On the one occasion when I got to meet Ari Jaaksi, he told me the goal of the Internet Tablet team was to make the internet experience as good or better on the NIT as on a PC.
We usually talk about the aspects where the Nokia N800 needs to improve.
But what about WiFi reception? The N800 with the most recent OS is way better at locating and connecting to WiFi than the four laptops I currently have or have had recent access to.
The new Dell Latitude D820 I’ve been given at work doesn’t even see our home network (based upstairs) from the dining room. And something going on with the Comcast broadband or our inexpensive Netgear wireless router will break the connection to the family computer downstairs that can’t be resurrected unless the router is reset. But the N800 (and the 770 I have too) connect just fine after such singularities (which take place probably three or four times a week).
Is the Nokia N800 the best device there is for locating and connecting to a wireless network?
I don’t have the experience to say. What can others report?
Ari Jaaksi, on his latest post on his blog announces that Nokia has decided to continue with the bug fixing and release of newer ‘Hacker Edition’ firmware for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. Quim Gil writes on his blog:
We will keep working on the IT OS 2007 Hacker edition for the 770. We will go through IT OS 2006 bugs submitted in maemo’s Bugzilla, trying to solve at least the most relevant and the ones already fixed in the official IT OS 2007. We will release the fixes in updated images, all of them unofficial and to be used at your own risk. We can’t make any promise on performance levels or specific bug fixes, but hopefully you will be happier than now with the results.
Quim Gil also apologizes:
This is our goal, and sometimes we need to rush in order to achieve the milestones in the way. The 770 support while delivering the N800 on time suffered from one of these sprints. A mistake was made, our apologies. We are trying to ammend it and learn from it. Please be patient with this ongoing project, and expect progress from our side around the topics that concern you most.
iNdT is at it again and this time releases Carman - an On Board Diagnostics (OBD-II) analyzer application for the Maemo platform. Carman lets you monitor and detect problems on your automobile by accessing the data stored on your car’s on-board computer, the same data that service technicians use. If you have an OBD-II compliant automobile (most cars after 1996 are), you can use a Scan Tool device (about $116+) and connect Carman to it via USB (ElmScan 5) or wirelessly via Bluetooth (using a Firefly or Elm 327).
You need Python 2.5 for Maemo to run Carman and a Nokia 770 (with 16MB of free virtual memory), or a Nokia N800. More information as well as the application download link can be found at the Carman garage.
I asked Dr. Ari Jaaksi, head of Open Source Development at Nokia and of internet tablet development, “If you were outside Nokia developing an app for the internet tablet, you — who knows the device’s capabilities better than anyone else — what would you be working on?”
And he said, “I don’t know about the application. But aspects I’d like to see in it . . . an app or service (it doesn’t have to be inside the device, it could be on the network) that demands online, constant access.”
This underscored something he had said a few minutes earlier when he had described the experience of building a device from the ground up that wasn’t a laptop, wasn’t a cellphone, wasn’t a PDA, but fit in the space between these devices, more portable, better-screened and so on. The internet tablet he described needed to be “really good for the internet experience … [because it is for the person with a] strong and active online life, [who] wants that internet experience wherever you go.” The 770 and the N800, he pointed out, put that first, as those other devices do not.
I’m always thinking about the Nokia 770 or N800 as computers, as e-readers, as entertainment devices. The way Ari Jaaksi puts the emphasis on the internet experience makes me trust his declaration that the Flash and browser issues will be resolved. It’s the space where these devices has to shine.
Photo from Karoliina Salminen’s blog of the Hildon UI running on a laptop computer at way beyond 800×480. This is just a teaser of what is coming from Lucas Rocha, she notes.
Hm-m. This means future generations of internet tablets can be freed from the hardware specifics of the Nokia 770. (I changed “internet tablets” to lower-case, because I got to thinking how a UMPC might be dual-bootable, plus there’s that H9 UMPC we heard about earlier in the week.) Nokia could release a next-gen tablet with such a different spec sheet that the 770’s end-of-life could be extended as as the low-end, lowest-cost (and more restricted) model.
I wonder too if this doesn’t lead to overlapping and smaller-than-full-size windows in Hildon too, an in-no-way-belovedlimitation of the current UI.
I didn’t anticipate that the first Asian-produced Maemo internet tablet would meld features from the 770/N800 with UMPC traits — a 20 GB hard drive and 7-inch size, for example. (Above, the H9 UMPC from Beijing Peace East Technology Development.)
Priced at $490 in lots of 500, the H9 does seem to be the first reasonably priced competitor to the Nokia 770 and N800 Internet Tablets. No clues yet as to whether it can handle the Asian languages that the Nokia devices cannot.
Am I wrong in thinking that this sort of “follow on Nokia’s track” is not only inevitable but desirable? It seems to me that the open-source movement is built on the core tenet that people have different visions of how to get the ideal feature set and you have to allow them to build on what you’ve done or else we’re all stuck. So Nokia builds on Debian and Beijing Peace East builds on Maemo.
Why the obsession to make the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet be a computer (see, for example, Trusted Reviews)? Or a PDA? Or a cellphone? Allegedly this is because people want to carry fewer devices, hence the upswing in convergence.
But is that really where we are headed?
If you go back a couple generations, there was a time when every family had one television, and before that one radio. And then as they became less expensive, more were added and maybe you even had one per person. Radios are now so cheap, we have one for each possible use — one in each car, one in each bedroom (attached to a clock) and in the kitchen, one in the home stereo system, one in each boombox and in each portable tape or CD player, special ones built on a clip just for going jogging.
In my own household — two adults, two children — we have ten radios. They’re all optimized to a single situation, and we think that’s right. We don’t see this as violating some principle of multiple use (or minimum use either — how many minutes a week is a shower radio on, anyway? Or the guestroom clock-radio?). We follow the “specific devices for specific needs” principle.
And that applies to computers too. To tablets.
You know, if I can access my files on the network, and I use web-apps, why do I care about “synching” my internet tablet with a PC? Just as I want that clip-radio for jogging, I want to carry a small but suitable device for surfing, reading and, you know, anything that might come up — a see-me voip call, some work, some music, a game. But, heck, at other times, I want that laptop. And at still other times, I carry some index cards and a one-dollar Optiflow pen and leave the tablet at home.
Soon enough today’s internet tablets will sell for $50 - $100, and we’ll have a slew of them. (Yes, we’ll have some extraordinary $400 devices then, too.) It’ll be access to the network that they each provide, so it won’t matter which one I pick up: my information won’t be quarantined in separate devices constantly falling out-of-synch with every other device I use. And, likely as not, the capabilities will be downloaded from the network too, or on the network entirely.
Our cellphones and our internet tablets are just the first devices to be pocketable and derive their worth from the network — no connect, no use — while our expectations are driven by the old-paradigm devices of yesteryear (eg, 2005). I mean, after all, would you have even considered buying a PDA back in the day if it didn’t work offline? And, in the end, isn’t that pretty much the way the internet tablet is?
That’s where we’re headed, I think. Not there yet, by any stretch of the imagination, and I yield to no man in counting on the off-network apps in my own 770. But I can feel it coming, every time I reach over to check the alarm on my clock-radio and see the internet tablet resting on the bedside table. Soon enough I’ll have a bedside tablet, and a breakfast table tablet and a tablet in the car that always lives there, like the radio.
Here’s my review of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, the gosh-darned most revolutionary device around, smaller, lighter, better-screened, less-expensive and capable of see-me phone calls at voip prices — what do you think, will I like it?
But first, let’s get the formalities out of the way. I’m a fanboy of anyone who shows egregious genius. The makers/builders of the internet tablet twins qualify on several counts. My attitude shows in everything I write about the 770 and the N800. Secondly, speaking my opinion and wanting to further the development of the scene has qualified me to purchase both a 770 and an N800 at steep discount — 58 and 68 percent, respectively, as one of 500 participants in both the 770 and the N800 developer-device programs. (Of course, I know people who got them free!)
So, here’s my review:
The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet came as a shock to observers of the web tablet scene. No one expected Nokia to expand its line and push the tablet envelope so soon and so far, considering that widespread distribution in the U.S. occurred only 12 months ago.
But the strength of the 770’s appeal apparently persuaded Nokia to capitalize on its first-to-market advantage and hug the internet tablet to its N-series, smart-phone bosom. (Hence the “N” prefixing the name.)
Anyone who uses one of these tablets soon experiences a glowing recognition that, holy cow!, the internet doesn’t have to be confined to a desk or laptop-friendly chair. Now you can surf standing up, walking around, riding the train and so on, just as you can use a phone untethered from a phone jack.
This comparison to the cellphone’s liberation of movement comes from Ari Jaaksi, the head of Nokia’s open-source software group and the internet tablet team specifically. And it’s critical to understanding why the N800 and the 770 don’t fit into any neat categories that other reviewers seem to want to force them into.
A first for me: on the train ride in from Montclair today, the fellow sitting next to me was another Internet Tablet user, which we discovered when I pulled out an N800 to work on. Having a particular interest in the Gizmo Project, he suggested we talk later, Gizmo to Gizmo, N800 to N800 (or maybe it was N800 to 770).
As it happens WiFi is conscientiously blocked where I work, so I’ll have to try this later, perhaps tonight. But a visit to the Gizmo Project (from which I’ve been absent, lo this last half year) shows that versions for the N800 and the 770 are both available (not to mention the Nokia N80, one of the six or more WiFi-capable Nokia cellphones). (Screenshots link from here [N800] and here [770].)
Gizmo, of course, is SIP-based VoIP, with free computer-based calls (that includes Internet Tablets) to other Gizmo users or any SIP-based software, such as Google Talk. This is as opposed to proprietary approaches like Skype. The Gizmo Project’s value-add is that it offers users the option to pay nominal fees to connect to landline and mobile phones.
I’ve used Gizmo, and I’ve used Skype, and I’ve used Google Talk, and I’ve used Vonage, and I’ve used cellphones (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile), and so on, and so on. (Landlines!) We all have. I know that pointing to another way to talk to people doesn’t make your heart beat faster, even if it does use a non-proprietary protocol. And I can scarcely think of times when I’ve had fewer than 2 or 3 options available to make a call at one time or location. But …
But Gizmo lets you talk using your Internet Tablet to anyone with any phone. Now. (Actually, dating back to July. Some months yet before Skype joins the fray.) That’s a big step up from “talk to other people with Google Talk on their computer.”
Sometimes I’m so busy with getting somewhere, I don’t see that the landscape has changed. Drastically.
Maybe Gizmo will make my heart beat faster after all …
CES saw the long-rumored appearance of Apple’s convergent device, the keyless phone that runs OS X. As you can see from this size comparison supplied by Sizeasy (thanks, engadget!), the iPhone is nearly as large as the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet.
For the last 18 months, we’ve been saying that not every person wants the identical thing from their tablet, and that different vendors would emphasize different aspects as they entered this device zone. The UMPC went for traditional computer features (hard disk drive, Windows operating system), Sony for a proprietary marketing model for e-books and slideout keyboard for its Mylo. And Apple chooses cellphone and camera as its prime features.
Nokia long ago gave highest priority to size, weight, cost and internetability when designing its internet tablets, making possible the walkaround web. If you keep the cost below $400, make the screen 800 pixels wide and need to carry it in a pocket, well, your device can’t also include a cellphone, 2MB camera, hard disk drive, keyboard, Windows, and so on and so on.
With this announcement, Apple officially retired the word “Computer” from its name. iPods and iPhones aren’t computers and that’s where Apple is positioned. But its computer orientation is what enabled Apple to blow off the cellphone OS approach and put its own Unix-rooted OS X into the iPhone. Think Steve Jobs isn’t prepared for really, really rapid advance in capabilities for the pocket communicator?
Perhaps the most reassuring part of Apple’s approach for the Nokians is Jobs’ determination to have it his way. So, as others have noted, the iPhone isn’t a smart phone, onto which you can plunk your own applications to make the device ever more your own. No, you’ll get only what Steve permits you (which is still more expansive than Sony or Microsoft, come to think of it).
It’s only Nokia that says, yes, the CPU in your pocket should do everything you want, and every user is going to want a unique blend of capabilities. And most of those are going to be software-based. And that door is wide open. Maybe Ari Jaaksi and his crew chose this path for other reasons. But as of now, Nokia seems to be the only vendor willing to grow the carryaround device in conjunction with its customers and who isn’t anticipating fleecing them.
Welcome to convergence, Apple! Better fasten your seat belts. It looks to be a very bumpy ride because of the speed!
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Update: The report at Good Morning, Silicon Valley! included an analyst’s saying he thought sales of 10 million iPhones this year was low. I’ve just got to believe that kind of heat will transfer to the N800 as people wrap their heads around this concept of a small, keyless, great-screen carryaround computer.
The iPhone breaks two basic axioms of consumer technology. One, when you take an application and put it on a phone, that application must be reduced to a crippled and annoying version of itself. Two, when you take two devices — such as an iPod and a phone — and squish them into one, both devices must necessarily become lamer versions of themselves. The iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and a mini-Internet computer all at once … without taking a hit in performance. In a way iPhone is the wrong name for it. It’s a handheld computing platform that just happens to contain a phone.
Right on, Lev!
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Added later: So why does it matter that the iPhone is nearly as big as the N800? Two reasons:
People get used to the size/form factor. Plus you know imitation phones will come out, enlarging the pool of devices this size. The more devices there are, the less odd the Internet Tablets seem to those who need help understanding why they’re so great.
Apple’s going to match the 800×480 resolution. They may be able to squeeze in the screen in the current size or maybe the next model is slightly bigger. But a single derogatory comment — “I’d rather surf on a UMPC” (also 800×480) — and Jobs will make it happen. Then the Internet Tablet will need something other than price to make it stand apart.
