11 posts tagged “n800”
Nokia released an firmware update for the N800 and N810 last june. It is called Diablo. This firmware contains Seamless Software Update feature and allows future OS upgrades over the 'air' without a need to 'reflash. Same is valid for applications. The most interesting other improvements are those of faster panning in the browser and a better e-mail application. In general touchfinger typing seems wel implemented in the basic Nokia developed applications, as such the N800 is well supported. Minor bugs have been noted when entering web addresses or passwords on occasion, requiring pen based input or a restart of the application.
Several recommended 3rd party applications still struggle with finger touch based input. Pen based text input is a mess. I.e. Gizmo and Skype (3rd party) still don't support touchfinger IM input on the N800. Rather annoyingly. As a result Gizmo found itself dismissed and replaced by a brandnew GoogleTalk account using the built-in chat support that is compatible with most other VOIP and IM servers. It seems to do well over firewalls too. Skype got reinstalled after the firmware upgrade. I require Skype for the occasional VoIP to friends in Far Far Away where the internet connection is not all that good and Skypecopes best when faced with lots of packet lag.
After more than a year I find I use the device mostly as a house device. Mostly a mere backup in case the every in reach N82 (and before the ever present N95) is busy recharging or otherwise unable to perform. When used the N800 plays music or vid's from the house uPnP server, takes/makes VOIP calls, browse the tvguide and checks my RSS feeds. Other applications are neglected, though admittedly to be able to use it as a musical instrument would be very interesting.
I make avid use of my N95 for pictures and the occasional video shot. I noticed of course that the occasional night shot might benefit from a steady hand. More important the longer video shots sometimes causes severe cramps holding the camera steady. I needed a hand, preferable a steady hand.
And a tripod is as steady as those hands come. Originally I found the DT-22 design more suited for the N93(i) than the N95 and was rather sceptical as a N95 utility. Yet others commented favorable on the DT-22 with the N95 and I decided to give it a try. Thus, quickly ordered my doorbell rang a while ago delivering the DT-22, Nokia's universal tripod.
Well time for a closer look and then some silly testing... For those wanting to be sure not to waste any penny for useless gadgets.
The DT-22
In the right picture you can see the telescopic tripod legs in its three different lenghts. The middle length can't really lock into position as do the other two positions, but there is a notch that gives sufficient support to hold the N95 on the tripod. The clamp is visible in the following picture series. Clearly you can see how it unfolds. The screw is on the left:
Maximum inner clamp size is at least 54 mm with sufficient thread remaining to clamp with adequate force. Below you can see the N95 mounted in the DT-22. Since this is a asymmetric distribution there is the preference to tipover in the direction the phone is held. I measured the weight placed on the different leg tips in this situation and got 70, 120 and 160 grams. Which is is a geeky way to say, don't bump the table where you put the tripod-N95 combo on, not even slighly.
It's capable of holding my SonyEricsson w800i phone too, but not my N800. The N800 form factor is inconvenient, which is a pity. It would be great to hold the N800 at a more pleasant viewing height when working with a bluetooth keyboard at a table.
Addenum: I forgot to mention something about the build quality. Well it is excellent and I really mean excellent. Durable wearproof plastic and metal. The only comment I have is that the balljoint is a bit light. There is a slight tendency to sagg holding the N95 in landscape mode.
Yes, yesterday youtube no longer played on the N800. It seems its flash version is considered a too old version. In fact more sites started showing this problem. On the other side emtube is happily chugging away with everything from 'anonymous against scientology' to the latest report from 'Nokia Creative' on my N95 with no problems. I guess the N810 has the same problem with running the same OS-version. Perhaps they should release a non-3G Symbian touch OS version for the N800/N810! That might be very cool indeed and give excellent user feedback on the new USIF
I hope Nokia considers this a wrong to be righted fast. I know they don't own youtube, but youtube support was mentioned...
For now I am holding my breath and am closely watching Nokia's actions. Back to watching the news on my old and trusty N95...
The 32 GB versions of the iTouch and iPhone are announced and we know the SDK kit is coming up real soon now. With the expanded memory and third party software the N800/N810 is getting steep competition. Surely one of the first applications will be web browsing with decent flash support and more. Though I guess it will take several months to a year before the iPhone/iTouch has become a more versatile and interesting platform compared to Symbian/Linux. But so will be the case for Nokia with the Symbian touch interface, perhaps even longer. Future models of Apple with GPS and better cameras will surely claim a chunk out of Nokia's n-series market.
A real battle is coming up and although Nokia holds the market, any company that can take 6% of the mobile phone market in 6 months will provide us consumers with an interesting battle, quick developments and some decent price slashing.
Let the battle begin over MIMD and MIMD-like-phones!
I have a nice collection of DVD's. In fact its too large, too large to fit inside the microSD slot of my N95, too large to fit in the SD-slot of my N800. So obvious some compression is required to change the DVD-discs into a more compact shape that is accepted by the N95 and N800.
Of course having state of the art devices, we want the best viewing quality on all the devices with a single convenient file. Guess what... I ran into the imperfections of life, the universe and everything.
Video format compatibility issues
Now on first sight the N95 and the N800 both have two compatible video formats. The default videoplayers of the N95 and the N800 take in mp4. The N95 can run the stage6 DivX player, the N800 supports mplayer which can handle DivX too and hapily my Philips DVD-player takes DivX, but sadly no mp4. Obvious one would choose to encode the video in a single format on a diskdrive. Here it is where thing go pearshaped and the term 'can play mp4/DivX' means, can play sometimes mp4/DivX. The universe of videofiles has two quircky dimensions. There are file formats, actually called containers, that store compressed video in a certain container format. However the compressed video can be different types of compression formats. And to blur the distinctions there are containers that are called MP4 and compression that is called MP4. The MP4 container format can contain i.e. H.264 compressed or MP4 compressed video.
- The N95's default media player can play a MP4, with H.264 compression with a resolution of 320x240. A maximum bitrate of 1400 kbps is recommended in the forums. It can also handle MP4, with MP4 compression with a resolution 640x480 at 1.4 Mbps (confirmed) or even 3Mbps as is created by the built-in camera application (untested). Wether the N95 actually uses all the 3Mpbs data during playback is doubtful. Playback on the PC tends to give a sharper image. I suspect that the image-quality is hardware decoder limited and more bitrate does not improve the playback on the device above a certain level. Playback on the N95 screen is done at 320x240, playback through the tv-out at 640x480, giving a much better quality than 320x240 encoded video on a tv.
- The N800 is a pretty difficult device. The native screen resolution of the N800 is 800x480 pixels but there
seems to be a bus bandwidth limit obstructing video
playback at full screen resolution. Typical a resolution of 400x240 works well.The default Nokia video converter converts videos to a MP4 container file, with MP4 compression at bitrates upto 800 kbps. Resolution changes from 400x160 pixels to 320x240 pixels depending on the width and height of the original video, resp. 2.35:1 to 4:3. Using other software to generate MP4 at higher resolutions in general leads to interrupted playback, particular at heavy action scenes. Framerate might be lowered from 25 fps to 15, but that would make the action also more choppy.
- The DVD-player does not play MP4, but it seems to have little problems with any DivX type of file.
As you have noted I only talked about MP4 here. DivX can be played on the N95 and the N800 but the required resolutions are low enough that it is not of interest for the DVD-player and on the N95 tv-out in 640x480 is not supported. MP4 seems the best choice and should run also on the iPod Video, the iPhone and the iTouch.
From the figures above clearly the N95 has the better video hardware for MP4 playback. Despite the facts that the N800 has the better and bigger screen (800x480 pixels versus 320x240) and the faster processor (400 MHz versus 333 MHz). Also H.264 compression is supported on the N95 and even in OS2008 I could not get a 320x240 MP4 with H.264 compression to playback on the N800. The N810 is specified to cope with the the format,but I have not yet seen a confirmation or denial of this.
So it seems it is not a question of picking the right format but more about picking the right resolution and bitrate. For playback on the screens of the N95 and the N800 their best format is clearly MP4 at 320x240 pixels, and a bit rate of 800 kbps gives more than sufficient quality on both of them. For top-notch tv-out quality the N95 can handle 640x480 pixels resolution, perfect for vacations in accomodations where there are tv's with composite video-in connectors for top-notch playback. 1400 kbps seems sufficient high to get the most out of the video playback, though 3000 should be possible. With Dolby Surround preserved in the stereo sound it makes a jaw dropping playback quality if the tv-setup can do surround! Also 640x480 in MP4 is also supported by the iPhone and iTouch as well as several iPod Video's. Making MP4 a lasting choice.
Conclusion
If I want to compress for playback on the device screens of the Nokia N800 and N95 the best pick is MP4 at 400x240 or 320x240 pixels, 25-30 Hz, 800 kbps. The video can be converted with the Nokia internet tablet video converter which works well and runs on both the N800 and the N95.
Playback of is smooth and fluid on the N800, and video scaling to full screen is well implemented resulting in the minimum amount of blocky pixels during playback. Still for the N800 one feels a bit cheated. Video playback when using the full 640x400 resolution on my Dell Axim X51v clearly looks much sharper and crisper than the 320x240 with pixel doubling on the N800. Especially when being used to the sharp 800x480 screen resolution of the N800 for the dekstop applications, a panning scene from Lord of the Rings looks definitly a bit fuzzy. However the fluent playback at the 400x160 or 320x240 does make the action scenes look great.
On the N95 playback looks also crisp and clear and even more fluid. the 320x240 matches the N95's screen resolution perfectly and downscaling 400x240 suffers no problems what so ever and even gains some extra resolution for playback via tv-out. If you want to go topnotch with the N95, a MP4 at 640x480 and 1400 kbps with surround encoded stereo sound is most impressive. Hook it up to a widescreen tv with surround capabilities and play 'The Matrix'. The mp4 at 640x480 is also suitable for the iPhone and iTouch as well as several iPod Video's. Making the resolution and file format a flexible choice.
Last remains to note that James Burland at NokiaCreative posted getting good results at 480x240 resolution on the N800 using XViD through Handbreak. Clearly there is room left for some tweaking.
Regrettable
The only video's recorded by the N95 that will playback seem to be the MP4 video's of 320x240 or smaller. The 640x480 resolution is too much for the N800. Eventhough at 400x160 and 320x240 pixels there is 25-50% cpu power to spare on the N800 during playback. MP4 video's with resolutions to high for the display to handle could be decoded at lower resolutions before using pixel doubling for playback. It is a bit clumsy but with cpu power to spare, it could at least play a high quality video recording made with my N95 or another recent N-series phone.
N800's uPnP
Well it pretty simple. The N800 can act as a uPnP client. It can not act as a media server or player. Basically it can communicate with PnP servers and play video and audio. The default media player has a problem with large mp3 collections and can sometimes freeze the media player. The Linux-based OS is luckily quite capable handling it and stays responsive and can kill the program for you.
In the packages listing an application by Nokia called Media Streamer exists and is specially designed to handle uPnP servers. It can cope with my 15 GB mp3 collection over uPnP as well display photo's. MP4-files are most likely not show by my uPnP server (WL-700gE) which does not allow me to test wether or not the Media Streamer can stream-play MP4 video-files. NFS-mounting the directory with the video's from a NFS-server however does allow playback of network-shared MP4 video-files.
Sadly the N800 does support uPnP server mode. With a 32 GB SDHC-card it would be a mobile media powerhouse to be taken to a friends house or party. With two 32 GB memory cards it would definitely kick a small donkey. Or at least an iTouch. In fact the N800/N810 supports OTG (playing a usb-host) making it possible to attach a usb-disk (250 GB usb-harddisk) or a simple usb-stick to the N800 and play music from it... That is what I would call bloody terrific!
Another thing I felt was missing is the possible to setup a point-to-point wifi-connection between the N95 and the N800. At least not through the GUI. Transferring large video files, browsing the N95 as a uPnP server for streaming video's is not possible with an ad-hoc network. Bluetooth is far slower in file transfer than wifi. Transferring a movie takes hours.
N800's bluetooth
Bluetooth headset for calling works great, transferring buisiness cards goes great and OBEX file transfer too. DUN for making an internet through your phone is trouble free. Yet no A2DP is there, a real great regret for an obviously very media capable device. Nifty however is that the filebrowser allows file browsing in bluetooth devices that support bluetooth file transfer. It is very easy to browse all the directories on the N95 and copy files to the N800 or vice versa.
Summary
The N800, a MIMD, is lacking some expected features in uPnP and bluetooth. Particular when compared to a smartphone as the N95. The N800 is a device which has the capacity to be a fully qualified MIMD. In fact it could beat the crap out of the iTouch. It has video-calling, dual memory cards upto 32 GB supported, USB-OTG for attaching disks and bluetooth GPS support. Yet it is lacking at least one serious feature: A2DP. I would expect to be able to connect a stereo bluetooth headset to it. Though the possiblitity to act as a bluetooth speakerset would be a great asset too.
Also it is lacking the capacity to be a uPnP server as well as be able to set up a ad-hoc network with a smartphone for high data transfer. Primarily of course for uPnP ;-) Nothing better to take it to a party hook it up to the stereo and remote control it from the phone. This is very obvious for anyone with some friends ;-)
As such the media connectivity of the N800 is at a minimum. The connectivity to a (smart)phone does not seem to rise above it use as a internet modem, or for transferring buisiness cards and small files. The versatility of making connections I experienced with the N95 makes the N800 look poorly in comparison. And as a companion to a smart phone the N800's connectivity seems to be the limiting factor. As with my evaluation of the N800 as a internetbrowser OS2008 feels only 70% finnished.
Hopefully Nokia will be working on OS2009. The N800/N810 are a great competitor for the iTouch... It is open, it has a active and growing developers community. It is just is lacking that final touch to bring it to the masses. Nevermind the sexiness of an Apple product. Marketwise and developmentwise it is time to turn the N800/N810 into a solid consumer product that can carry the N of Nokia with pride.
For a long time we phone users have been struggling to get that message or appointment into our phone or organizer. We are putting more and more into our mobile devices, writing sms, instant messaging and typing extended e-mails. Some might even do a bit of office on their phones. Automatically an inputmethod, pen, touch, mini-qwerty is measured against our current yardstick. The speed and comfort of a full-sized qwerty keyboard.
Recently I bought a N800, spurning the N810 for it's keyboard and GPS features. The N800 can currently be bought for half the price of a N810. But for a while I was in dubio wether or not the keyboard would be worth the extra cash. The GPS is not the point. A bluetooth GPS can be used too. And the application extGPS allows the N95 to be used as a GPS for the N800 if needed. The keyboard was for me the main issue, but now I know did right.
Testing the speed of my Foxes
Testing occurred with the pangram: 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog ' is a pangram. It uses all letters of the alphabet at least once. So I tested my gadgets and supplemented this data with the results of James Burland over at Nokia Creative. Nokia Creative a creative blog oriented towards the new nokia Nseries models. His focus is on the photographic side of cameras like the N95, N95 8GB, N82 and worth a look. James Burland compared on his blog Nokia Creative the typing speed between his N810 and the iPhone.
Here are the test results:
- keyboard 7.3 seconds
- N800 using touch finger typing, 15 seconds (Snoyt, two thumb method)
- N800 using touch finger typing , 20 seconds (Snoyt, single index finger method)
- N95 using T9, 20 seconds (Snoyt, two thumb method)
- iPhone, touch finger typing portrait, 18.7 seconds (Nokia Creative test, two thumbs)
- N810 hardware keyboard, 18.5 seconds (Nokia Creative test, two thumbs)
As you can see that there is little difference between the N810 hardware keyboard and the iPhone. Amazing his touchscreen typing is about as fast as a hardware mini-qwerty. He does complain the apple keyboard is a bit narrow.
From the results you can see that the N800 is significantly faster than the N810 and the iPhone. Is this for real?
The keyboard of the iPhone (as seen in James YouTube video) is much smaller than that of the N800 because the iPhone uses it in portrait mode while the N800 works always in landscape. As such the key areas are larger and bigger and the letters are bigger and easier to read, allowing a faster typing speed. Making the touch finger interface of the N800 with OS2008 25% faster than the N810's hardware keyboard if James is as clumsy or dexterous as I am. More amazing however is the result that the hardware mini-qwerty does not fares faster than the N800. One reason I can think of is that you actually need to depress the keys. A touchscreen requires less effort and types lighter and thus perhaps faster?
I did not test the other input methods for the N800 with OS2008. Handwritingrecognition of OS2008 does not really work for me. Neither does the recognition software of Windows Mobile 5. Palm OS was one of the few that worked reliable even it required training this monkey. The remaining method (besides a bluetooth keyboard) is typing with the pen and a pen-sized touchscreen keyboard which is slow and very annoying. Finger touch typing is definitely my favorite input method second to a real keyboard.
Other results
A while ago I posted about Jenneth Oriantia's smartphone typing speed test
. She tested all the thumbboards on all the smartphones she could get her hands on. On average the phones score arond 10-ish seconds for typing 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.' (6-7 seconds on a real keyboard) and 13.64 seconds on the N95 classic. This indicated that the N95 is about 25% slower than a good mini-qwerty keyboard. Correcting James his typing speeds with this. It would mean that he on his hardware qwerty keyboard would be about as fast as I am on my finger touch screen. As such the main difference between an hardware mini-qwerty keyboard and a decent sized finger touch typing keyboard is the difference in what you can seen on the screen during typing. There is nothing wrong with my short-term memory however and as such 200 euros difference in price is a second N800 ;-)
Conclusions
It looks like there is little difference between the typing speeds of a decent hardware mini-qwerty keyboard and OS2008 latest touchscreen finger typing. A decent sized touchscreen finger keyboard can give you 50% of the typing speed of a normal keyboard. Nokia's patent on touchscreen tactile feedback could give the user even a better respons by adding tactile feedback on the finger position. There are some problems with Nokia's N800 touch finger typing implementation. Skype and other instant messaging clients do not support the touchfinger typing for instant messaging. Severly restricting your input speed. Only Pidgin supports this and does it well. Javascripted environments like the blog-post editor of Vox work not well with the touch finger implementation. However these are problems that could easily be solved.
The future of typing
Very promising is that the N800 has a screen more or less equal to the size of the N95...
Meaning that a mobile phone could be designed of the size of the N95 with a full touchscreen of 800x480 pixels. Giving a maximum of screensize for video and graphics while a fast and efficient input method exists with tactile feedback allowing blind operations. Better yet, the tactile feedback technique could be switched to a mode allowing where blind people could read the screen and buttons by touch! No sliders or keys are required thinning the N95 to the thickness of the iPhone ;-)
Now that would be something... A Nseries phone with all the photo and video capacity of the N95 and the kick ass touchscreen resolution of the N800. Add that nifty N810 hardware button to switch the touchscreen off and I am almost content. Ahh well, of course I also want Xenon flash, USB OTG, mouse support and a remote desktop server (X11 or RDM). Nokia? When can I order one?
OS2008 (Linux-based) and the Maemo interface that are running on the N800 are oriented towards browsing and communication. The home desktop screen has three software buttons on the left. In the pictures the main two functions are visible in the topleft of the screen: browsing en communications. The third icon, is the icon for additional applications. They are 'hardwired' softbuttons. Below those buttons you can see several icons of opened applications and at the bottom the icon for showing the window list. You can open applications while keeping the navigation bar (on the left) and toolbar in view or go fullscreen. Switching can be done by button press or through a menu.
OS2008 a diamond with rough edges
OS2008 has an excellent package system where you can choose to download only Nokia served software or run any kind of 3rd party software. Anything from commercial origin (Skype/Gizmo i.e.) to the unstable lonely hacker's untried and untested software is possible. OS2008 gives you the freedom to choose your own level of trusted software. There is a growing collection of software applications available that will run on the N800 and N810 extending the features of the tablet well into the lower software range of EEPC/UMPC. The Linux desktop environment KDE is ported including the wordprocessor application and the spreadsheet application. Installation however is not for the avarage click-and-doing user.
OS2008 has a touchscreen finger-keyboard and a touchscreen pen-keyboard. The difference are the keysizes and the amount of screen occupied by them. You can configure a preference which keyboard should pop-up when activating an inputfield. However it does not work flawless. Nevertheless OS2008 really shines here and there and yet there are some annoyingly rough edges present. Lets take a close look at the main possibilities: Webbrowsing and communications.
Webbrowsing
Embedded videos do not always scale proper and badly designed java-scripts can cause problems, especially in scaled webpages. They can obscure some text that otherwise would be readable or the buttons to click an ad away are not reachable. CPU-intensive javascripted pages can take a while to load and run, longer than on the PC but very acceptable. Yet in fairness even on the desktop PC my webbrowser can have troubles with some badly designed web pages, locking Windows for a couple seconds. Flash-based pages like Nokia's Nseries are larger than the N800's screen resolution and are unscalable nor can they be panned. Making it an annoyingly useless page. The N95's mini-page overview is in such cases a much needed but missing feature for quick panning and browsing a web page. And of course embedded Windows wmv video's do not work.
The webbrowser shows an RSS icon if the page contains RSS feeds. Clicking it allows the RSS-Reader to add the feed. The desktop applet of the RSS-Reader can auto-update the RSS feeds, scroll the latest news and open on request reader to read the summaries. If desired, one can have the RSS-reader then open the native web browser for accessing the original article.
Communicating
The built-in software has support for Video-calling, VoIP and messaging. Natively GoogleTalk, Jabber and SIP are supported. A upcoming enhancement package that currently is available for beta-testing will additionally support AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo and some local linked XMPP protocol. The last will most likely support using the N800 as a baby videophone. GoogleTalk is said to support video-calling between the N800/N810 but not to PC-clients. Addtionally Gizmo and Skype are available.
SIP
I tested SIP with my SIP-provider and after doing the required firewall configuration it worked quite well. Altough a bit hidden, there is a menu to generate DTMF tones, something that Fring on my N95 lacks. This allows you to operate all the touch-tone operated menus in someones voicemailbox or those annoying support-lines. It works well handsfree as with a bluetooth headset. Speaker sound level is less that of the N95, but sufficient unless you are watching the tv or listening to the radio at a good volume. The larger distance between the speakers gives a much better stereo effect than the N95. Watching a divx-movie really is a pleasure.
Skype
Skype only does VoIP, it seems stable and reliable, using about 7 MB of RAM. Voice quality is good, although the network speed and processor are slower compared to the PC. On difficult connections a lower voice-quality might be caused earlier than on a fast PC which can use a more cpu-intensive compression and broader bandwidth internet connections. Skype easily penetrated my double firewall setup and did not need any additional configuration on the routers. Messaging works well, weblinks are transferred and can be clicked on the N800 to open the webbrowser. Sadly no beep sounds when a message is sent by one of your contacts. Also file transfers are not implemented. Hopefully these will be coming as well as the much wanted video support in the N800/N810 community.
Gizmo
Gizmo is using SIP to negotiate a connection. Gizmo like regular SIP requires some configurations on my firewalls which is easily done if you take a look at their forum. However Gizmo sadly is not very compatible with the N95's SIP implementation. Messaging works well both ways. Calling from regular SIP (from the N95 i.e.) to the Gizmo client on the N800 works well too. However in the other direction the N95 crashes the moment you click to accept or reject the call. Even using the Gizmo software on the N95 does not solve these problems since it actually uses the native Nokia SIP stack. Not a bad thing since in my experience the Nokia SIP stack is more stable than Fring's, mostly :-(. Videocalling to the N95 is not supported either. Video calling between Gizmo on the N800 and the 4.0 Desktop PC Gizmo client for Windows
Messaging
All the different messaging clients seem to do their work. Yet the finger touch-keyboard is not supported by messaging clients and you are forced to use the pen-based touch-keyboard. Most likely this is disabled because they occlude a large portion of the screen (where you contact's messages appear). Thisis very annoying. Finger typing is far more relaxing and easier than pen-based. The smaller letters makes you really squint..
I had a quick view at Pidgin which seems to have messaging support for anything but Skype. It not only does messaging and file transfers it also opens the hotmail webpage for you when you have a new mail. Best of all it supports the touchscreen finger-keyboard as well and it works great!
Mail supports the regular POP3 and IMAP4. Sadly you can only access your inbox and not the subfolders, preventing you to sort, move and copy mail to them. Even my N95 is capable of this. Attachment and HTML posts are well processed. Remote linked images in the mails are not downloaded. So far so good. But strangely I could not find the menu-item to download the in-linked images and show the e-mails in full glory. Attachments work well indeed and are automaticaly opened by the media player or relevant applications. There are no filters and other goodies. Mail is simple and very limited but it works.
No PIM
First of all there is no PIM. Now an agenda function is not really required. it resides in my phone and I don't want 7 devices to beep me when I have an appointment. Especially if the N800 is used as a companion device for a mobile smart phone. However the option to sync e-mail adresses and phone numbers with the N95, or any NSeries device in fact, is absent. The software on the N95 to synchronize with another cellphone over bluetooth is useless here, no Java (ME)! There is however a limited capacity to get PIM data to the N800. You can send a single phone book entries from the N95 to the N800 by bluetooth, but not the complete phonebook. There is actually an import function for Outlook contact data. Yet it could not process my exported Outlook contacts folder. It said it was to large, only about a 100 addresses... For each SIP call you want to make or each e-mail you want to sent from the N800, you have to either type the adres manually or sent that contact's data by bluetooth. Particular in the light of it's communication features it's a big irritation.
Usage
I find myself putting the N800 on a small box at my desktop and using the bluetooth keyboard to write long e-mails and posts. Days can past without need to switch on the PC at home, except anything other than syncing my N95. A solution to hookup a larger screen and a bluetooth mouse a seems very desirable trait, a wireless solution to my TV would be also very interesting. The inability to go directly from an input field on the device to they finger touch-type keyboard is annoying. For some reasons on certain occasions the penbased touchkeyboard insist on popping up.
Conclusions
Summarizing. It is an excellent webbrowser tablet. OS2008 has good working VoIP support for Skype and SIP. Mail and messaging support is present but limited.Third party applications for mail are still mostly in beta. For instant-messaging Pidgin seems a very worthwhile program.
- The RSS-reader and web browser team work well together and support almost anything needed in that field. Problems can be caused by badly designed java-scripted pages and the ability to pan certain flash animated pages.
- OS2008 has native support for GoogleTalk, Jabber and SIP, although an upgrade is already in the works to include more protocols. Instant messaging works without file transfers and touchscreen finger typing, the pen is needed. GoogleTalk is said to support video-calling between the N800/N810 but not to PC-clients. Addtionally Gizmo and Skype are available. Skype works well even through firewalls, again without video or file transfers and touchscreen finger typing. Gizmo could gotten to work with VoIP and Video, messaging worked though without touchscreen finger typing.
- Mail support is limited to reading your inbox folder. Attachments and HTML are well processed. HTML e-mail viewing is limited to inlined images, inlinked are never loaded.
- Synchronization of phonenumbers and e-mail adresses, bookmarks with n-series mobiles is completely lacking, yet an obvious and logical requirement for many of us.
Looking purely at the internet tablet part of OS2008, it gives the impression to be 70% finished. Considering the Linux background some rough edges were expected. Yet for the release of the N810 a more complete solution from OS2008 was expected by me. If Nokia wants to keep competing with the new generation of MIMD as shown at CES2008 more upgrades are to be expected. The upcoming OS2008 Instant messaging upgrades are hopefully the first of a series of additions to the N800/N810 software. In the meantime one can find real gems in the current limited collection of free software in the N800/n810 community. Applications like Pidgin fill some of the gaps in OS2008 and Nokia released support software.
Nokia would do well to get a stable and finished video calling software, phone and e-mail adress synchronization and panning of flash pages. Additionally improve finger touch support, e-mail support. Bluetooth mouse support and an external screen support would be exceptionally terrific!
Also a much better integration between the N800/N810 models and their n-series mobile phones is required. It is at the barest minimum. There seems only to be one useful option: The ability to use your mobile phone as a GPRS linkup to the internet. However if Nokia goes the distance for the firmware as they seem to be willing for the latest N-series models (N95, N95 8GB, N82...) they will surely find themselves with a community of loyal customers and keep OS2008 and the N800/N810 as the leading MIMD in the market.
As just said, there is a gap of missing features to fill. Yet with all its raw edges it is a very practical and useful device and I find myself going a full day without switching on the PC. Also the Linux core makes it a practical device with truly hidden depths. There are more comments to be made but I will reserve them for my next post. When I will take a closer look at the media capacities of the N800, the second M in MIMD. Expect me to comment on it's playback options, uPnP and its quite excellent typing speed...
Last weekend I ordered a N800 as a companion to my N95. Partially as a supplement, partially for it feature overlap. I wanted redundancy in my mobile wifi access to SIP, Skype, MSN. Just for the case my N95 got held hostage again by that company of morons playing Nokia Care Center in my local town.
In other words, time to do some research ;-) In coming posts I hope to report on the N800 from more than one
perspective. The diamond in the rough OS2008 definitely could do with a
opinion. Foremost of all I am interested to see how well it is suited
as a supplement to my N95 (classic). Another question is wether or not
the N800 has the muscle and brains to function as a fullfledged MIMD.
Clearly it is not a UMPC. It's out-of-the-box OS lacks many features
like PIM and more that a fullfledged PC requires. Also it's screen is to small and there are insufficient I/O featurs like USB-ports, tv-out or VGA-out.
Lacking also is support for a mouse. Yet it seems more than capable to be
used as a mobile typewriter when combines with a bluetooth keyboard...
Will it truly impact the time I spend behind my PC at home?
Check the nseries group at vox or my blog for the posts I hope to produce in the coming week.
Last weekend I ordered a N800 as a companion to my N95. Partially as a supplement, partially for it feature overlap. I wanted redundancy in my mobile wifi access to SIP, Skype, MSN, in case my N95 got held hostage again by that company of morons playing Nokia Care Center in my local town.
The N800 came in a nice box. Sealed with a special holographic Nokia seal. On the seal was a statement that it was packed and sealed by Nokia. Cool! Looking forward to the quality controlled content of the box, I broke it before taking the picture ;-)
Below you can see the three pictures I took opening the box and unpacking the N800. The first shot is right after opening the box. The second shows the N800, with the empty space for the internal memory card and the battery. In the third picture from the left you can see all the goodies in the box. Top left the headset (single control button) without volume and media control buttons. Top center the battery. Top right the N800 ;-). Bottom left the charger with a mini-plug, compatible with the N95 and the BH-900 headset from Nokia. Bottom center the mini-usb to usb cable and bottom right a soft cover for the N800. On top of soft cover the spare touch pen that came with the N800. A screenprotector was included and already stuck to the N800's screen.
There are a lot of nice unwrapping video's and stories on the internet describing the N800. It seems useless to redo all this great work. In short the device feels nice and solid. Built quality looks great too. It feels a bit heavier that expected (226 grams). The first thing I did was upgrade the old OS2007 firmware to the latest OS2008 (under Windows XP) and connect teh device to my wireless network.
Both, upgrade and configuration, were extremely easy. In fact easier than the N95 is. The firmware upgrade for OS-X and Linux looked a bit more complicated but clear instructions were available on the internet by Nokia. Installation of additional software packages is very easy, almost too easy. There is a special application to download and install Nokia signed software and from www.maemo.org, one can also install unsigned software developped by the open source community. My first impression was that it really rocked with some sharp edges. Some things really are very smooth some are inconsistent.
In coming posts I hope to report on the N800 from more than one perspective. The diamond in the rough OS2008 definitely could do with a opinion. Foremost of all I am interested to see how well it is suited as a supplement to the N95 (classic). Another question is wether or not the N800 has the muscle and brains to function as a fullfledged MIMD. Clearly it is not a UMPC. It's out-of-the-box OS lacks many features like PIM and more that a PC requires. Also it's screen is to small and there is sufficient I/O featurs like, USB-ports, tv-out or VGA-out. Lacking support for a mouse i.e. Yet it seems more than capable to be used as a mobile typewriter when combines with a bluetooth keyboard...
My Groups
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Nokia N95 Users Group Updated: 2 days ago
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nseries (host) Updated: Nov 6, 2009
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S60 3rd Edition Updated: Nov 3, 2009
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