Nokia N800- Are you waiting for this.?

The competition with the announcement of Apple’s iPhone and the LG’s touchscreen Prada Phone, Nokia needs to come out with this sooner..
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As a result the first images and device stats hit the net from other sources while I sat helplessly cursing the guys at Comp USA that opened their packages early. But alas, I can take some solace in knowing that the review I’m about to post is the only one based upon real world daily, hard core this-is-my-main-portable-device use.

The prior model, the 770 Internet Tablet had put that to a good two month’s serious use prior to getting my hands on the N800. During that time I upgraded the Linux installation using Nokia’s “flasher” utility, added half a dozen applications including Maemo Mapper and traveled extensively both with the device and a laptop as well as without a laptop. I’ll discuss my feelings about that a bit later.

The initial impression I had upon seeing the N800 was a combination of excitement and disappointment. Clearly the device is far more polished and much sexier than the somewhat rough and blocky 770. It definitely fits in the N-Series line-up now whereas with the 770 that would have been a stretch.

However, the 770 sported the very cool (and very practical) aluminum slide on cover which both turned the device off AND protected the large screen from all the stupid things that we accidentally do to our sexy toys. I immediately commented on what I felt was a serious reduction in the utility of the device and was told that the issue was manufacturing related. In essence Nokia couldn’t make the covers fast enough to keep up with the production of the new devices. I was promised that another protective screen cover would be forthcoming rapidly and as of yesterday it turns out this was in fact true. While not as robust as the aluminum hard case that swaddles the 770, it is certainly a more elegant solution in keeping with the more refined lines of the N800.

From an appearance perspective, the N800 is much nicer. It also sports much larger (and stereo) speakers on the front of the device and a cleaner and more symmetrical distribution of buttons on the face of the device as well along the top. The dual tone casing is also very nice, the integrated stand in the back can also double as a loop over grip to help you keep from dropping your N800. The new Stylus is vastly improved and in fact is one of the first styli that I have ever used that felt half way decent in my hand.

Overall, from a “hand feel” and appearance perspective the N800 beats the 770 hands down. The only exception I’ve noticed is that the buttons on the top of the N800 are a tad bit cramped and thus aren’t quite as easy to use as those on the 770 but this is a trivial issue as you don’t really use those buttons all that much anyway.

Both devices sport an identical (and beautiful) 800 by 480 color display. If you want oohs and ahh’s fire up the media player application and show off a little video for your friends and family. The pixel density on the display is amazing – in fact the quality of this display is nothing short of remarkable. I haven’t seen the iPhone up close yet but I would be straight up surprised if the quality of that display was even equal to that of either Internet tablet.

The N800 also supports the use of two different removable memory cards. Best of all you can use Micro SD, MMC, SD and Mini SD in either slot. The N800 materials state that the device supports cards of up to two gigabytes however users report that it will read and write to the four gig cards as well, meaning that it’s possible to add up to eight gigabytes of additional storage which – except for multimedia means that you have all the onboard storage you could want. It’s a simple matter to have extra SD cards with your additional media (say movies, for example). I suspect that in a next iteration the device would have substantially more memory and storage which would place in on par with even the standard Video iPod’s that have large hard disc drives.

The other major difference between the N800 and 770 is the speed of the processor. The N800 is dramatically faster and this difference is apparent in how it handles video, large files or email accounts with several hundred messages. The N800 will play video from YouTube and Google Video out of the box whereas the 770 requires an upgrade to its flash player to accomplish this task.
One of the principal issues that pundits site as a concern as it relates to the iPhone is battery life. With a closed body like an iPod, there will be no changing of batteries between charges with the iPhone. This leaves you with an expensive brick if you’re out and about (say doing international travel) and won’t be near a charger for 24 hours or so.

The N800 (and the 770 for that matter) both have removable batteries and work with the same chargers as the rest of the N-Series line. Battery life is basically all day using the device on a sporadic basis; say to craft an email here and there, read a PDF, browse some websites, place a video call or two; basically what I would call typical use for the average executive. For hard core solid uninterrupted use with WiFi on and connected you’re looking at 5 to 6 hours of uptime before you need a plug, a spare battery or an external battery. In other words, all but the most intensive use will fall well within the battery capacity of the N800.

One thing that I feel Nokia did poorly with respect to the 770 was the way in which it was marketed. The idea that this device is useful for browsing the Internet from my sofa strikes me as a little ridiculous. Most likely if I feel that way than other people do too. At home I have more computing power than some small countries, but when I’m out and about browsing the web-even just to check movie listings or pull up a map is a much better experience on the N800 than on even the best phone-based web browser.

The “instant-on” capability of the device makes it ideal for ad-hoc, spontaneous use whereas even resuming a lap-top from stand-by seems to take a lifetime by comparison. This difference is readily apparent when you board an aircraft, take your seat and have just a couple minutes while waiting for the plane to pull away from the gate in which you can do something productive. With a laptop you have just about enough time to boot up before you have to shut down. With the N800 you can be into your third or fourth email response before the flight attendant comes and asks you what sort of device you’re using. (they’re too curious about your “tiny computer” to tell you to turn it off).

In fact, every time that I’ve pulled the N800 out on an aircraft the person adjacent to me wants to know what I’m using. This is one of the things that has convinced me that with the right software suite on the device it is really the ideal stand-in for the laptop for short trips. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the N800 can completely replace a laptop and even a trip of four or five days (for me at least) would be a stretch with just the N800 but since starting to use it I have found that while traveling I don’t pull my PC and during a number of conferences I have used the N800 for note-taking, liveblogging and keeping myself entertained during boring presentations.

The base software installation is a bit on the meager side but that’s easily remedied by paying a visit to Maemo.org the site that is the central enclave for developers and the repository for the software that is being developed for the platform at a near feverish pace.

This is definitely something to love about the whole platform. Based on the Linux 2.6 kernel, and with a platform called Maemo and a development environment that they’re aggressively promoting, the device is totally open and Nokia is absolutely committed to supporting this community both with internal resources that are developing software and with the various websites that offer support, discussion and a “garage” for projects in process.

The company has also made a major commitment to future hardware development and while I have no specific knowledge of the nature of the improvements planned for the future, I am aware that the third generation device is already under development. Of course the open nature of the device means that as the software improves what you’ll get out of the N800 will continue to increase and new functionality and new utility will be a consistent theme for people that choose to adopt this new platform which I would argue is the real UMPC.

Having used the device so much I do have some pretty strong feelings about what I would like to see next. First, it needs to be able to connect with other N800’s the same way it bonds to mobile phones. Users should be able to wirelessly swap content any time they’re in proximity. The beautiful screen needs to support a portrait mode in addition to the landscape and full-screen modes currently available. I don’t think it needs the “kitschy” accelerometer of the iPhone and in fact think that people may end up finding that feature annoying as they move around and their screen jumps from portrait to landscape unintentionally. A “multi-touch” screen would be nice but there’s nothing it does that you can’t do dragging a corner or striking one of the zooming keys on the N800.

Perhaps the biggest deficiencies relate to the complete lack of a decent personal information management system for the device. Their simply isn’t one available; yet. Synching should also be better supported. The one program that does allow you to synch the device leaves so much to be desired that it isn’t worth the space on the machine that it requires. This too needs to change or a productivity solution needs to be developed that includes this functionality as part of its attributes.

I’d also like to see some kind of office suite ported to the device. While I wouldn’t want to put together a big spreadsheet on the N800, doing an expense report would be a perfect use and one that I wish it had currently.

As far as gaming I’m sure that experienced gamers will have lots of opinions and most of them won’t be thrilled- this is NOT a PlayStation Portable. Multimedia is quite nice and someone could do well to begin to pre-format movies for the dimensions of the display as I think that the N800 will begin to get a decent following as people realize that for the same price as the sorely limited iPod video you can get a device that is for all intents and purposes a tiny computer that is capable of supporting all the but most demanding things that one would normally do in the course of a workday.

All in all I love this device. I love the convenience, I love the size, I love the instant on/off capability. I think it does many things well and the excitement that I feel when engaged with the development community that has gravitated to this platform has convinced me that the best is certainly yet to come and dramatic innovations in software are on the horizon. Couple that with the knowledge that Nokia is already looking towards the future of this hardware platform and I am convinced that we “ain’t seen nothing yet”. Believe me though, I’ll be first in line to test the N-whatever when Nokia takes the wraps off some time early next year. And hopefully, this time, Nokia won’t keep me gagged behind an NDA while someone that has a buddy at CompUSA gets the scoop on a device that hasn’t even been charged while I read that blog post from my hard used prototype…time, as always will tell.

The competition with the announcement of Apple’s iPhone and the LG’s touchscreen Prada Phone, Nokia needs to come out with this sooner..

As a result the first images and device stats hit the net from other sources while I sat helplessly cursing the guys at Comp USA that opened their packages early. But alas, I can take some solace in knowing that the review I’m about to post is the only one based upon real world daily, hard core this-is-my-main-portable-device use.

The prior model, the 770 Internet Tablet had put that to a good two month’s serious use prior to getting my hands on the N800. During that time I upgraded the Linux installation using Nokia’s “flasher” utility, added half a dozen applications including Maemo Mapper and traveled extensively both with the device and a laptop as well as without a laptop. I’ll discuss my feelings about that a bit later.

The initial impression I had upon seeing the N800 was a combination of excitement and disappointment. Clearly the device is far more polished and much sexier than the somewhat rough and blocky 770. It definitely fits in the N-Series line-up now whereas with the 770 that would have been a stretch.

However, the 770 sported the very cool (and very practical) aluminum slide on cover which both turned the device off AND protected the large screen from all the stupid things that we accidentally do to our sexy toys. I immediately commented on what I felt was a serious reduction in the utility of the device and was told that the issue was manufacturing related. In essence Nokia couldn’t make the covers fast enough to keep up with the production of the new devices. I was promised that another protective screen cover would be forthcoming rapidly and as of yesterday it turns out this was in fact true. While not as robust as the aluminum hard case that swaddles the 770, it is certainly a more elegant solution in keeping with the more refined lines of the N800.

From an appearance perspective, the N800 is much nicer. It also sports much larger (and stereo) speakers on the front of the device and a cleaner and more symmetrical distribution of buttons on the face of the device as well along the top. The dual tone casing is also very nice, the integrated stand in the back can also double as a loop over grip to help you keep from dropping your N800. The new Stylus is vastly improved and in fact is one of the first styli that I have ever used that felt half way decent in my hand.

Overall, from a “hand feel” and appearance perspective the N800 beats the 770 hands down. The only exception I’ve noticed is that the buttons on the top of the N800 are a tad bit cramped and thus aren’t quite as easy to use as those on the 770 but this is a trivial issue as you don’t really use those buttons all that much anyway.

Both devices sport an identical (and beautiful) 800 by 480 color display. If you want oohs and ahh’s fire up the media player application and show off a little video for your friends and family. The pixel density on the display is amazing – in fact the quality of this display is nothing short of remarkable. I haven’t seen the iPhone up close yet but I would be straight up surprised if the quality of that display was even equal to that of either Internet tablet.

The N800 also supports the use of two different removable memory cards. Best of all you can use Micro SD, MMC, SD and Mini SD in either slot. The N800 materials state that the device supports cards of up to two gigabytes however users report that it will read and write to the four gig cards as well, meaning that it’s possible to add up to eight gigabytes of additional storage which – except for multimedia means that you have all the onboard storage you could want. It’s a simple matter to have extra SD cards with your additional media (say movies, for example). I suspect that in a next iteration the device would have substantially more memory and storage which would place in on par with even the standard Video iPod’s that have large hard disc drives.

The other major difference between the N800 and 770 is the speed of the processor. The N800 is dramatically faster and this difference is apparent in how it handles video, large files or email accounts with several hundred messages. The N800 will play video from YouTube and Google Video out of the box whereas the 770 requires an upgrade to its flash player to accomplish this task.
One of the principal issues that pundits site as a concern as it relates to the iPhone is battery life. With a closed body like an iPod, there will be no changing of batteries between charges with the iPhone. This leaves you with an expensive brick if you’re out and about (say doing international travel) and won’t be near a charger for 24 hours or so.

The N800 (and the 770 for that matter) both have removable batteries and work with the same chargers as the rest of the N-Series line. Battery life is basically all day using the device on a sporadic basis; say to craft an email here and there, read a PDF, browse some websites, place a video call or two; basically what I would call typical use for the average executive. For hard core solid uninterrupted use with WiFi on and connected you’re looking at 5 to 6 hours of uptime before you need a plug, a spare battery or an external battery. In other words, all but the most intensive use will fall well within the battery capacity of the N800.

One thing that I feel Nokia did poorly with respect to the 770 was the way in which it was marketed. The idea that this device is useful for browsing the Internet from my sofa strikes me as a little ridiculous. Most likely if I feel that way than other people do too. At home I have more computing power than some small countries, but when I’m out and about browsing the web-even just to check movie listings or pull up a map is a much better experience on the N800 than on even the best phone-based web browser.

The “instant-on” capability of the device makes it ideal for ad-hoc, spontaneous use whereas even resuming a lap-top from stand-by seems to take a lifetime by comparison. This difference is readily apparent when you board an aircraft, take your seat and have just a couple minutes while waiting for the plane to pull away from the gate in which you can do something productive. With a laptop you have just about enough time to boot up before you have to shut down. With the N800 you can be into your third or fourth email response before the flight attendant comes and asks you what sort of device you’re using. (they’re too curious about your “tiny computer” to tell you to turn it off).

In fact, every time that I’ve pulled the N800 out on an aircraft the person adjacent to me wants to know what I’m using. This is one of the things that has convinced me that with the right software suite on the device it is really the ideal stand-in for the laptop for short trips. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the N800 can completely replace a laptop and even a trip of four or five days (for me at least) would be a stretch with just the N800 but since starting to use it I have found that while traveling I don’t pull my PC and during a number of conferences I have used the N800 for note-taking, liveblogging and keeping myself entertained during boring presentations.

The base software installation is a bit on the meager side but that’s easily remedied by paying a visit to Maemo.org the site that is the central enclave for developers and the repository for the software that is being developed for the platform at a near feverish pace.

This is definitely something to love about the whole platform. Based on the Linux 2.6 kernel, and with a platform called Maemo and a development environment that they’re aggressively promoting, the device is totally open and Nokia is absolutely committed to supporting this community both with internal resources that are developing software and with the various websites that offer support, discussion and a “garage” for projects in process.

The company has also made a major commitment to future hardware development and while I have no specific knowledge of the nature of the improvements planned for the future, I am aware that the third generation device is already under development. Of course the open nature of the device means that as the software improves what you’ll get out of the N800 will continue to increase and new functionality and new utility will be a consistent theme for people that choose to adopt this new platform which I would argue is the real UMPC.

Having used the device so much I do have some pretty strong feelings about what I would like to see next. First, it needs to be able to connect with other N800’s the same way it bonds to mobile phones. Users should be able to wirelessly swap content any time they’re in proximity. The beautiful screen needs to support a portrait mode in addition to the landscape and full-screen modes currently available. I don’t think it needs the “kitschy” accelerometer of the iPhone and in fact think that people may end up finding that feature annoying as they move around and their screen jumps from portrait to landscape unintentionally. A “multi-touch” screen would be nice but there’s nothing it does that you can’t do dragging a corner or striking one of the zooming keys on the N800.

Perhaps the biggest deficiencies relate to the complete lack of a decent personal information management system for the device. Their simply isn’t one available; yet. Synching should also be better supported. The one program that does allow you to synch the device leaves so much to be desired that it isn’t worth the space on the machine that it requires. This too needs to change or a productivity solution needs to be developed that includes this functionality as part of its attributes.

I’d also like to see some kind of office suite ported to the device. While I wouldn’t want to put together a big spreadsheet on the N800, doing an expense report would be a perfect use and one that I wish it had currently.

As far as gaming I’m sure that experienced gamers will have lots of opinions and most of them won’t be thrilled- this is NOT a PlayStation Portable. Multimedia is quite nice and someone could do well to begin to pre-format movies for the dimensions of the display as I think that the N800 will begin to get a decent following as people realize that for the same price as the sorely limited iPod video you can get a device that is for all intents and purposes a tiny computer that is capable of supporting all the but most demanding things that one would normally do in the course of a workday.

All in all I love this device. I love the convenience, I love the size, I love the instant on/off capability. I think it does many things well and the excitement that I feel when engaged with the development community that has gravitated to this platform has convinced me that the best is certainly yet to come and dramatic innovations in software are on the horizon. Couple that with the knowledge that Nokia is already looking towards the future of this hardware platform and I am convinced that we “ain’t seen nothing yet”. Believe me though, I’ll be first in line to test the N-whatever when Nokia takes the wraps off some time early next year. And hopefully, this time, Nokia won’t keep me gagged behind an NDA while someone that has a buddy at CompUSA gets the scoop on a device that hasn’t even been charged while I read that blog post from my hard used prototype…time, as always will tell.