Tuesday, May 01, 2007
A review of the Nokia N800 Linux tablet
Last week I attended the Nokia Mobile Mashup event. The nice surprise was the gift of a N800 Linux tablet. That's definitely Mobile and Open Source, so I spent a Saturday morning playing around and here you have my review.
Let me start saying I do not understand this segment. I might be stupid, but I do not get why a consumer would need an Internet Tablet... It is a device with wi-fi but no cellular connectivity, no keyboard and a pen. Soooo... you can't make a call (yes, you could with VOIP but try to put it close to your ear and you look like a fool) and you can't write emails (no keyboard, c'mon...). What you can do is browse the Internet (clicking on links with the pen...), read RSS feeds and listen to music/video. In a nutshell, it is an entertaining device not meant for consumers ;-) Similar to an enterprise device not meant for enterprises (the iPhone). A niche.That said, the device is absolutely great. The screen is gorgeous, so crisp it shocks you when you turn it on. The device feels nice in your hands. It has a few buttons on the left to navigate the functions, but I rarely found myself using them. The music sounds good, even when streamed over the Internet. It also has an extremely cool tiny retractable webcam, for videochats. It supports wi-fi (although not my office network) and I was able to pair it with my Verizon Treo 650 via Bluetooth to navigate the Internet (it took me a few steps but it miraculously worked!). The virtual keyboard on the screen is small when your pen is out, big when it is in its pocket (so that you can use your fingers): nice touch! Browsing with Opera is pretty good and the RSS reader is fully featured: I sucked in my feeds in an OPML file from Netvibes (nice feature, BTW) and I got all my feeds instantaneously.
The Home interface is made with Applets. Sort of widgets, with the info you should need when turning the device on, for example your latest feeds, your speed contacts, a Google search and so on. Clearly, the hope is that the Linux community will create many more (weather and so on). The idea is good, but the feeling is that it lacks applications, yet.
As obvious, the first need for me was synchronization (ok, I am biased, but why did Nokia not add any way to sync the device? Where do Nokia people have their address book???). Luckily, there is an open source client called SyncEvolution, based on the Funambol sync client. I went on the site and tried to download the app. There is a debian package available, plus the source code. Unfortunately, the N800 Application Manager did not like the debian package...
I am a stubborn geek so I did not give up. I started looking at the open source community at maemo.org (quite lively, I have to say. Good job by Nokia). I downloaded an Xterm application and in a second I was browsing the file system with a terminal. Using vi without a keyboard is a pain, so I thought "this thing is connected to my network, if I find a telnet server I could access it from my PC"... I had first to upgrade the firmware to the latest version (quite easy, with a USB cable), then I downloaded an ssh server from maemo. A second later, I was accessing the wireless device from my PC, with a real keyboard and a mouse. Very cool. It gave me the feeling of power, in particular when I found out how to become root (that's the ultimate feeling of being God for people that grew up with Unix).
I then installed the debian SyncEvolution package, configured the files to connect to a Funambol v6 server and boom, my address book was synched. It worked like a charm. Amazing. The power of freedom.
The beauty of the device is that it is open as in open source. They have a good community building lots of apps. For example, I needed an IM for Yahoo Messenger and I found Gaim was available. It works great. They need more apps, but I am sure they will come.
As I wrote before, the problem is really who would really use it, apart of a bunch of geeks. Maybe it could be used in hospitals or other specialized niches, but definitely I have no use for it in my life (I am a part-time geek ;-) If I am close to a PC, I use that for browsing or emails. If i am running around, I use my cell phone with 3G. If I want to listen to music, I use my iPod.
Since I did not have a use for it, I tried the ultimate consumer test: I asked my wife if she wanted it. She looked at it and said "cool, I'll take it!". I asked her what she was planning to use it for... She said "I'll browse the Internet when I am in the backyard" but a second later "or maybe not, I'll use my laptop there". Then "maybe in the kitchen"... "or I could print out the recipes so I do not fill it with flour". Then she said "I would definitely not go around with a thing that big in my purse". And the final "actually, you can keep it". End of story. The device is not for consumers. I really hope there is a segment somewhere for it, because it is really a beautiful device. But it is likely to be small. And if Nokia gave it to me as a gift, it is probably not selling that well ;-)
Posted by Fabrizio at 09:07
5 Comments:
The device will grow on you, there are a lot of apps out there. I started out with your mindset and then a few months down the line I find the gadget indispensable, a phone for the weekend and night time, tablet for the day time unless I am a desktop. Of course it is a geeks gadget but its the best geek gadget I have ever owned. Check internettablettalk.com to see what people are doing with it.
Comment Posted at 21:05
At work we've been playing with a Nokia Linux table for quite some time and we actually did some interesting sw development for it. The device is cool and having Linux makes everything easy (at least if you're a Linux programmer :)
Both I and my collegues are convinced that today there's probably no market segment for such a device, but we believe this device might be a kind of experiment Nokia is doing to deeply evaluate Linux for its devices. What if they are thinking about replacing Symbian with Linux and want to see what Linux community could do with these devices?
This is just our speculation though, so might be completely off road!
Comment Posted at 00:37
David Beers said...
My wife and I call it the pillow surfer. We used to read stuff to each other from the dead-tree issues of the WSJ or NYT while sitting at the breakfast table. Now we take our coffee back to bed and read the news to each other on the N800. We often do the same thing in the evenings, surfing for real estate on Realtor.com. The browser is so good and the hardware buttons for zooming in and out on images actually makes it a better way to experience Realtor.com than a PC. Definitely more intimate! :-)
I also like to use it for reading online or offline material in my favorite chair or the couch--it's nice to get away from the desk and rest your shoulders from the hours of mousing you do during the day. I even use it when I'm at my desktop PC as an "ambient email" device. It keeps me peripherally aware of my Inbox, but not so much that it breaks my concentration every 5 minutes. That helps keep my email addiction under control, which makes a big difference for my productivity.
The N800 never leaves the house. For me the idea is "home mobility." Hard to explain until you've had it for a while... then you can't live without it. But how to market something that people don't know they need?
Comment Posted at 17:13
Fabrizio said...
Well, people did not know they needed the Internet, the mobile phone, mobile messaging... and so on. Sometimes, a segment looking for a market really finds the market ;-)
We'll see. I root for the N800 for sure.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 17:17
A Nokia without cellular is like a car without gas. Goes nowhere.
