Playing around briefly with the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet
During the CTIA’s Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference in San Francisco I went to the Nokia booth and got a chance to play around with the new N810 Internet Tablet (see above).
I have an N800 (as I’ve discussed briefly on May 1), provided courtesy of Nokia through its blogger relations program, and I use it occasionally. I’ll typically use it around my house, via WiFi, on the first floor to browse the Web, read RSS feeds and listen to stored music or podcasts or on the second floor when I’m in bed and don’t want a laptop computer.
I know some people who have the N800 love using it in conjunction with a Bluetooth folding keyboard. The N800 + keyboard certainly doesn’t take up much space.
Big difference: A keyboard
But many people have been asking for an attached keyboard. So Nokia has obliged with the N810’s keyboard that slides out from behind the screen.
My initial impression from using it for perhaps ten – 15 minutes: It’s usable, but you wouldn’t want to do much work on it. At least, I wouldn’t.
Frankly, I’d much prefer to enter text on my RIM BlackBerrys that have a QWERTY keyboard, whether it’s the 8700 with the relatively large but slightly slippery keyboard or the 8300 or 8230 with a somewhat smaller but less slippery keyboard. All of them are much easier to type on the than N810’s.
A few analysts and journalists have written that the top row of the N810’s keys are a bit too close to the top of the display and that makes it difficult to type. That’s true, but in the few minutes I used the keyboard I didn’t find that was a major problem and I’d probably get used to it.
A bit difficult to depress, shallow travel
My main complaint is the keys are a bit too difficult to depress (I prefer a lighter touch) and are very shallow. I can understand the tradeoffs: Keys with a lighter touch might be too easy to accidentally press and if there was more key travel the keyboard would have to be thicker.
Frankly, I would have preferred the tradeoff. I can certainly see where using a keyboard could come in handy. But the N810, like the N800, has a large on-screen keyboard that isn’t bad to use….considering that it’s a virtual keyboard.
For quick notes, entering URLs and the like, the N810’s keyboard is good enough and it’s certainly convenient — just like the similar, but slightly smaller QWERTY keyboards on clamshell-type cellular phones.
Still use a Bluetooth keyboard?
But if you want to write more than a paragraph or two, I think most people would prefer a much better keyboard. Indeed, I suspect that a fair number of people who like the N800 with an external Bluetooth keyboard will still want to carry the external keyboard.
The N810 includes a predictive text capability when you’re using the slide-out keyboard. As you enter the first few letters of a word, word choices are displayed on the screen.
To select the word you touch it, rather than using the keyboard. It seems unnatural to have to touch the screen rather than using the keyboard, but I think it might be the best choice for selecting the right word quickly, rather than having to use a keyboard cursor key, as an example, to move among the choices and then press “enter” to select.
More info.
If you’d like more information, the Internet Tablet Talk forums have a thread with comments about the keyboard, although relatively people even have used the N810. It’s not going to be commercially available in the United States until November.
Based on my very brief use of the N810 I much prefer BlackBerrys for entering text. But BlackBerrys don’t have the N810’s 4.13" WVGA display (800 x 480 pixels), that’s larger than the Apple iPhone’s. A large screen makes a big difference when reading text or watching videos.
Other features
The N810’s speaker and audio software is, I believe, somewhat better than the N800’s. The N810 also is bundled with GPS, although I didn’t test that.
The N800 had a swivel VGA camera, designed primarily for video calls. The N810 also has a VGA camera, but it’s attached so the front of the screen so it can only point one way.
The N810, like the N800, is designed to be used wirelessly with either WiFi (802.11b/g) or connected via Bluetooth or a cable to a cellular phone. It would be interesting if a next generation N8xx or N9xx would be bundled with cellular or another wireless technology, such as WiMAX.
N810 versus iPhone
Some people who have wondered about such a “bundling” have suggested the Internet Tablet could be an iPhone competitor (almost every new wireless product seems to be a potential iPhone competitor — and none are, yet).
But it will take more than another radio or even an integrated keyboard for the Internet Tablet to approach the usability and sexiness of the current iPhone, let alone the second and third generation iPhones.
One last note: I have been told that N800 owners would be able to download a software upgrade when the N810 is available, in order to get some enhancements that are bundled with the newer device. But I haven’t confirmed this.
So, these are some brief comments about the N810. If I’m able to get one to test, I’ll write more.
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