For the last 2 days I’ve been re-familiarising myself with the Nokia N810 and using it as an online presence, notification tool, microblogging tool and communicator. I’ve got the email client hooked up to Google via IMAP, Mauku tracking twitter, the built in chat client connected to Gtalk and OVI, the built-in Skype client running (voice works too), weather updating on the home page and the RSS reader loaded with feeds. Oh, and because of the very nice sounding audio quality, I’ve been using it as an Internet radio. Canola is loaded with the last.fm plugin and I’ve even considered fitting the car mount and subscribing to the navigation system. Oh, I almost forgot, FBreader is installed now and I’m planning to start reading with it. (Nokia and Amazon should get together for an offering on the Nokia Tablets.) When used in this mode, as a screen-off presence and notification tool, it will last for 7 hours on a single charge. (That’s about 3-times more efficient than the best Intel MIDs.)
There are problems though. Firstly, when you get an interesting RSS entry or tweet and you click through to the URL, the device slows to a crawl on the web and the experiences takes a nosedive. The N810 isn’t a good browsing device at all, despite the good technical capability of the browser. (A proxied browser service like Opera Mini would have been much better for this platform.) The second problem is connectivity. WiFi and Bluetooth are your only choices meaning it’s not really a mobile device. Tethering to a mobile phone for on-the-go usage will give you battery life issues on the phone although spare batteries for mobile phones are generally quite cheap now so if you’re able to share your phones data connection easily, this is an option.
I love the N810 design, enjoy the keyboard and predictive text input, am impressed by the way Nokia, Maemo and the community has remained active on this platform and because of those advances in software, consider the N810 to be more useful now than it was when I first tested it over a year ago. It’s still not worth the 450 Euro I paid for it, mainly because technology has moved forward since then, but it is definitely worth what Expansys are asking for it in the UK now.
This is going to sound like an out-and-out advertisement but believe me, I had started using the N810 before I had any idea that Expansys were going to drop the price to just 180 pounds. That’s just over 200 Euro at today’s exchange rate. Even with being limited to slow or mobile-site browsing and having to tether for your out of hotspot experiences, its a bargain.
It’s very rare that I put affiliate links in news items but I’m going to do it here because this is a great entry-level into the world of Internet communications and microblogging.
Nokia N810 on offer – Expansys UK. £179.99
Tip: InternetTabletTalk is the place to find the Maemo and Nokia Tablet community once you’ve made your purchase. Try Android, Ubuntu and other software stacks if you get bored with Maemo!
More info on the N810 including specs and links, in the product information page.
You missed the real land rush which was a couple of weeks ago. PC World were offloading the n810 for just £80 in store price only. n800 was just £40!
http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/318046/nokia-n810-internet-tablet-79-97-cl/
Holy crap. That’s worth it just for use as a twitter tool.
Steve
http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26475
http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25752
two ways to use webkit rather then microb as browser.
the first one is a full alternative bowser, but sadly it cant be set as default (yet)…
the other a replacement engine for the built in browser, altho the main dev seems to have gone burnout, so someone else needs to pick up the stick…
btw, what pqges are browsing that will send the browser to a crawl? turn of flash unless needed and you avoid those pesky ads…
Grabbed 2 at the time! Being a gadget fiend I am struggling a little to make it fit in my life – but with such superb battery I will a way. I got one for the Missus who is not very techy and she loves it, I set up bluetooth connectivity to s60 and she surfs all the time on it.
In summary what I do like is:
– extended battery performance – puts many other devices to shame
– quick start up – great for offline blogging
– connectivity setup options are rock solid, nice touch how internet connect fires up bluetooth itself without you having to enable it.
– video – for someone who uses iPhone and Nokia s60 a lot I like the n810s ability to handle video streaming no nonsense.
Only issues are over the fact that the linux aspects are not hidden away more – installations and finding apps are not that intuitive. It could have been a killer consumer model if it had a little apple style ux consideration added to it.
Cannot fault it thogh considering I picked it up for 80 squid :-)
I asked my wife how much she thought the N810 was worth before telling her about the offer. She said ‘400 Euro’. WHen I told her it was half that she was suprised!
Steve
this drop in price, alongside nokia’s recent release of a alpha sdk for maemo5 have gotten a lot of people guessing about when the announcement/release of the next tablet will happen.
Is it worth upgrading to an N810 from an N800?
Is it any faster than the N800?
Also, can you still use a Bluetooth GPS on an N810 instead of the internal one? In a car, an external antenna will get a better signal than the internal one.
With a bit of luck this means the N900 (or whatever it’s going to be called) isn’t far off…
Thanks.
I haven’t tried GPS yet (only had it a couple of weeks) The next device will not have Linux based, its the N97 which will be s60v5 and a lovely 32gb under the hood!
The N97 is a different product. the next tablet will still be linux based.
Are you sure there’s another Linux model in the works?
Looks to me that Nokia are gonna *do* a communicator on it – They had series 80 for their communicator line and then with E90 changed the OS and brought it into line with their s60 platform. I’m guessing with the recent announcement of discontinuing the n810 wimax that n97 is the natural successor. Judging from the pictures the similarity is uncanny:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/nokia-unveils-flagship-n97-phone/
Nope, look up Maemo 5
http://maemo.org/news/announcements/first_maemo_5_sdk_release_targeting_platform_developers/
Ok, but what about hardware? Has any new hardware been announced? Nokia also has the Symbian Foundation which is open sourcing the s60 platform.
no new hardware right now, altho people are guessing its right around the corner given the price drop on the N810.
also, people have been looking at the maemo5 source, and trying to guesstimate what kind of hardware its aimed at.
what about data exchange with outlook (win) or similar services on linux computers?
Hmmm, will it do the 3G web stuff (or is it just WiFi that it can use)? I tested the 800 series from Nokia and really liked the units too. I don’t need the GPS at all so always wondered what the price point would be with a unit that did not have it? However, At that price (note – have seen web prices of around $200), then they are hard to resist. Hmmm, maybe there is a price for the GPS maps or a subscription to them (and Nokia bought that tech a while ago, so that is maybe how they make up for the low cost now)?
OFF TOPIC – We need to keep in mind that the Nokia used LCD tech is NOW “old tech”, as of an announcement in the link below. Nokia and others in the Mid and Netbook LCD screen using space will now have to see if they can compete with the 20 hour battery use per charge tech described below?
News Flash:
Pixel Qi had a “product freeze” announcement two days ago. Summertime 2009 will see full mass production of their tech that results in a potential 5 fold increase in battery life (per charge could be 20 hours for a 3 cell battery maybe).
http://pixelqi.com/blog1/2009/02/02/product-freeze/
We shall see if the ARM OEM folks, or Intel OEM folks, are first to market with this 10 inch screen (and the battery saving tech that comes with it)? If Intel and their OEMS are not in this game quickly, and the ARM folks are in this game already, then that will give the ARM folks a real boost, and quickly!
http://www.pixelqi.com/mission Quotes:
“Pixel Qi has a belief on the future of the computing – it’s not about the CPU or the OS – It is about the screen”.
“Instead of focusing on higher speed (more MHz) and larger memory (more GBytes), we work toward new device designs by focusing on displays that we can read, as easily as paper – indoors and out – with battery life measured in days not hours”.
can’t believe i missed that at pcworld… will go and double check tomorrow see if they have any…
for great info check out internet tablet talk as above and maemo.org (the flavor of linux it runs) there are loads of ported apps and a strong user community… or you can force it to auto connect to windows via remote desktop and use it as a remote client..
I saw this and was very tempted. If only there was an easy way to get MS Office compatible products on it I’d buy one.
There is abiword which is compatible with MS Word and also a sheet app but I haven’t had a proper play with these apps. I think you should view the device as an extension of your office rather than a permanent replacement for any part. That way you accept any shortcomings and find solutions for working
For Example I use the maemo wordpress app to make notes, write word docs and compose blogs on the move, I can then *sync* the data in draft form up to my website. From there I can edit/publish/or download back to my desktop machine.
abiword development is in somewhat of a hibernation right now, but gnumeric is indeed available.
another option is to use debian chroot and run openoffice. the dev of that project even used it along with a usb2vga dongle to do a presentation last year.
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