Tom Raftery rips Nokia a new one with his review of the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. Last summer there was a huge amount of interest in the Nokia tablets after the 770 was available for a knockdown price. I was about to go on holiday for a week and couldn’t wait for the 770 to arrive and so I bought an N800 model (which I reviewed earlier). I’ve not yet upgraded to Internet Tablet OS 2008 but that’s because I’ve been using my iPhone pretty much 90% of the time (and the other 10% has been with this laptop).
First off the maps for the GPS are terrible. … and the GPS application doesn’t plot routes either.
Next is the low memory of the device. I only had around 3 applications running at the time so I was surprised that this consumed all the RAM on the device.
The UI is really clunky. I mean really clunky! In this regard I have been spoilt by my iPod Touch experience.
It is slow opening/running applications and the browsing experience is painful compared to Safari on the iPod.
The display doesn’t change orientation if you turn the device through 90 degrees.
It is a brick – big and heavy. Am I likely to carry this and my N95 with me when I am traveling? I don’t think so!
I have most of the same functionality with the combination of the iPod Touch and the N95 as I do with the N810 and the N95 for a fraction the pocket real estate!
Ouch!
Admittedly I didn’t find the N800 to be as much hassle as Tom describes and there are some times I wish it had had the hardware keyboard of the N810 model (Nokia needs to talk to Apple about onscreen soft keyboards). But it did save my geekness while I was in Skegness.
I guess we’ll have to wait until February to see if the iTouch and iPhone really start to challenge the Nokia internet tablets in terms of available software. We’ve already heard that SAP is building their native application for iPhone and there’s the recent news that Sling Media were also building for the iPhone/iTouch too.
The Nokia wouldn’t be enough for me to ditch a laptop and frankly neither is the iPhone or iPod touch. The issues with the iPhone/touch are 90% in software. I need more and better apps. But it’s getting close that these small devices could change our lives.
The other issues with these devices is also their strength. There’s something nice, something essential about using a proper keyboard. Finding a keyboard for the N800 was difficult enough that I eventually gave up after buying one and finding it wouldn’t work. If someone made an external keyboard for the iPhone, even a wired model, I think they’d be onto a winner.
I can’t wait to see what Nokia and Apple are going to bring out next.
I have the 770, and use it as an ambient information display device.. the UI is shocking, that’s for sure.
I’d not say “shocking”. It’s evident they put some thought into the design. I think they should have perhaps kept thinking or maybe stopped thinking a bit earlier.
Well, the 770 has that horrible front end with a “desktop” and “widgets” than can exist on it. They completely ignore how people might use the thing – it’s not a desktop or a laptop, it’s a handheld device. Give me my main features a click away. But that’s just my option, and I’ve not seen the 8xx devices.
Again I don’t think it’s without merit. I do hope they’ve done something surprising with the RSS Reader and Mail application. Both were awful.
All of them use the same OS anyway.