Introduction, package
Nokia fans may hardly admit that there are things that don’t work out for the first time even for their favorite manufacturer. An internet-board without compromises is a thing like this, on which our northern friends have been working so hard for years. They are putting the third device on the market but we still can’t say: yes, that’s what we need! However, now not because of angering trifles, but a knowingly missed feature. It’s a shame.
Couple of years ago we would have only laughed on a thing like this: a device only with internet? What for? And now here is the N810 without any calling functions but it got the letter ‘N’ and we can only raise our hats in acknowledgement. Yes, we do need things like this, there are people who want to browse the Net without compromises, which nowadays can only be done with a thing called iPhone. The applephone has only one problem: if there’s no WiFi around, we can only surf with EDGE and that feels pretty lame beside the pretty cheap HSDPA solutions. The Finnish had their chance but couldn’t make it. There’s no way to put a SIM-card into the N810.
The testphone provided by the MobilX arrived in a huge box. Besides the stuff itself there was a showy grey-blue leather case, a charger, a data cable, stereo headset, another stylus, a holder for the car (can be attached with screws), and a cleaner tissue.
Hirdetés
Exterior
So I don’t have any problems with the concept itself. Neither with its right for existence. Once I had a Nokia 770 accompanying me, basically I liked it too, but it had serious lacks in quality. These were repaired in the N800, but the N810 stands on the top of the evolution without a doubt, I could nearly say it’s perfect.
The engineers got the right measurements without a mistake: 72 x 128 x 14 mm, weighs 226 grams, perfectly sits in the hand, one feels that there is ‘stuff’ in it, not heavy though. I think this is the optimal weight and size for a device like this. The front casing is made of blue-grayish metal with chiseled surface. On the left-top corner there is a LED (giving the thing a high-tech look), this mystically shines when the internet-connection is active or if the machine is on charge. Under it there are a light sensor and a VGA-camera for video calling, going more to the south from these there are two function buttons. The display is 4.13 inches diagonally, 800x480 resolution, the quality of the picture is perfect, the colors are beautiful, no problems with reading, it has to be like this. That’s all.
Turning the machine reveals the only weak spot of it: the backside. Looks good, the lower metal part, no problem with this, but it is very loose. I really cannot understand the manufacturer. After creating the marketing-samples, wasn't anybody there to tell them that a backside with a shape like this sucks? Correcting this would have been so hard? I think it would have been enough to attach a small piece of sponge to the inside to avoid the user feeling this ‘nearly’-emotion. Nearly perfect only, the backside is lame. When can I hold a device in my hands which reduces the previous sentence to only one word?
Going from top-left to the right the buttons are the following: full screen, volume controls, power button, keylock switch. I don’t think I need to go into the details of the functions, special thanks for the full screen-button, it’s very-very useful. There is a shoddy stylus at the end of this line which we won’t use very often.
There is nothing on the bottom if we look at it in its basic stance. But there are many to see only hidden from our eyes. The machine has a foldable leg that can keep the device in a standing position on the table. It has three stands between which it clicks smoothly, useful and good. Unfolding this shows the switch to remove the backside, the microphone and the slot for the SDHC-compatible miniSD card.
There are loudspeakers - one on each side. This suggests stereo sounding, and based on the manufacturer, it is real stereo. There’s nothing else on the left, and there are a couple of other things on the right: 3.5 jack-out, socket for the charger, microUSB port. This last one is only available if the leg is unfolded.
The biggest coolness – which is a great innovation, as well – can be seen after sliding the device: a real QWERTY keyboard. And nothing lame, pretty comfortable because of its size, looks good, has backlight, pretty high-quality, just as the sliding mechanism. And finally we don’t have any problems with the input; a keyboard like this may even be envied by the HTC.
Inside, Operating System
The heart of the device is a 400 MHz TI OMAP 2420 CPU. Sounds a bit funny, but the other N-series smartphones from this manufacturer has the same in themselves (N93, N95, N82, E90), but I have to admit that they are only clocking at 330 MHz. I can hear you asking that if this chipset is enough to run the Linux-based Nokia Internet Tablet OS2008 without any crashes. Luckily the answer is positive.
The Nokia 770 had serious problems with the amount of its memory, because opening 2 or 3 web pages left no empty space in the cache, and the machine could only send an error signal to the shocked user. Fortunately the N810 doesn’t have this problem because the manufacturer hasn’t spared out the memory. There is 128 MB RAM for temporary usage, and a 256 MB + 2 GB flash ROM to store our data which – as I’ve mentioned before – can be expanded by a miniSD card.
The Linux-based platform is easy to upgrade with the integrated Application Manager. But if these dozens of programs – which also enjoy the supplement of Nokia – wouldn’t be enough, we can find others on the internet, we can practically download anything, which is available for other platforms (Symbian and Microsoft Windows), and moreover this list of downloadable files can be upgraded with the files of external servers which only requires the installing of one file – it’s like the iPhone’s Installer. The selection is obviously smaller than in the case of other systems, but here every program is practically free, which itself can be a rather convincing fact when buying the phone.
No problem with handling. The Home screen is given, on which we can put out a lot of icons which is not only our choice, but it depends on the software, too. We can put out the Google search bar and the net radio etc., for example. There are three icons on the left side, pointing at the first we can reach things connected to browsing (new, blank page, favorites), the communications are in the second (new e-mail/chat/web telephoning, others like these), and the third is the menu itself. If a program is running, then its icon goes onto the bottom of the list, so the user can easily choose between the currently running applications (yeah, multi-task). The menus of each program can be reached by the icon next to the globe in the upper left corner, and we can set the brightness and volume during the running of any program, and moreover the state of the battery is always visible – expect when a full screen software is being run. The user can alter the visualization with different themes.
The device is pretty bad at document-handling, no Office support, only a PDF-reader, missing the search function, though. There are four games: Checks, Blocks, Mahjong, Marbles. Backup option is integrated, and the QWERTY keyboard is not the only way for input (but it is advised to use). There is a virtual keyboard in the machine and a handwriting-recognition algorhytm. Not too many other programs, notepad, drawing thingie, terminal, world clock, calculator.
Internet and Stuff
The most important change on the field of the internet is that the browser has been changed from Opera to FireFox, or at least to some kind of a Mozilla-based software displays the web for us. It does its job perfectly, nice and fast, doesn’t widen the pages too much, supports AJAX and Flash, even plays the YouTube-videos. However, no scrolling routine in it, which misses pretty much (knowing the mobile Safari), but I could manage living without it anyways.
The integrated internet phone can use Google Talk, Jabber and SIP accounts. The Skype is at an another point of the menu, not integrated, and I couldn’t install it either, because the installer told me that it was missing a couple of things – but forgot to tell what exactly he needed. The chat supports the same accounts, so no integrated MSN, but I could help this matter easily. There is an e-mail client, can get along with authenticated IMAP-servers and attachments, too. The RSS reader handles RSS 1.0, 2.0 and Atom 1.0.
There was another repair made that is even more important than changing the browser. They soldered a bit on the WLAN-receiver that now doesn’t make the problems as the N800. It could connect all networks, and the signal was stronger than with any – I repeat: ANY – other machines that has gone through my hands ever. I could surf the web at points of the flat where the notebook or the PDA not only couldn’t connect but wasn’t able to see the network. But even with considering this I’m unable to understand why they left out the HSPDA-support from it, because I think the SIM-socket could have been placed at some place without any problems. So mobile-net can be reached through a cell phone with Bluetooth and capability to operate as a modem.
Multimedia
Every hardware is given to compete with the armies of PMPs on the field of video playing, only the built-in memory is smaller than the mentioned machineries. But the big screen – as I’ve realized later – is not everything.
Music and videos are both played by the Media Player from audio formats the followings are supported: : MP3, WMA, AAC, AMR, AWB, M4A, MP2, RA (RealAudio), WAV. We can search between files by author, album and style, but there is a small logical mistake: after choosing an author we have to choose an album, so practically it only helps us to distinguish albums by authors, and this makes the whole thing irrelevant. There’s no way to create a list of one author with all of their tracks. No equalizer or bass boost, only repeat and shuffle in the options and that’s a pretty small range of choices. The album covers don’t show up, the volume can be set with a scroll, but the basic headphones are rather silent and the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen can’t be heard not only on the subway, but even on a tram. One has to buy new headphones to help this. The double loudspeakers and the metal casing do their job, without headphones it sounds very good.
The following movie formats are OK with the device: 3GP, AVI, WMV, MP4, H263, H.264, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, RealVideo, but XviD or DivX AVIs cannot be played. There are two integrated clips in the memory, both are shown nicely, but it remains a torturing question why Nokia put Anna Abreu's End of Loveon its phone designed for browsing. Since the videos are handled by the Media Player there are no newer options either.
Only the front side has a camera, theoretically it was put there only for video calls, and this theory is strengthened by the fact that there’s no photo shooting-software in the memory. However, I installed one without any problems so now I can show what the thing is capable of. I’m saying again: this camera is not supposed to take photos, it’s only for video calls, so don’t expect a miracle. The highest resolution available is 640x480 and there are no options.
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GPS, others, summary
New upgrade that the device has a built-in GPS-receiver. It’s an NMEA 0183 with only five channel, but the bigger problem is that the test phone only bore the map of England in itself, so I couldn’t use the Wayfinder program with the TeleAtlas map. However, I think I couldn’t have used it anyway, because it was only a trial version working as a digital map, for real navigation I should have bought the complete program. As a map it is lame, cannot be compared to the iGO, slow, hard, ugly.
The battery has 1500 mAh, replaceable. The manufacturer says it provides 4 hours of surfing, which is approximately correct. Theoretically it can play music for 10 hours and with these two pieces of information one can count that with a little music, a little video, a little anything, it can keep up for about 5-6 hours. The brightness of the display can be set in five levels, but the device – based on its information from the light sensor – can change the brightness all by itself. Altering this looks great because real transitions can be seen going from one level to another.
Summary: looking at the subtitle of the review, I went thinking about its tenability. The Nokia is still unable to create a reliable internet tablet-machine, but summarizing the characteristics of the N810, I feel a title nearly perfect The biggest problem with it is it cannot handle a SIM-card, the loose backside is not a thing that would be a serious setback in the usage, I only cannot understand why they haven’t repaired it. Anyway, it’s a very good little machine, nice, fast, reliable, an exacting piece of work, programs are free for it, and it can be used as a decent multimedia-player. It’s biggest opponent are the iPhone and the iPod Touch, the latter is better on the field of multimedia, but worse in many others. The current price of the N810 is approx. 465 Euros - this is the reason why we only found it Cool, and not Reommended.
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| Nokia N810 |
Bocha
Translated by EQMontoya
The phone was provided by the MobilX
The phone can be bought online at: www.mobilx.hu
Info-line: +36-52/501-868
Specifications
| Nokia N810 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | no GSM module | |
| Size | 128 x 72 x 14 mm | |
| Weight | 226 grams | |
| Display | ||
| Size of display | 4,13 inches | |
| Resolution | 800 x 480 pixels | |
| Type of display | TFT, touchscreen | |
| Number of colours | 65,536 | |
| Memory | ||
| Contact list capacity | dynamic | |
| Built-in memory | 256 + 2048 MB (~2200 MB free) | |
| Memory expandability | miniSD (SDHC-compatible) | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequencies | no | |
| GPRS / EDGE | no / no | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | no / no | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | no / 2.0 (A2DP too, with a program) | |
| WiFi | 802.11b/g | |
| USB | 2.0 (microUSB) | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | no / yes | |
| GPS sensor | yes, 5 channeled | |
| Softwares | ||
| Platform | Nokia Internet Tablet OS2008 (Linux-based) | |
| WAP / HTML browser | no / yes (Mozilla) | |
| E-mail client | yes (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | yes | |
| Games | 4 | |
| Currency converter | no | |
| Extra softwares | Extra softwares: world clock, internet radio, PDF-reader | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | no | |
| Secondary camera | VGA resolution | |
| Video recording | no | |
| Music playing software | yes, runs in background | |
| FM-radio | no | |
| Worktime | ||
| Stock battery | 1500 mAh (BP-4L) | |
| Stand-by time | 5 days | |
| Browsing time | 240 minutes | |
| Music-playing time | 600 minutes | |
