Every Flavour Beans

The reason I had decided to buy Nokia N800 Internet Tablet the very first week it was released, even before I could read decent reviews about the product, was that it is based on the highly customisable/extensible GNU/Linux platform. Also its predecessor Nokia N770 had already tasted reasonable success. Few things that could’ve been expected were that N800 might smooth-out some of the complaints that the early N770 users had(also fixed in N770 through updates) but it might not support as many applications in the first quarter of 2007 as N770 did. But I had trust in the Free software developer community that within an year or so, N800 can boast of more applications than any other device in its category. Less than six months since its release, I am already enjoying a number of applications ported to N800 platform(Skype is still missing! Not anymore).

I used the device for the first few months deliberately not installing any of the applications available in Nokia or third-party repositories to see how useful the device would be in its default state. I must say that most of the functionality I was looking for was already available in the device. One thing needs to be stressed here though: Nokia N800 is not a phone, it’s also not a wannabe phone. It’s just an Internet Tablet that allows voice based communication over Internet through applications like Google Talk(comes pre-installed in the device). If being able to call a traditional phone is high on the wish list, even though it might just be possible with N800 when Skype will be is ported to it, still I would say that it is definitely not the device for you. Nokia N800 vs iPhone just doesn’t make any sense to me(though it is fun mocking the Apple/Microsoft products :) ).

Now coming to why N800 is so perfect for me:

1. Browse Internet from anywhere in the house/office/etc. It’s better than a laptop because it is such a small device, it is so easy to carry it around the whole house, and even a bit farther too, if my access point can throw the signal that far. Thankfully it doesn’t come with some crappy old web browser that can’t handle anything beyond WML/HTML - N800 comes with full-blown Opera 8 web browser with good support for even Web 2.0/Ajaxified websites. The web pages can be zoomed in and out to increase/decrease font size etc of a page with a simple button press. The wireless connectivity is easy to set up(when I powered the device on, it searched and showed all my three access points, and after I selected one of them, it has been connecting to it without I having to repeat the selection process) and it has never dropped the connection. I can lay down on a couch while doing casual web browsing, download files, save or bookmark pages. Before going to shop for electronic items, I browse through all the products at home, and instead of taking notes, I just save the pages on the device and carry it with me to the shops. This would’ve been unnecessary if the shopping complexes in my area had WiFi access points or if Webaroo kind of application were supported for N800.
2. Audio and Video Player. I have never bought an MP3 player in my life. I have seen and ignored people around me buying iPods, Creative players etc but I never could see how a 5″x3″ sized device that didn’t also play video could be useful to me. iPod Video and Creative Zen Vision:M now support video too, but their screen size is like a joke to me. I was considering buying Creative Zen Vision:W(after disappointing experience with Creative Portable Media Center) which has a dream screen-size. N800 made it unnecessary as it plays MPEG, DivX, XviD, FLV etc. formats and I can copy the video files like copying any other file on a PC: no cumbersome synchronisation process using a tailor-made software is required. I am not completely happy with the video playback capability of N800 though. Without installing additional software, it plays only MPEG files. With proper codec support, it plays a lot more video formats. I wish that as long as the video is in a resolution compatible with the device, it should play most of the popular formats without additional software(just a single additional application like MPlayer is fine; most of us are going to install it anyway). The bass in audio playback is non-existent with the headphones that come with the device. I exchanged them with Creative E880 earphones and MP3 playback is nearly as good as iPod - with a better user interface.
3. Voice/Video Chat. Google Talk is pre-installed in Nokia N800 and N800 comes with built-in microphone and a video/web camera, so it’s at least as effective as chatting on a PC using a Web Camera, only a lot more convenient. The web camera especially can be rotated 360 degrees but is useful only while video chatting. It can not be used as a stand-alone camera either to take pictures or to record video. An application is available through Nokia repository that enables N800 to take pictures through this camera but I found the quality of the pictures to be too bad. You can’t imagine how bad. Google Talk is more than sufficient for my needs as I don’t carry N800 around the town to take pictures with it.
4. EBook Reader with FBReader. N800 may not be a dream device for the regular ebook readers but for a casual reader like me, it has enough features(except support for bookmarks) to make me happy. FBReader doesn’t come with N800 pre-installed but installing it from the “Application Manager” is a trivial task. It supports plenty of ebook formats and allows switching to portrait or landscape mode. N800 supports increasing/decreasing font size and full-screen reading mode.
5. FM Radio. When I get bored listening to all the MP3s present on the device, I tune into the local FM channels for variety. Earphones are needed to act as antenna for FM tuning. A small application also needs to be installed.
6. Support for more than 8GB memory! The device officially supports only 2GB cards but even that means 4GB in total as the device comes with two memory slots. 4GB SD cards come very cheap these days and work just fine with N800 - I have 2 x 4GB = 8GB memory. 8GB SDHC cards can also be used(so the total becomes 16GB of memory!) but a modified kernel an official update (2007) needs to be installed which though is straightforward but not a trivial task.
7. Terminal! I wouldn’t have bought the device if the terminal was not supported on it. The device can run ssh server, vnc server too so that it can be accessed from another computer.
8. Acts as USB storage device, doesn’t need a memory card reader or custom software. Most of the devices require a custom software to talk to the device even for simple file transfers. Some devices allow the memory cards to be removed from the device and attached to the computers through memory card readers. N800 connects to the computer through a USB cable and acts as a regular USB storage device(just like iPods do - for file transfers. For audio/video transfers, iTunes is needed). The big plus point of this feature, apart from the fact that a software doesn’t have to be installed before connecting the device to a computer and a memory card reader is not needed, is that it can be accessed from a gnu/linux system too. This may seem an insignificant feature who haven’t struggled and failed to connect 9 out of 10 devices to their primary operating system.

So that’s my list though I can add a few more features to it easily.
If you are looking for a balanced review of the product, inquirer has a good one:
Nokia’s cheap UMPC alternative is future-proof
Google for more info.