The Nokia N800 may deliciously fill some holes in your life

I recently got a Nokia N800 "Internet tablet" from a nice chap on eBay. Rewind a bit: I was mulling over getting an iPod Touch (in a freakish coincidence, my brother reveals he got one a coupla days ago and he had no idea I acquired this N800), but as fantastically stylish as it is, it didn't do everything I wanted. But what did I want?

I needed a useful machine to capture ideas on. Both vocal and written. I also wanted to read ebooks when on the go, and surfing/poking the Net would be a plus. So's playing music… and movies (like TED talks).

My research led me to the cheap availability of Nokia N770s (earlier sibling) on the market, and gosh darnit, I missed a US$156 sale on the N800s. After much digging, it became clear that instead of the iPod Touch (which lacks a mic), the N800 would be right device for me. It was difficult to find a bargain since they're being discontinued at various places, but like I said, eventually eBayed it for US$200 — which is still a great deal compared to its street price at introduction, and the US$400-something N810, which has somewhat more features but isn't worth twice the price, I feel.
 

The good great stuff off the top of my head (without bullet points):

The N800 fits in a pocket. It's relatively light. It has a little kickback stand so it can rest on your dresser at an angle and show you the time, or whatever.

The 3.5 mm stereo minijack works with standard headphones, and you can plug it into a nice pair of speakers. It needs a firm press to "click" and fit, which confused me at first, but the snugness is reassuring.

Maemo OS2008 (the Linux-based operating system) is super-easy to use with the included stylus, and there are 200-odd apps for it. I had to upgrade from OS2007 for free via the Nokia site, and while I had some misstarts getting the USB connection recognized, that was resolved in fairly short order.

Programs are often easy to install via wifi. It auto-recognizes the filetypes after downloading and in seconds, you have new proggies to enjoy. Some of my faves so far are Evince (document viewer), Numpty Physics (game like Crayon Physics), and the mobile version of Skype is well-designed for a compact space and performs excellently. There are numerous possibilities (e.g., via Garnet VM you can apparently run Palm OS apps?) I haven't tried firsthand.

Out-of-the-box, the included apps are a good suite, and refreshing: the Media Player has a superb list of preset Internet radio stations, which I put to good use.

The mic (according to my bro + mom) is clear. Recording quality only seems to go up to 16-bit/8 KHz, but still intelligible.

The screen is brilliantly bright and razor-crisp (many reviews of the N800 praise the same thing). A few buttons on the left control commonly-used features and you can also tap the screen with your finger instead of the pyramidal stylus.

Design is intensely compact and amazing. Just about no space goes to waste. At first, I had difficulty finding the stylus, until I realized it pops out (a fingernail will slide it out). The built-in camera does that too, kinda like a periscope (it rotates to capture varied angles). Pulling out the latch for the kickstand reveals the USB connection and a slot for a second SD memory card (the first is next to the battery beside the back panel).

Apparently, you can officially install up to 16 GB (two 8 GB cards), but some people have gone up to 32 GB. That's plenty for such a relatively tiny device.

Data transfer from your main PC is easy. I haven't tried directly via the USB connection, but I loaded media onto an SD card which was then inserted into the N800, and it worked perfectly. I did the reverse, and the same is true.

I haven't owned a PDA-thing since… My Magic Diary!
 

As for what's not so cool:

The N800's camera is fun, like one of those VGA digital disposables, but grainy and lacking in quality. Don't expect to make National Geographic, but here are some untouched images:

Flickr has way more from other N800ers.

Battery life is shorter than expected. Leaving the N800 alone will have the screen dim and supposedly, it can be left on for several days idling like that. Haven't tested that yet, but after a full charge, I maybe got 4-5 hours of actual usage: that included Internet surfing and lots of media (PDFs from ChangeThis, MP3s, MP4-movie) playing. Battery life is very approximate (it's shown in hours without minute-countdown granularity).

I haven't found a really slick recording app yet. The Maemo Recorder is basic, but you have to save after recording each file: I'd like one-click instant-idea recordage.

Flash performs slowly. The N800 does work with sites like Pandora if you want to play music at bedtime, but it loads sluggishly (takes over 1 min.), returns a script error you need to dismiss, and after that, I found it regularly flaked out and stopped playing music. This also means my website (with the Flash widgets on the left) was slow to load. I may consider a redesign; that bugs me.

The default screen dimmer presets only go up to a few minutes: this'll halt music playback, too. If you want to keep the screen alive longer, I recommend moreDimmingOptions, which'll let you keep the display on for an hour or longer before turning off — like a regular alarm clock's sleep mode!

I have a hard time with the handwriting recognition. I tap to enter letters on an onscreen keyboard instead, and it has decent word recognition (after you've used some proper/weird words, it shows them to autocomplete the next time you try).

Doesn't play Second Life natively (I inquired whether Vollee would be doing something like they did for some of Nokia's cellphones), but you can stream it. Complicated and casually impractical, but doable.
 

Overall, a lot more good than bad. The Nokia N800 is a difficult fish to market because it's not strictly a phone (altho it can do phone-like things), it's not a dedicated MP3 player (doesn't have nearly the battery life but it does play music fine!), and it brings together a tasty smorgasbord at a currently-wow-inducing price point. "Internet tablet" or "appliance" works, altho you can still get lots done offline. In some ways, it's competitive with the Chumby, altho the N800's more for on-the-go, as opposed to plugging it in at home.

And while it hasn't been hyped like the iPhone, iPod, iWhatever, the N800's a gem nonetheless, and from the looks of it, very hacker/mod/flexibility-friendly, which means no jailbreaking needed to do some really wild stuff. This is exactly the kind of machine that's grown a cult of core followers.

If you get an N800 and need to get started, the onboard Internet browser (Mozilla-based and really nice rendering from what I've seen) will show you the way to Maemo software, and you should definitely also go to:

• Internet Tablet School
• Internet Tablet Talk forums

I've learned a lot perusing both, and what's especially incredible is your mind will open to even more of what you can do with such a versatile and delicious little gadget. Maybe you'll find gaps you never knew existed before that the N800 will happily plug, and no, that's not a euphemism.

So far, the Nokia N800 is living up to my expectations and beyond: the novelty has yet to wear off and I need more immediate steps to some of my desired creativity capture, but it's a favorite!

Tagged as: General, Pictures, Reviews, The Web