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Linux Based Nokia N800 Internet Tablet Reviewed
HHL3T writes "CoolTechZone.com has published a review of the Linux-based Nokia N800 Internet Tablet that was announced at CES 2007 back in January. The review concludes, "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."
That means it HAS to be good, right?
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I bought my N800 to use mainly as a book reader and I must say its been awesome. Crisp, big, and high resolution screen, perfect for reading. I'm using one of many free software addons called fbreader for reading ebooks.
Instantly working bluetooth data connections with most carriers (I was amazed how easy it was to setup - select your carrier, turn on bluetooth on your mobile and off you go, instead of windows where you have to know setting XX ZZ and YY before you have a chance of getting connected through your mobile phone).
Wifi with as good a range as my Thinkpad T60p.
The ability to surf the web easily on a display that's *readable* everywhere you want to.
Way better battery performance than my PDA which features a screen half the size...
Did I mention it runs linux? You can run VNC, ssh etc. on it and install these apps with just a few clicks... VNC actually works quite decent (over WIFI, it blows using bluetooth, mainly due to bandwidth limitation).
All in all, I definitely don't regret buying one.
-pug
As a platform the thing is very nifty, true, but it has some interesting uses as a platform if people developed with a different mindset. The 770 and this device changed my thoughts about what mobile devices should be. I'd like a small useful "phone" that acts as a local router, with devices that perform specific functionality around it. Think of the tablet as a screen for your mobile.
As an ADD'er, I'm interested in how I can create tools for keeping me on track. The 800 can sit at the desk, act as a radio, run widgets, and act as something like Xerox's multiple display system. There aren't a whole lot of thought tools in this area (mobile), and a lot of opportunity. I'm happy that Nokia has the gumption to put something like this on the market. Your mileage may vary...
apparently they are using one as their web server.
What I really want is this thing, with a real cell phone feature as well. That way I'd rig it to receive calls via skype and fail over to the cell when wifi wasn't available. Oh, and I'd like the phone to have a prepaid option as well. There really isn't a combination I know of that has prepaid, wifi, and skpye capabilites in a single phone.
Please let me know if there is one for the US of A.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The problem is that Nokia considers GNU/Linux tablets to be unsupported abandonware only 1.5 years after introduction. The tablets are loaded with proprietary and binary-only drivers and software, which means once official support goes away, you're left with a very expensive paperweight. Linux Weekly News reported on this just this week.
I've got one of these, and love it. Yes, it isn't a phone, and isn't trying to be a phone, and isn't for people who wanted a phone.
It's definitely a lot more than just a web tablet though. GPE PDA software is being ported, it's got gpg and ssh and the gnumeric spreadsheet and GPS software and interfaces to online digital maps and mp3 player SW. It's got a ton of other stuff like that, coupled to a device with a best-in-class screen, built in 802.11, and around ~5 DAYS of battery life under my normal use.
It's really a nice little multifunction device and slips in my shirt pocket. The closest Sony x86 based ultraportables are about 3X the weight and volume of this thing. This won't replace a real laptop with a keyboard and so forth, but it's still a great thing to augment your laptop and you can carry it with you everywhere.
Bad sides: the case that comes with it sucks. The included mp3 player only works with tagged files, not with simple directory-sorted files. Couple of others, some of which can be fixed with SW.
That's my impression of it. I've got one with 8 Gb (2x4), but an upcoming kernel patch will allow use of high capacity SD cards for more storage.
There is not much on the market I'd trade mine for, and it's not all locked down crap that wants you to pay for each little feature you want to use like many competitors' offerings.
I veiw my Nokia as a dedicated system for browsing my bank and stock accounts. It is cheap enough to set aside for that reason and I am confident that my interactions with these important websites are through a browser/system that has not been hacked.
Nokia will not reimburse you for the shipping cost, and has a very broken tracking mechanism. As several users at the Internet Table Talk forum have documented, this means that your $400 device goes back to Nokia, and you don't know when/if you'll get it back.
The bleeding edge guys get their bragging rights for a few years, the manufacturers get their R&D funding, and everyone else gets a better product in the end. Everybody wins.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N800
I gotta chime in here... I also purchased an N800 and am overall very satisfied with it. The thing is amazingly capable, especially when paired with a bluetooth keyboard. I use the Think Outside XTBTUE keyboard. The keyboard folds up to a size not much larger than the N800. I can walk around with an 802.11b/g capable, fully functional Debian based machine in my pocket, with ssh, vnc, and a keyboard that I can type on at full speed.
To be honest though, I think what really was the catalyst for my purchase was the desire to show my support for companies willing to empower and work with the opensource community, rather than against it (which is also why I purchased a SqueezeBox, another company willing to work with their opensource customers.) Check out maemo.org for a glimpse of the N800 development community.
Nokia even had a program where they allowed 500 active opensource contributors to purchase an N800 for only $99.
PS. Hear that companies? I vote with my wallet and will gladly give my money to companies that embrace opensource software.
I was eying the 770 for awhile as a possible pentest platform. I ended up grabbing the n800 the week it came out. It's a pretty nifty product. Only problem with me is the lack of usbhost and the flakey wifi drivers (It puts in ghost data which skrews up some programs, like aircrack) Kismet does have a driver and works fine with it, but I believe it still freezes up when the screen blanks. The programs on it that came from the 770 still need some work to be used properly. You also have some weird endless rebooting problems if a program you install flakes out on startup. Overall it has great potential, but currently mines been regulated to running fbreader as an ebook reader. It's been the best ebook reader I've used so far, so I'm still happy with it. Oh, and for a media device.. it support rhapsody, has an fm radio (of course with horrid reception), plays web radio, and orb support has just come out for it.
The problem is that Nokia considers GNU/Linux tablets to be unsupported abandonware only 1.5 years after introduction. The tablets are loaded with proprietary and binary-only drivers and software, which means once official support goes away, you're left with a very expensive paperweight.
This is true for all the devices in it's class and is not special to GNU/Linux tablets. It's true that an all free device like the One Laptop per Child is better, but that single device is the only one I'm aware of. Everything else has to be reverse engineered and all other makers consider their PDA's, tablets, laptops and deskops to be abandonware by the LWN definition, "the End-User Software Agreement is still valid and Nokia 770 customers can make use of all their rights, same as before the N800 and the IT OS [2007] were launched."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have the predecessor to this (the Nokia 770), and it's a top-rate wifi scanner. You get all of the power and leetness of kismet without the need to lug a laptop around, which means that it's perfect for war-walking. It even has aircrack-ng ported to it, although I haven't tried it yet.
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core Dumped
When will gadget developers realise that it's completely stupid to put lots of tiny little holes around buttons?
Speakers on gadgets are all very well but like so many laptops (the widescreen Apple and some Fijitsu notebooks esp) they get full of dust and gunk if the holes are facing up or around the keypad. Get it together, sheesh. Your device doesn't exist on the drawing board, the idea is that it's actually used by (grubby) humans.
I have an n800. So far, I haven't been able to come up with a task that it can't handle. it runs a modified debian; imagine apt-get on a handheld. Most any GTK program its cpu can handle can be quickly ported by the most inexperienced programmer. If you already use linux, this device is an amazing godsend. However, I understand that this amazing ability to use all the same programs as on the desktop will be lost on someone who uses windows. Literally my only gripe is that its chipset doesn't support USB Host mode, so if you want to use an external keyboard it has to be bluetooth, or another computer attached via vnc.
I bought an n800 the day after they came out, and I have been extremely happy with it. The review recommends using it "only as a digital newspaper"?! I'm sorry, but the reviewer wasn't being very creative.
I find the n800 most useful as a portable penetration-testing platform. The reviewer missed the point that the n800 really is a linux box, so it will run whatever you throw at it - kismet, nmap, metasploit, dsniff, aircrack - you name it. It's small enough to hide just about anywhere, and it looks so much like a phone that you can use it in public without drawing much attention to yourself.
I highly recommend pairing the n800 with the Stowaway bluetooth keyboard from ThinkOutside. This, when combined with the n800's XTerm program - gives you a complete, networked, graphical linux workstation that fits within the confines of your cargo pants (settle down!). The keyboard expands to full-size, so you can type quite naturally, and it folds down in seconds in the event you need to make a quick-getaway.
Did I mention that the n800 can also run mame and mplayer and that you can fit two 4GBs of flash cards into it? Oh, and that it takes regular cell-phone batteries, so you can carry around as much portable power as you need, for a long job or a long flight?
Oh, and also that the bluetooth chip has an FM radio reciever built-in?
Ever since the Toshiba Libretto, I've been waiting for a pocket-sized, touch-screen, wi-fi-enabled xterm/attack platform. The n800 is the best I've seen yet. Still, I'd recommend only using it for all the things you do with other kickass, portable linux devices. The n800 is not yet ready to replace your Aibo.
After a month of use: The 770 has better form factor and looks better, but the N800 has: - much better power savings thanks to the new OS - practically never crashes. I have had zero crashes after installing the updated OS. Installing was a breeze, it even located my backup and restored settings from old OS. - has MUCH improved packet management - works flawlessly with a Nokia bluetooth keyboard - has enough CPU power to watch those 350M TV series episodes (it's not 30fps but it's smooth enough using mplayer) - Opera never crashes, loads very fast, and renders very fast - It's "always online" thanks to very sane hassle-free WLAN configuration system and good power saving modes Its' a great platform for Lucasarts games, remote configuration (X Terminal, SSH). And with the LCARS Trek-theme the OS is very very futuristic. Some software ports like X-Chat (for IRC) and X-Terminal are excellent. 770 was a nice prototype (I used it for a year). N800 is a solid product. With 2 x 4G SD cards it can easily carry a weekend's worth of videos of music. Looking forward to the Navicore navigation set (released last week).
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Last time I tried kismet (about a month and a half ago) It crashed on the n800 when the screen blanked. Other than that, it works pretty well. It actually gets better reception than some laptops I've used. Not sure if they fixed that problem or not. On the 770 it works perfectly.
A local CompUSA was going out of business so they gave me 40% off on the N800. I just had to buy it. As a result, I've been installing open-source applications for it, and they are amazing. One of the selling points of the device was the bluetooth integration with a GPS unit. The device runs an application called "Maemo" for the desktop, and its built on Debian. I downloaded "MaemoMapper" which has GPS, Routes, and Maps, and once you get the "Flite" library installed, it reads you directions. All for far less than a standalone GPS. Throw in all the other features, and it was too good to pass up. The developer base is growing extensively, and more and more projects are opening up. I already have NMap on the device which is great since you don't need to carry around a laptop to do some testing.
Relocating to San Francisco / Palo Alto... Hire me?
Even if currently unsupported, there seems to be a USB Host-able chip in the N800. You can read about it here. I can't find the original page right now, but Google is your friend.
From TFA:"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."
What exactly does that mean? Does the author think your PC has some magic CSI-like software that "enhances" You Tube videos? Or does the Nokia use some crappy codec that can't handle video at 320 x 240? Or did he just have a crappy network connection that couldn't handle the stream?
This is the one that really gets me: "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 other words, music sounds better through a decent set of headphones than over the tiny speakers crammed into an ultraportable device. The fact that this finds this interesting--as opposed to blatantly obvious-- makes his credentials suspect. And I guess I don't have a very good ear, but I can hardly ever hear the "clearly defined bits" in my digital music.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Karma whoring: http://www.nokiausa.com/N800/1,9008,,00.html
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
I have a 770, and I can't wait for some sort of bluetooth storage like Seagate's D.A.V.E. or that Bluonyx thing by Agere. Then I can store more movies and music on it than I can with the small 2gb flash card that my 770 has.
Its an excellent device to take on planes. You don't have to worry about getting out the laptop, putting it on the tray, the guy in the seat in front of you in full recline and taking that much more of your personal space, longer battery life, etc.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
The chipset does support USB Host mode. Linux drivers for it don't... or should I say didn't. Someone just announced USB host mode patches for kernel yesterday on maemo-developers mailing list.
Presumably you'll still need power injection hack, though.