In short: some improvements over the N800, but not enough to warrant the price delta. Some brain-dead decisions by Nokia (miniSD, microUSB), but not enough to make me stop using it.
Country: australia
Purchased From: somewhere in california, our USA office purchased it
Likes:
has a nice sturdy feel to it.
GPS
Dislikes:
The pull out keyboard is a big disappointment. The keys are too close together and hard to discern from one another, even with my skinny fingers. I keep hitting the wrong keys. The Zaurus keyboards are much easier to type with.
As well, why isn't a camera app included? I do prefer the pull out and rotatable camera of the n800.
Not enough open source/too much proprietary closed software.
Keyboard backlight turns off while keyboard is pulled out. This is irritating at night.
The desktop applets are not lockable like on the n800. They keep moving around and often find myself fumbling to move them to find an applets underneath.
Country: USA (but the n810 rom thinks I'm in the UK).
Purchased: 12/15 from a CompUSA in Des Moines IA (3 hour drive, but they had it in stock which by then no one else - even online - and at 20% off since they were closing).
I'm really impressed.
Everything works well. The speakers are loud enough and clear for such a small device. I don't think I've been below 3/4 full on the battery. Bluetooth goes without effort to the other side of the office. Wifi picks up APs as well as my MacBookPro. GPS is good for the size/space/power, but I'll probably use an external one most of the time. The BT headset switchover works well.
Screen loses color saturation in sunlight but is still very readable (a key reason for the n810 over the n800). I've not seen the OLPC/XO but it might be the only real competitor. Keyboard works well - having it lighted is useful too (there isn't enough screen real-estate to have the tapboard up all the time).
It runs linux so I have VNC both ways, ssh, etc.
Sometimes the web access is a bit slow, but not unexpected for the device (and huge web pages. Adblock and greasemonkey with a blockflash script helps a great deal). YouTube and other Flash9 multimedia work great.
RSS needs to "open in new window" for links. Missing windows media codecs for speech
or such (Win Mobile for ARM processors has them as: wmsdmod.dll wmadmod.dll wmvdmod.dll), so a small number of streams aren't accessible. They aren't on the iPod/iPhone either though.
Hate list: I NEVER have typed the euro or pound symbol, but since I hack linux I use the or bar ("|") and control keys. I keep putting my left thumb over the ambient light sensor so the screen dims. Keyboard doesn't seem to latch fully. USB port covered by the stand. Only OEM chargers indicate full. The "lock/unlock" sometimes sticks - the LED flashing as an indicator would help. The power switch also doesn't feedback well.
And/or a car adapter. They include the vehicle mount.
Although it has some proprietary software, it is real Linux - USB host mode works, I can add kernel modules, and I use Gnumeric, and the shell and system is all familiar (I do embedded linux professionally).
Country: USA
Purchased From: micro center - Houston, TX
Purchase/Arrival Date: 12/29/07
Likes:
beautiful screen, great web experience, handy qwert keyboard, linux OS, impressive battery life, excellent multimedia performance, decent number of apps & add-ons...it's really a pretty little machine!
Dislikes:
gps slow to connect, won't do my laundry for me
Favorite Apps:
so far - web browser, internet radio
Comments:
I'm an IT n00b...and a linux n00b, but I was able to flash my n810 to the latest os2008 last night using my EEE PC. I was pretty happy about that! I have fairly large hands, but the small qwerty keyboard doesn't seem to hinder me....I'm writing this from my n810!
all in all, I'm happy and very impressed with this device. is there room for improvement? sure, but it really does everything I need it to do...and it does the job well.
This is my first IT and my first brush with Linux. I got my hands on the N810 on Christmas Day but I've only been able to use it for the last 3 days.
First impressions are that it's pretty much what I was looking for though I do require PIM software to be installed. Screen is lovely and the keyboard is good, for my fingers at least.
First thing I did was install the OS upgrade which went without a hitch and took around 30 minutes from start to finish including download.
I then tried YouTube which is excellent, a bit choppy with some sequences but on the music ones I like perfectly smooth.
I've sorted the PIM stuff out. First I had to come to terms with repos and all that stuff but didn't find it difficult, thanks to many helpful and clear contributions on this forum. (The manual is a waste of space in my opinion)
I installed GPE Calendar, ToDo and Contacts. Then I signed up on Google Calendar. Then I installed Erminig. This complained of missing libraries which I downloaded one by one. But it all stalled on the python-runtime which I could only find in corrupted form (see elsewhere on the forum!).
I solved this by clearing all Application Manager catalogues and making a new entry called All at web address http://stage.maemo.org.extras. This worked well (thanks again to various forum members).
I then filled in a few details in Erminig and -wahay! It alo synced up first go. Brilliant. I now have a PIM system, on IT and PC that comes somewhere near my Palm TX - which is headed for eBay.
I've also installed Eggtimer, Password Safe and Camera.
I intend to install maemo Mapping soon. All in all, Linux ain't that hard to use. I tend to learn things hands on and this proves to be an easy way to get to know the N810.
Great piece of kit. it's cut my TV viewing by half. I don't think I've even scratched its potential yet. I intend to learn Python and do a bit of programming for it myself.
What don't I like? The poor Nokia documentation. The ambiguity over standby/ turnoff. Do I switch it off - or let it idle? And with Linux, the number of people who use what looks like gobbledegook instead of English.
Luckily, this forum is a fantastic tool and I thank the all organisers and contributors for it.
Likes:
- Feels pretty good in your hand, fun to use. Impresses by-standers quite a bit.
- I like the keyboard. Slides in and out in a good way. The D-pad actually works better than it seems like it will; learning to just trust it helps.
- It's smart about a lot of things, like not popping up on-screen keyboards if hardware keyboard is open, connecting to a variety of networks w/o any fuss, guessing words as you type, lighting up keyboard when needed. If you hide the browser's toolbar in full-screen view, it pops up briefly when you're connecting to a new page. Nice!
- It connected to my Treo 680 via BT w/ no problem, and uses the Treo's Cingular network connection when WiFi isn't around.
- Full-screen view is wonderful. Clarity/sharpness seems great. Desktop theme is attractive and easy to customize.
- Speakers are loud and clear. Sitting it on its stand and letting Internet Radio run is pretty cool.
Dislikes:
- A bit slippery, and rattles when shaken side-to-side. (I may try putting a bit of electrical tape on the battery to see if that solves the rattle.) Definitely not that desirable "slab of metal" feel I'd like, but that's part of the deal w/ a slide-out keyboard I guess.
- I'm OK with the D-pad being on the slider, but I'd love to also have page-up/down keys on the face. Maybe on the right, just like the existing buttons on the left? (Are you listening, Nokia?)
- Some apps have the wide page-scroller bar on the right, but most don't. That tiny scrollbar is impossible to get to with your finger! Page flicking is interesting, but sometimes I want to grab the scrollbar and move down a long page. Links/text-entry fields in the web browser are small and can be tough to select, too.
- More unique cables to stow - USB cable is not mini-USB, and doesn't charge the device. The new Nokia charger seems like the pin could easily break, and it could stand to fit more snugly. It does use a standard headphone port, though.
- Email support is weak for power-users, and otherwise this device seems best suited to power-users! I don't plan on using this thing as a PIM, since my Treo does that quite well. Checking email when I get an attached PDF to read, though, would be nice. I've got the Modest email client installed; it's better, but still isn't as good as I'd like to see w/ its support for IMAP folders. Can't Nokia adapt Thunderbird to the Maemo interface the way they did for Firefox?
- Documentation: As noted by others, this is a real weak point. Come on, Nokia - what do those blinking lights mean, anyway? I had to turn them off!
Favorite Apps:
Let's face it, most of us got this thing at least in part because you can do a lot of messing around with it. I downloaded and installed quite a few apps, but have now found that many of the built-in ones work pretty well if given a chance.
- Maps (the built-in one): I purchased the nav option, and it works great! True, the GPS won't lock to the satellites indoors, but what do you want? It works like a charm in my car, and I hardly ever need to navigate when I'm in my kitchen. :-) I just sit the device in the ashtray area forward of the shifter, and it locks on in less than 2 minutes. That works for me. So far, the POI database seems very complete. (Note: it says "voice-guided turn-by-turn". This is true, but it does not call out the streets by name. I had another GPS for a while that did do this, and it was nice. I find, though, that it really doesn't matter that much, at least for me.) Unlike some of the other posters, I couldn't get Maemo Mapper to work at all. It couldn't find the GPS unless Maps was also running. Then after a LONG delay, it placed me in the next street over!
- Media player: Very usable and attractive interface. I installed Canola2 beta, and love its look and feel. However, I find it to be flaky for anything except photos, so I reverted to Media player for my everyday music & podcast needs. I even like the included headphones, which wasn't true at all for the Nokia phone I got a few years ago.
- RSS reader: Looking at these over my morning coffee is nice. Feeds with attachments, like podcasts, can be downloaded right to the device. I imported my feeds from bloglines no problem, right from the device's web browser. My ipod/itunes combo seems like a bit of a pain in comparison.
- omweather: Gotta have a desktop weather widget, right? (Oops, I mean applet!) Not sure why this wasn't included in OS2008, but this one is easy to get and set up.
Country - UK
Purchased from - play.com
Purchase Date - 22.Dec.2007
Likes
Size - it's a much better fit in my pocket than previous versions.
Keyboard - granted the size gets some getting used to, however it's a much better method of typing than with the stylus (for me anyways)
UI - OOooooh pretty.. seriously a great improvement
Dislikes
Position of fullscreen and zoom buttons when using the keyboard.
Webcam - hmmm, same quality as n800 but without the funky rotate ability.
Repos - these seem to be broken at the moment, but easily fixable soon
I am hugely happy with my new n810 and havent put it down since the day i got it. Hopefully the repo probs will be sorted soon, but this hasn't stopped me putting on my fave apps;
Pidgin
skype
xchat
maemo mapper
Will be even happier when canola matures (e.g. proper cover art functionality) and pidgin finally gets webcam support.
I now have to think what i can do with my n770 and n800!! seriously like the idea of a using n800 as a wardriving machine for my security work
