The N810, like its predecessors the N800 and N770, isn't a phone. It's a Linux-based handheld computer that connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi or with a Bluetooth connection through a mobile phone. Nokia has finally gotten the form factor right; the N810 is a pleasure to hold and to use. The 2.8 by 5 by 0.55 inches (HWD), 7.9-ounce metallic body feels solid, and the richly colorful 4.1-inch 800-by-480-pixel touch screen slides up to reveal a thumb keypad. There's a VGA camera built into the side for video calling, and a little stand pops out of the back if you want to prop the N810 up on your desk. On the top, a lock switch lets you use it as an MP3 player in a coat pocket without worrying about bumping the screen. Overall, it's an attractive, thoughtfully built piece of hardware.
The N810's home screen consists of "widgets," including a Google search box, RSS reader, clock, and Internet radio app that you can move around on the screen, showing the Debian Linux–based operating system's attractive transparency effects. Big icons on the left-hand side of the screen let you launch other apps with your fingers. It's a well-designed interface, though it isn't quite as simple to navigate as its direct rival, Apple's iPod touch.
The N810 connects to the Internet effortlessly, either through Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g (with WPA2) or using a Bluetooth connection to a mobile phone. If you choose to go the mobile-phone route, you'll need to subscribe to a relatively expensive tethering plan—around $50 a month—from your carrier. This has nothing to do with Nokia, though. Web browsing is the device's real strength. Nokia is the true king of handheld Web browsers. The company's Series 60 phone browser is the best in the business, and the N810's browser renders pages that look just as good as they do on a PC, including Flash (but not Java) plug-ins. That's superior to the iPod touch, which can't handle Flash.
The e-mail program supports only POP3. When I tried to use its IMAP option, the device choked and crashed. But messages are rendered in HTML, and reading text on the crisp-looking screen is a pleasure. The interface did seem a bit sluggish sometimes, with responses trailing after button presses—a surprise considering the device's relatively powerful, 400-MHz processor. The N810 has 2GB of onboard flash memory, and a slot on the bottom of the device takes miniSD cards for additional storage; an 8GB SanDisk card worked fine.
Music and video players are also on board, along with a Rhapsody client. The music player handles AAC, WMA, and MP3 formats—though no DRM—and the video player plays WMV and a somewhat perplexing subset of MP4 files. You can put your music on an SD card or share it with PCs through your wireless network—the N810 sees Windows shared folders right out of the box and can even stream tunes shared by an Orb server over a LAN without any additional software. You can play your music through the built-in (stereo, albeit tinny) speakers or standard wired headphones (there's a 3.5mm jack on the side of the device). Bluetooth stereo isn't supported, unfortunately. To play full-screen video, I had to pass my files through Nokia's free desktop video converter (for Windows only). When I didn't do this, I had problems with some dropping frames on my sample files. The N810 played videos for about 4 hours 20 minutes before running out of battery juice.
Though the N810 isn't a phone, you can make calls using Skype and Gizmo VoIP clients that work over Wi-Fi. I got surprisingly decent call quality with Skype calls, which is refreshing: Skype on handhelds usually sounds pretty dismal. The Gizmo app also connects to popular IM networks, including AIM, MSN, and Yahoo!, but somewhat clumsily. Pidgin, a more streamlined IM app, connected to AIM much more smoothly.
The N810 comes with GPS, as well, but the GPS chipset is mediocre. Though the device acquired a signal well in low-rise Queens, it was absolutely hopeless in high-rise Manhattan. The free built-in U.S. and Canadian maps, from Wayfinder, include an extensive array of points of interest. A $129, three-year license enhances the system with driving directions and spoken prompts.
The N810's biggest drawback is that it still lacks two absolutely key features for a handheld: a PIM suite and some sort of Microsoft Office–compatible document editing program. (It does have a PDF reader, which rendered even our most complex graphical documents with aplomb.) The brilliant Palm OS emulator fixes that to some extent, but it restricts you to working in a tiny window on the N810's large screen. That makes running Palm OS apps only a stopgap solution.
That's right—Palm OS. ACCESS seems to be unable to write a new Linux OS for Palm devices, but the company has come up with a perfectly capable Palm emulator for the N810. The free Garnet VM pops a 320-by-320-pixel application window and a virtual graffiti area into the middle of the N810's screen, leaving the rest of the device's display blank. You can use the hardware keyboard or touch screen for input and according to ACCESS, the system is compatible with about 80 percent of Palm OS applications. I synced my contacts and calendars over the Internet from a PC to the virtual Palm's PIM apps quickly and easily. That makes the N810 a potential upgrade path for Palm OS users looking for a future, though they'll want to break out of the Palm OS box into full-screen N810 native apps as quickly as possible.
With Linux, it should be simple to rewrite desktop apps for the N810. According to Maemo.org, the application development group, there are now 198 apps for the device, including a contact syncing solution, text editors, IM programs, multiple music and video players, and games, though there's no comprehensive PIM or Office package shown. But I couldn't test many of the available applications because the download process is fatally flawed. Almost all downloads rely on a central server at repository.maemo.org that did not work properly over the six days I tried the N810. Sometimes I couldn't get any new apps, sometimes I could get a few. And sometimes the N810 just spewed error messages at me ("installation file corrupted"). Nokia claims servers were heavily loaded, but that's no excuse.
The poorly functioning installer hurts the N810's major advantage over its top rival, the iPod touch. Like the N810, the touch is an awesome Web browser and music and video player. The touch is better at multimedia and PC syncing; the N810 is better with the Web and integrates e-mail and IM options, which the touch doesn't. The N810 could appeal to users who want much more if the installer worked properly. It also doesn't help that the $479 (list) N810 costs considerably more than Apple's $299, similarly Unix-powered touch.
So here we are, back where we started. When I first reviewed the Nokia N800, I heralded it as breakthrough hardware that needed the software to make it sing. The N810 still struggles with the same problem. Though Nokia's Web browser is gorgeous and the development community seems to be working hard to create new software, the broken software installer brings me back to the old frustrations. ASUS, with its EEE PC, has proved that Linux devices can "just work." Nokia needs to bring its handsome tablet line out of beta and lower the price in order to truly go after Apple, ASUS, and Palm.
SPEC DATA :
- Type: Linux
- Screen Size: 4.1 inches
- Operating System: Linux Internet Tablet 2008
- Processor Class: TI OMAP 2420
- Processor Speed: 400 MHz
- RAM: 128 MB
- Networking Options: 802.11g
- Megapixels: 0.3 MP
- Flash Memory Type: Secure Digital
- Bluetooth: Yes
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