N800; Cool AND Useful

I picked up a Nokia N800 internet tablet for a project I'm doing for a client. We wanted an inexpensive wireless access device for a warehouse control project. Since the custom application is web-based (using SugarCRM as the base), we needed something that would handle full web browser functionality in a hand held package. The N800 fits the bill with a few caveats.

My first experience with the N800 wasn't very pleasant. The unit was DOA (dead on arrival) and I was only able to get it to start up once. Most of the time it would never acknowledge the charger and it wouldn't start. I couldn't even get it to the point where I could flash it. This made me nervous as the N800 is kind of at the end of its life, what with the new N810 now available. Tigerdirect, where I bought it, was great, and painlessly cross-shipped a replacement and gave me full credit on the dead unit.

Once I got past that, I really started liking the little N800. One of the first things I did was get the latest upgrade on the OS. Unlike Palm or WinCE devices, firmware updates are pretty regular on the N8xx product line. The unit has internal and external SD card slots that can handle any standard SD card up to 2GB (full size, but not the new high cap SD cards). Make sure you back up your settings to one of those SD cards before you do the upgrades because you'll lose everything stored on the N800 itself.

Most of the applications are about 80% there, when it comes to fit, finish, and function. The email program works, the drawing program works, etc., but they seem to lack some of the UI or functionality you might have come to expect from a desktop system. The UI is really easy to figure out and the application menus make sense. Some of the button functionality is not obvious, but once I figured out that the big button on top switches the unit to full screen mode, the on/off button combined with the square button controls power, and the square button by itself will toggle the full thumb keyboard, I was pretty well set.

Where the N800 really shines is in the way it handles its bread-and-butter applications; web browsing, communications, and connectivity.

WEB BROWSING

The N800 uses a mozilla base so any site that renders in Firefox will look really good and function on the N800. The latest firmware update has taken care of compatibility issues I was having with flash and I can now use sites that require version 9 without a problem. I now use the N800 for most of my casual web browsing and all of my favorite sites like facebook.com, *.google.com, gmail.com, bloglines.com, imdb.com, wikipedia.org, etc. all work and render beautifully. One of my biggest complaints with my cell phone as browser has been that 90% of the sites I might use don't render properly. Wikipedia, for instance, shows up as a list of single words down the right side of the display; on the N800, wikipedia is already a shortcut on the system.

Related to web browsing would be the RSS feed. There is a nice RSS feed reader built in, but I had problems with news.google.com crashing it on a previous release. While the little desktop scrolling rss feed app is pretty neat, I found that I prefer to keep all my feeds on bloglines and just use mozilla to keep up. That way, not only do I only need to access one place regardless, I also don't have to worry about compatibility, crashing, or battery use (the app wakes up every once in a while to see if it can access the internet and update its feeds).

COMMUNICATIONS

While it is designed to support a web-based world, the N800 also includes some internet client applications that really work well. It has a skype client, but I don't use skype and didn't try it, but it does have a really nice Gizmo client which I do use. The Gizmo app is similar to skype, but it is really an integrated chat/sip phone communications app that was designed to be able to talk to other systems. There have been a few issues that keep the N800 from getting a 10, such as having to click about 5 times to get to a numeric keypad to use during a call (like you need for voicemail). A little more work, though, and this app will be easier to use than the desktop version. With the latest version of the browser supporting flash 9, I look forward to trying out the gizmo "no software" option you can use at www.gizmocall.com.

The N800 comes with a set of combination earphones/mic that allow you to use gizmo right out of the box. The quality was good enough to make and receive calls.

Using gizmo, I was able to set the N800 up as an extension on my asterisk phone system and configured asterisk to ring both my desk phone and my N800. Running with gizmo active all the time was a little power intensive and I did have to charge in the middle of the day, while testing this, but I didn't play with any settings to see if I could improve this. The biggest problem seems to be with leaving it running without having access to the network--it keeps trying when there isn't a connection and that seems to hurt battery life. I just killed the application and just start it when I need it.

CONNECTIVITY

I was really impressed with the way the N800 handles connectivity. There is support for bluetooth phone data access which I use with my verizon wireless Treo 700p phone for access anywhere. I can also access any wifi network. This is all done with a well thought out interface that behaves itself. I wish my laptop had as nice an interface to find and access networks.

MEDIA APPLICATIONS

The media applications on the N800 fall into the IT WORKS! category of interface design. I was able to watch mp4 movies on a really nice display (full screen) and could pause them and return to them later. I did have some issues:

• Fast forward/rewind jump some percentage of the movie each time. This means I can only get with 5 minutes or so of where I want to be in the movie. This control should be much finer. When watching a 2 hour cartoon movie, my kids would like to be able to skip something less than one and a half cartoons at a time.
• There is no 2x/4x/8x kind of fast forward capability, like you would expect.
• It doesn't remember where you left off, unless you leave it running on that movie. Now most players can't do this, but it would seem pretty simple to keep track of where I was in each file, the last time I played them, and start back up there. My Dish DVR does it. I can carry about 5 or 6 movies on each SD card, I don't think it would take much to track this and age out the ones that I haven't watched in x months. Besides, this list would get killed everytime I flash the thing.
• Pretty bad play list management. Little annoyances crept in such as resetting my entire play list if I accidentally double click on a media item. This should be a whole lot easier. Check out the iPod or any modern mp3 player and you'll figure this out.

GENERAL UI

I really like the UI on the N800.

The keyboard has a word guessing feature that usually works well. It doesn't consider a . or @ in the middle of the word to be a place to restart the search though, so once you start typing an email address or website, you're on your own.

OS2008 really has been an improvement over OS2007.

OTHER APPLICATIONS

Other applications all pretty much work. I was dissappointed with some things like the calculator.

Because of my warehouse application, I wanted to use a bluetooth barcode scanner. I was able to get it to configure as a bluetooth keyboard, but when I did, that disabled the pop-up keyboard. This would be great, if it really was a keyboard, but it is only a scanner imitating one. I have yet to find a way to get both to work at the same time. This leads me to one other complaint...

While the N800 does what it was designed to do very well, and the fact that it runs linux means it should be very configurable, it can be a real scavenger hunt to find out what you want to know about how to configure things. I've got about 2 hours into trying to figure out how to re-enable the pop-up keyboard when an external keyboard is connected, but there just isn't enough organized documentation for the casual N800 hacker to be able to figure things out quickly.

OVERALL RATING

I give the N800 a 9.5 out of 10, primarily because it does its primary functions almost flawlessly, is very upgradable with new firmware, has an active development cycle, and great battery life. It really is easier than booting up your laptop when you want to use imdb.com to find out when that actor died or want to look up something on wikipedia. You can check your web email, access google, and really get access to data using your bluetooth phone or available wifi. I really like the thing.

A better media player, support for the high cap SD cards, and the ability to support a bar code scanner would make this little guy just about perfect.