Quick N800 review
Mar. 26th, 2007 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
babysimonSince a few people have asked about it.
First of all, this is obviously not a real review, and I'm not a real journalist, or even that good at writing. It's more just some impressions, probably with glaring holes.
The first thing you notice is the screen - it really is amazingly sharp and high-res. The built in browser is Opera 8.5 and it definitely feels like a desktop browser. Almost every site looks like a very small but crisp version of what you'd see on a desktop. Some very AJAXy sites don't work too well, and anything that has navigation which assumes you can mouse-over without clicking can be a pain (Flickr!), but it's miles away from any browser I've used in a small gadget.
I do wonder how well you'd do with poor eyesight though. The screen is only just over 10cm across, and you can have to peer quite closely at it. Personally I would have bought a version that was 50% bigger with a correspondingly scaled-up screen, but then it wouldn't be so portable. At least the zoom in/out and full screen buttons work fast.
The built-in email app is fairly rubbish (particularly for IMAP), but someone's ported Claws Mail to it, which I hadn't previously heard of, but which seems to be fast and full of features. Certainly better than web mail.
I haven't tried using it as a Blackberry replacement, largely because Orange's mobile data plans seem stuck in the dark ages, so using the device through my phone rather than WiFi is an expensive luxury. But it certainly works well for checking your email from the sofa. Composing replies is OK, but not great - there's a full screen virtual keyboard which works quite well, but if I wanted to write a lot with this thing I'd get a bluetooth keyboard.
I've hardly used the Jabber client (as noted), and haven't used VoIP or video calling on it at all. The built-in camera is even worse than phone cameras - it's really only for video calling. I wish they'd included a GPS instead of a camera, but I guess that's cost.
It works nicely as a music player. The speakers are at least loud, if not very bassy, and after installing another uPNP server on my mythbox (the built-in MythTV one is very flaky) the media player worked well, and the downloadable Canola player is very pretty and means you don't even have to get the stylus out. It only comes with 256MB storage built in and a 128MB SD card, but has two SD card slots so it could almost replace an iPod (if you wanted a big-screen player with the capacity of a Nano). It also plays internet and FM radio. Video performance was pretty weak when I got it, but Nokia have already released an update that improves things a lot.
There's a whole bunch of other apps I've installed too. I *think* Nokia have done the right thing in requiring apps to have a custom UI (based on Gtk): the screen is so tiny and high-res, and using a stylus and fingers is very different to using a mouse, so a standard desktop would feel wrong. There's an... enthusiast out there who has ported KDE already, so if you want an over-engineered desktop you can have it. Or spend four times the money for a big, heavy UMPC.
Overall I'm torn. I don't regret spending the money, but quite a lot about this device is nearly there rather than just right. It seems to be getting better at quite a rate though - people are constantly porting new applications and the recent firmware update improved performance quite a bit. And it is addictive. I'd have trouble letting go of it.
First of all, this is obviously not a real review, and I'm not a real journalist, or even that good at writing. It's more just some impressions, probably with glaring holes.
The first thing you notice is the screen - it really is amazingly sharp and high-res. The built in browser is Opera 8.5 and it definitely feels like a desktop browser. Almost every site looks like a very small but crisp version of what you'd see on a desktop. Some very AJAXy sites don't work too well, and anything that has navigation which assumes you can mouse-over without clicking can be a pain (Flickr!), but it's miles away from any browser I've used in a small gadget.
I do wonder how well you'd do with poor eyesight though. The screen is only just over 10cm across, and you can have to peer quite closely at it. Personally I would have bought a version that was 50% bigger with a correspondingly scaled-up screen, but then it wouldn't be so portable. At least the zoom in/out and full screen buttons work fast.
The built-in email app is fairly rubbish (particularly for IMAP), but someone's ported Claws Mail to it, which I hadn't previously heard of, but which seems to be fast and full of features. Certainly better than web mail.
I haven't tried using it as a Blackberry replacement, largely because Orange's mobile data plans seem stuck in the dark ages, so using the device through my phone rather than WiFi is an expensive luxury. But it certainly works well for checking your email from the sofa. Composing replies is OK, but not great - there's a full screen virtual keyboard which works quite well, but if I wanted to write a lot with this thing I'd get a bluetooth keyboard.
I've hardly used the Jabber client (as noted), and haven't used VoIP or video calling on it at all. The built-in camera is even worse than phone cameras - it's really only for video calling. I wish they'd included a GPS instead of a camera, but I guess that's cost.
It works nicely as a music player. The speakers are at least loud, if not very bassy, and after installing another uPNP server on my mythbox (the built-in MythTV one is very flaky) the media player worked well, and the downloadable Canola player is very pretty and means you don't even have to get the stylus out. It only comes with 256MB storage built in and a 128MB SD card, but has two SD card slots so it could almost replace an iPod (if you wanted a big-screen player with the capacity of a Nano). It also plays internet and FM radio. Video performance was pretty weak when I got it, but Nokia have already released an update that improves things a lot.
There's a whole bunch of other apps I've installed too. I *think* Nokia have done the right thing in requiring apps to have a custom UI (based on Gtk): the screen is so tiny and high-res, and using a stylus and fingers is very different to using a mouse, so a standard desktop would feel wrong. There's an... enthusiast out there who has ported KDE already, so if you want an over-engineered desktop you can have it. Or spend four times the money for a big, heavy UMPC.
Overall I'm torn. I don't regret spending the money, but quite a lot about this device is nearly there rather than just right. It seems to be getting better at quite a rate though - people are constantly porting new applications and the recent firmware update improved performance quite a bit. And it is addictive. I'd have trouble letting go of it.
