play video at its native resolution due to a (imho unwise) hardware design decision.
Pankaj said,
August 7, 2008 at 8:58 am
What are you guys talking about? I own a N810 and I am so dissapointed. When I bought a handheld device carrying linux as its OS, I was expecting hundreds and Hundreds of software ports. Dissapointingly, the only porting action seems to be done by enthusiasts. Why doesn’t Nokia do more porting?
If it isnt too hard to make an application run in diablo, why isn’t nokia pumping out applications day and night? Asking the community to write applications from scratch is such a waste.
There are just a hand ful of games, a hand ful of notes-taking, drawing software - far from what it could be.
Pankaj said,
August 7, 2008 at 9:01 am
A platform is only as good as the applications it runs. That’s why windows is popular. That’s what makes gaming consoles sell. Ironically, that’s what makes linux good!
I am dissapointed at the number of applications available at maemo.
I am dissapointed that N810 can’t do USB networking. That should be such a basic thing, to be able to get internet on N810 using your work computer. An internet tablet should excel at connectivity, that should be No. 1 Priority.
Lancewex said,
August 7, 2008 at 9:32 am
Well, I have the N800 and love it more. I want that hardware keyboard, but can not live without the radio and the 2 SD slots (that I filled with 2 16GB cards). If the N800 could only record FM radio (like my iAudio X5L) I would never ever get rid of it. As it is I carry it with me everywhere. I truly don’t understand why everyone doesn’t carry one of these.
iluvnokia said,
August 7, 2008 at 10:09 am
Running N800 with OS2008 Diarrhea, i mean Diablo.
Fullscreen virtual thumb keyboard was a joy to use on OS2007. Chinook was an unstable piece of crap with broken thumb recognition with a fat and slow Microb browser. OS2007 Opera crashes fast but start back up again fast too (Trick is to read all your opened windows first before you risk closing any, crashes only happen if you try to close a window, my experience).
Battery life has been noticeably shortened compared to OS2007 Bora.
I read slashdot.org , Diablo microb will not crash but will freeze indefinitely when trying to open the 3rd window with 150% magnification, and kill your already shortened battery life while browserd is doing whatever the fuck it’s doing while freezing. The only way is to open a terminal and ‘killall browser browserd’. But after that you cannot surf anymore, you open a new browser window and will be ‘Updating’ constantly, you cannot surf.
Nokia has made an Internet Tablet that cannot surf the Internet.
However, the fullscreen thumb keyboard has much improved, Bora still ‘feels’ better to type, but still good.
Modest supports IMAP gmail well, and it’s fast but im beginning to suspect it only checks mail on startup but doesnt check intervally properly, not sure though.
Combined with Telepathy Haze for MSN messenger (& other various other IMs), it’s even better.
And further combined with a decent fullscreen thumb keyboard, it is pretty awesome.
Microb god damn fuckin sucks though.
Who gives a fuck if it’s open source, I want a good web browser that actually works!
Put opera back up as an option and/or hurry up with a webkit-based browser that also actually works.
Benad said,
August 7, 2008 at 11:32 am
@Hanno: That’s odd… Can’t play videos at native resolution? I’ve encoded myself a few DVDs at 800 pixels wide, widescreen, Xvid and a decent bitrate (enough to fit 2 hours in 800MB) and it plays flawlessly using Mplayer. I was able to play about 4 hours worth of movies during my last trip on a single charge using that. Try using Handbrake and chose Xvid settings, 800 pixels wide, fit on 800MB, and run mplayer from the command-line to get the best speed (”mplayer /media/mmc1/movie.xvid”).
@Pankaj: I installed the Debian chroot ( http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=199639#post199639 ) and the list of software I have now is gigantic, that is the *entire* Debian unstable branch. I myself installed many alternate web browsers, including a few webkit-based ones (I prefer epiphany-webkit).
@iluvnokia: I increased virtual memory to 128MB and sometimes it helps with graphics-heavy sites. Right now, it seems that while the Firefox engine (Gecko?) doesn’t leak memory anymore, it still easily takes tons of RAM to decode graphics. I’d still love to see Opera or a native webkit browser to be able to compare (fairly, epiphany-webkit is still too Gnome-heavy)
Rehan said,
August 7, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I’m intending on replacing my n800 with an iPhone in September. The problem that I can’t get over is the power management. Whenever I pick it up it seems to be discharged (I think that it isn’t turning off WiFi after 10 minutes of no-usage, as it’s supposed to). The next thing to do is charge it, of course, but mine, at least, has to be turned off while charging otherwise the battery runs down _while_it’s_charging_!
On top of that, it seems not to work reliably as a usb storage device. I find the video playback fine and the browser is OK. I don’t mind fiddling around with the software to a certain extent to get it to work properly but the battery issues are beyond the pale.
djs said,
August 7, 2008 at 12:26 pm
they got the hardware right but the ui is terribly inconsistent. why are there 3 different ways to get at a running app (physical button on face, window button on bottom left and app-specific button above that). why are there _any_ tiny desktop style window menus?
nokia - get a clue about simplifying the ui! the iphone, for all it’s closedness has a simple consistent way of getting to apps. stop trying to squeeze a desktop linux ui onto a MID.
and the browser is light years behind the iphone browser in usability, even if it can do flash. website creators are optimizing their sites for the iphone, not microb
Eric said,
August 7, 2008 at 4:37 pm
The n810 has it’s shortcomings, plenty of them, but it’s still one of the more capable devices out there despite those problems. The iPhone is a locked and very restrictive system where battery life and functionality are limited. Andriod is not yet here yet. Most other solutions people kick around are far too big to fit in the pocket.
Nothing can match the pure realestate of 800×480 in your pocket or the longevety of a good 6+ hours of moderate usage.
That being said the device is nowhere even close to it’s potential because of the lack of sound leadership and stewardship from someone, anyone. Nokia seems to be heading up the shotgun approach with no clear direction and the developers are doing what they can just to get apps running. I know Nokia is putting a lot of effort in house to the NIT’s but everyone else is left scratching their heads wondering “what’s up doc?”
Nokia Daily News 08/07/08 | Nokia Daily News said,
August 7, 2008 at 7:30 pm
[…] Maemo Apps - The N810 is seriously hard to beat! add bookmark […]
tz said,
August 8, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Agreed. My previous platform is a small 1024×768 laptop running Ubuntu. I use it for scratchbox and other development, but it is getting old and having occasional problems.
The N810 has displaced most things for the reasons you cite. It fits into my pocket (in fact, I have a pair of pants with a carpenter’s ruler pocket from Duluth Trading which seems made for it). I’m ready to do internet (with my cradlepoint router or at a hotspot).
My iPod is also starting to gather dust since I can’t directly download the podcasts (can they do that on a nonjailbroken iPhone3G?). But my Nokia both downloads and plays. And I can plug in a usb thumbdrive, or ethernet (and I can proxy a wireless connection!). And GPS. And keep my check register on Gnumeric. A swiss-army-knife v.s. a toolbox. And watch non-youtube flash and other flash sites.
It does video, though directly playing a DVD is very choppy (1fps) - yes, a real DVD in an USB drive. The converted ones work as well as the iPod.
Battery life is incredible for its size. I’ve only killed it once (constant GPS + listening to podcast + weather updates on an 8 hour motorcycle ride - it lasted about 6, but I had a second battery and was trying to test this, so I didn’t plug it into a reserve power cell).
And let me give a high complement to Nokia engineers. Bluetooth headsets are transparent as are GPS units. The Wifi manages to stay connected without me noticing. These don’t happen even on newer desktop/laptop Linux distros, or it is far more spotty. So many things “just work”. So do I fidget with my laptop or just listen using the tablet via my headset?
Yes it has limitations and annoyances, but fewer than the Windows computers I’m forced to deal with, and I can usually get it to accomplish any task I need without too much effort.
smackpotato said,
August 8, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I love my nokia n810. It never leaves my bedroom.
LosOutlandos said,
August 9, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I still use my n800 regularly, although, in my eyes, it’s cpu-power isn’t sufficient to be able to browse todays websites comfortably. I’m personally looking forward to the Aigo MID/Gigabyte M528 as a replacement, although I’d probably install Windows XP for more flexibility…
Clayton said,
August 9, 2008 at 11:06 pm
I have a N800 for a few months now. I really enjoy it as a do-almost-anything-and-still-fits-in-my-pocket computer
BUT… For my usage scenario, a video-out would be soooooo much useful. It would let me use it to Powerpoint-like presentations.
Sure that a little more CPU power would be great too. Some times… it’s just impossible to wait for web sites load and render.
After all, it replaced my Samsung Q1 with some advantages - battery life and pocketability.
About the software availability, I agree with Eric: there is just no leadership - like in Jesus-phone side… With all the new netbooks fuzz (and the Google Android), we might have a good momentum to a new portable linux distro. Such appearance would take most of the development resources - and I’m afraid about what could happen with Maemo…
Recent Links Tagged With "n810" - JabberTags said,
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