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Nokia's Linux-powered N800 Tablet Sneaks Out
sjvn writes "Officially, Nokia Inc.'s new Linux-powered N800 Internet Tablet doesn't exist. In reality, it's already for sale in the United States and boasts double the RAM and Flash Memory of its predecessor and it has a faster processor to boot."
Will it totally replace the 770, or will it be a big brother?
I hope it brings the 770 price down a touch, its just over my novelty price bracket at the moment.
liqbase
more information at http://thoughtfix.blogspot.com/
I hope it features a powered USB connector (unlike the 770)
as the link in the submission doest even have any pics just fluff leading to the real article here (with pics)
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9981902594.htm
I had a 770 for a little while, but it was just too slow and unstable to really enjoy. When it wasn't crashing, it was often too slow to do anything really cool with besides surfing the web. Even that was pretty slow. I hope for the sake of the N800 that it has really addressed a lot of that because it would make for a killer gadget for a lot of people. In fact, if they have addressed most of those issues, I might get one.
What I am curious about is the processors in some of the PocketPC handhelds like the Axim are pretty powerful. Why didn't they go for similar hardware specs in the first place with the 770? With those, they might have been able to get embedded Qt instead of Gtk.
Better photos over here
One of the people who owns one has posted a video of it booting and some general use. It looks slick.
It all comes down to the developer community.
Do remember that ultraportables deliberately sacrifices performance in favor of battery life. They'll always be inferior to bigger machines in raw processing power.
That said, I would think that a 220 MHz processor would be fine for most Flash presentations. Perhaps the ARM implementation of the plugin is less robust than the Pentium version. Or perhaps you're doing fancy animation that overtaxes the system.
And don't make the usual mistake of fixating on the CPU as the sole provider of application performance. Any application uses many different resources, and a bottleneck in any of them (in graphics applications, it's usually the video adapter, not the CPU) will screw you over.
Probably it's a problem/limitation of the Flash plugin, and can therefore perhaps be fixed, because the device itself plays Xvid/Divx at decent resolutions and framerates.
It's like deja vu all over again.
Not a phone. That thing you can see in some pictures sticking out on the left is the foldable stand, not an antenna.
You can use a BlueTooth keyboard, at the expense of battery life. If they made the USB controller act as a "host" (it does not in the 770), you could use a USB keyboard. None included in the package, anyway.
dakkar - mobilis in mobile
> Here's a question, will it be a cellphone out of the box and take sim cards?
Your question is asked anytime this product is mentioned. NO! The second it is a cellphone it will be a closed platform, the cell carriers won't accept an open phone on their networks, period full stop. Use bluetooth to talk to a cellphone to get net or do VoIP via 802.11.
> And keyboards of some kind.
One word, BlueTooth. Really, this is why they invented Bluetooth, so why reinvent the wheel?
> Heck, even a video out port, use the thing like a tiny desktop at home plugged in to the wall.
It isn't a video iPod, it doesn't have a hard drive so it won't be carrying around your media library. From a multimedia pov it is a playback frontend.
I haven't bought one yet but I have been drooling. I like the fact they have now done a product refresh and avoided doing the kitchen sink thing, it keeps it small and allows reasonable battery life. They do appear to have heard the loudest complaints, memory and cpu speed.
Democrat delenda est
I have a 770. First off, it's brilliant device, I love it. Definitely using it on my next long-haul flight rather than the built-in video players on airplanes. (I wouldn't use the built in video player, but mplayer has been ported to it and plays 400x240 movies full screen [hardware pixel doubling to fill the 800x480 display] at full fps, 128k audio, and about 500k video. Very watchable, and a full-length movie fits on a 1GB MMC with plenty of room left over for a couple of TV shows.) And of course there are various PIM style apps available for it over at maemo.org, not to mention VNC, xterm, ssh, ...
From what information we currently have (including the pics and video referenced above), I have to say I think they've addressed several of the biggest issues with the unit, specifically:
From the good close look we get at the connectors in the video nursegirl linked to, the USB connector is still unpowered. Frankly, I'm not sure how big an issue this really is. Yes, it means you can't use your existing USB keys with it even if you had an adapter cable, which -- true -- is less than ideal. In terms of other devices, you wouldn't want to power an external keyboard of the poor little 770's battery -- you're better off getting a little portable Bluetooth keyboard. I haven't felt the lack of the power on the USB port yet.
Looks like a great upgrade, good to see Nokia thought it was worth pursuing the product line... I hope the next focus is on software -- improving the handwriting recognition, doing some Nokia-tested and certified PIM apps (calendar, etc.), improving the little desktop area, etc. Doing this device with Linux, documenting the API, and fostering a development community were all masterstrokes, but you can't leave everything to the community, too many users won't be able to handle the complexity (not to mention that, er, some ports are done better than others...).
GoogleTalk and GizmoProject both work on the N770, so I'd be surprised if they don't support the new N800.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.