The Nokia N800 Portable Internet Tablet
(Review) - Nokia’s latest device, the N800 Internet Tablet, is unique, to say the least. It’s not a smartphone, yet it can send and receive e-mail messages; it’s not a phone, yet it can make phone calls; it’s not a portable multimedia player; yet it can playback audio/video files; and it’s not a notebook, yet it can browse the web. Are you confused yet? Alright, let’s see if we can define the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. The N800 does a lot of things, but it can’t be placed in any one of the multitude of portable categories. Nope, it’s in a category all by itself.
As the name suggests, the N800 is an Internet Tablet with a primary function to browse the web. Everything else is value-adds. With that said, it’s a spiffy little device that’s going to make you go wow at the future of portability and technology.
The N800 Internet Tablet sports a gorgeous and highly professional color scheme of silver (front) and matte black (back). The device is minimal in appearance with a 4-way navigational key with an OK button followed by Escape, Menu and Swap keys on the front. Although the navigational keys were fine, the three buttons were somewhat cumbersome, since they are embedded into the device, i.e., there’s a lack of tactile feedback on the buttons. However, we suspect you will get used to them after a while. The top edge of the N800 has the zoom in, out, full display mode and power buttons. Again, they, too, are tiny, but you should also get used to them as well. While we usually take off points for tactile-less buttons in our mobile reviews, we are letting Nokia slide. The reason for that is simple: cell phones have a lot of buttons, and the layout isn’t as easy to memorize. With the N800, however, there are very few buttons on the exterior, and it’s very easy to get the hang of them. On the left spine, the N800 has an embedded webcam for video conferencing. It’s an impressive design. The webcam can be inserted back into the device with a simple push to its edge. Not to mention, it can rotate 180-degrees for covering a lot of angles. The quality of the webcam was less than spectacular, and it’s just enough to get you connected into an important meeting on the fly. We wouldn’t use it as a replacement to a dedicated webcam with image enhancement technology and a 1.3-megapixel lens. The right spine has the stylus insert, a 3.5mm headset jack and a charger connector. We should also mention the amazing looking display with support for 65,536 colors and an 800x480 resolution. The stylus we mentioned above can be used to navigate through the device and key-in URLs and other text. There’s also a full screen keyboard for touch tying incase you want to use your fingers for text input. Personally, if you are going to use the N800 for long hours, we would highly recommend getting a wireless Bluetooth keyboard. It’s going to make things so much simpler. Handwriting recognition is available as well, but we would recommend you stay away from it. It requires you to adapt a new style and is unreliable in a lot of situations. That’s the "fault" of the technology, not necessarily in Nokia’s implementation. Once you get passed the exterior, the features are where all the power is unleashed. The N800 packs Opera’s version 8.0 browser with Flash 7 and high-resolution widescreen display that can be enabled with a push of a button at the top (remember the full screen mode button). That means you can browse the web, stream live music (either through a website or the onboard radio utility) or watch YouTube videos. Unfortunately, though, the streaming performance was sub par at best. The movies were pixilated, and the audio was unsync’ed with the clips. YouTube videos are known for their notorious video quality, and the N800 doesn’t have the power to remedy those issues like a PC would to tolerable levels. You can make phone calls with the onboard VoIP clients (Nokia’s Has Also Released Skype client exclusively for the N800 And N810), instant message your family, friends and colleagues through a built-in messenger, and send/receive e-mail messages using IMAP4 and POP3. The multimedia player and RSS feed reader is available as well. The RSS reader was, again, not as intuitive. It requires that you copy-and-paste the feed’s URL manually for it add it to your account. However, we would’ve preferred it if it synced our accounts with the likes of Newsgator, Yahoo! and others. Who wants to go through the hassle of subscribing to multitude of feeds again? Thankfully, due to N800’s open architecture, third-party developers can work to release different applications that will only make the N800 a strong platform. Other utilities, such as a PDF viewer, backup app, file manager, notes, calculator and such are available as well. Although the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet has about 128MB + 256MB onboard by default, there are two expandable storage slots (one at the bottom, one behind the battery cover) that can boost the storage capacity to 4GB (support for up to 2GB of expansion cards). It supports SD, MicroSD, MiniSD, MMC, and RS-MMC formats. The location of the expansion slots isn’t ideal, and it may turn into quite a chore if you transfer a lot of data. Even the exterior expansion slot requires that you move the kickstand (to make the device stand upright, incase you get tired of holding it or during a conference session) before accessing it. Also, there is no pushback capability to make the cards pop out on their own. Now, that was pretty annoying. Pretty much all of the popular audio, video and image formats are supported. Sadly, the audio and video performance wasn’t anything to get excited about. Similar to our web experience, the video playback was pixilated in action sequences, and the audio playback was poor. The lack of bass and clearly defined bits weren’t presentable through the integrated speakers. Interestingly enough, the audio quality improved vastly through third-party earphones. In fact, we are quite surprised, as we have never had audio quality improve that much just by switching it to earphones. The web browsing and app using experience was great. All apps are intuitive in that they walk you through a step-by-step wizard in many instances to help you get setup quickly and efficiently. The N800 Internet Tablet only connects to the Internet through WiFi or Bluetooth (via your cell phone). That’s a pity! If you don’t have either of these options, the N800 won’t be of much use to you. With that said, browsing the web was an absolute joy. The implementation of the browser and the relevant utilities make working on the N800 a pleasure. Regrettably, you can’t sync the N800 to your PC through a PIM app. If you are going to use the N800 for e-mails and contacts information, it would be a good idea for Nokia to embed an application that syncs the device with the PC effortlessly. Hopefully, a third-party developer will be able to release a utility that takes care of this problem. The use time is set at 3x hours with standby time at 10 days. We managed to push the use time to 3.5 hours after a single charge, though we would still like for it incline in future models. As it currently stands, the N800 is an absolutely amazing product for web browsing. However, it’s targeted at a very exclusive market: pure technology admirers who must have the latest and greatest, regardless of its real world functionality. We wouldn’t recommend you place all of your critical information on the N800, due to its limited online connectivity options and lack of a portable form factor, especially if you are a professional. But if you must have the N800, we would recommend only using it as a digital newspaper to stay abreast on the latest news, and get work done online. It’s just too much of an independent platform to be able to replace anything else, such as a notebook, a smartphone or a cell phone. For the price of £189 At Curry.Digital Technology Stores it’s Not that expensive, but if web browsing is your primary concern, then the Nokia N800 is an absolutely wonderful device that serves its purpose well.
