I just ditched my Nokia N800 internet tablet. it was a biter-sweet moment for me, I liked the device a lot, but there was a lot it wouldn’t do well too. Namely Ajax web sites and Personal Information Management. Now Nokia has announced the N810 internet tablet and expect to have it available some time in November.
Nokia N810 gets official - Engadget
The N810 sports a bunch of nice physical upgrades to the N800. The most prominent of which is the sliding real keyboard. The N800 had a very capable on screen keyboard but a real keyboard that doesn’t cover up what’s on the screen is a very nice touch. Also physically different is the front facing VGA camera, the N800 had a pop out cam, which could be rotated to face either direction but, there wern’t any practical uses for it, hopefully that will be rectified with the N810.
Under the hood the N810 isn’t that big of an increase over the N800. It’s using the same processor as the N800 but with a slightly faster clock speed. Still has the meager, but usable 128MB RAM, and 256MB ROM that the N800 had. Adds a built in GPS receiver. And still carries the same Bluetooth and WiFi chipset the N800 had. It’s important to note the Nokia Internet tablets are not cell phones. They are hand held Linux computers that use WiFi but can be easily connected to any bluetooth capable cell phone with a data plan. I used my N800 with my Samsung handset on verizon Flawlessly for high speed mobile data.
The Device claims audio playback of MP3, WMA, AAC, AMR, AWB, M4A, MP2, RA (RealAudio), WAV file types, I found the music playback on my N800 to be adequate, but nothing to get excited about. The Video Playback has been improved to include 3GP, AVI, WMV, MP4, H263, H.264, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, RV (RealVideo). Hopefully this will mean you won’t have to re-encode any video you want to load onto the thing with a wonky Java based application. That would be a nice improvement.
It looks like they are changing from The Opera 8 Browser, to a new Mozilla based browser for the default internet application. This is good news as it means we will probably better performance on AJAX capable sites. Meaning you might actually be able to use Google Calendar, thus eliminating the need for some Personal Information Manager software, something Nokia seems hellbent on not providing for this series of devices.
The price tag for release is $479, and I imagine you will be able to get it online and at CompUSA stores. I will definatly check this out when it becomes available, but I am not buying it unless it can run AJAX sites and Internet Video flawlessly. If it does I will give it some serious consideration, if it doesn’t I think I’ll wait for the N900 to show up.
Gizmodo has a nice little hands on review and video on their site. Check it out on the link below.
Nokia N810 hands-On Gallery and Video
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