AT&T announced today that it was beginning “Video Share” services in Atlanta, Dallas and San Antonio, with additional markets to come in July and eventually rolling out to 50 cities.
Video Share permits the owner of a 3G phone to transmit live video images to another owner of an AT&T 3G phone in one of the supported markets. The price is 35 cents a minute, with $5/mo (for 25 minutes) and $10/mo (for 60 minutes) plans. The Video Share feature is extra and not part of any AT&T data plan. Only one phone can transmit at a time, but the direction of the video stream can be switched during the call.
The size of the video looks to be something around 176 x 150 (or less) pixels*.
Within the 50 cities that will get Video Share, of course you’ll have to stay within the 3G coverage area.
Let’s compare that to the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, now and, well, let’s say July.
Right now you can have two-way visual calls — each side transmitting live — with any other N800 owner. The images are webcam quality, at 176 x 144 pixels. If the soon-to-arrive Skype voip package contains video as anticipated, cam calls can be made with any of the newer UMPCs — that is, someone who can walk around with the same untethered approach of the N800 or a cellphone — and with the millions of computer-based Skype users with webcams, PC, Mac and Linux. Um, you’ll need to be within range of a wifi network or else make the call on a cellphone data plan.
These cam calls are free.
OK, let’s recap.
AT&T: Pay $10 every month at a rate of $10 an hour, for one-way video, and only to other AT&T customers with 3G phones. Because it’s a cellphone, you can walk around while you talk or pan the camera. You’ll have to stay within the 3G coverage area.
N800 Internet Tablet: Free, unlimited, two-way calls, to anyone with webcam and voip. (You have to use Skype, but you don’t pay anything to use Skype for these calls.) You and any other webcammed-tablet user will be able to walk around while you talk or pan the cam. And you will need to be within range of your wireless network or with a cellphone connecting to the internet, using your data plan from your own preferred telecom.
Gee, maybe if the iPhone were being offered with this fabulous deal I’d spend more time thinking about AT&T’s offer. But, gosh, why would I want to pay, and pay, and pay for something I shouldn’t have to pay for? (The day I do that, Apple’s coolness factor will definitely have rubbed off onto AT&T. Not yet, baby, not yet.)
* As I understand it, the phones use a webcam-type second camera for this video and not the photo camera the phones might have.
Look, to start with, the term used for the killer app for the Nokia Internet Tablet is not going to be “video calling.”
“Video calling” is so last century.
What we’ll call it when we can see the person we’re messaging is anybody’s guess. Maybe “cam calls.” Or VidIP (video over IP). Or VM (visual messaging).
“Video calling” is what the telecoms will charge hundreds of dollars for. It’s not what NIT users will be doing.
With a large universe of Skype users, NITs make dandy phones. But you know what? I’ve got phones up the, um, wazoo.
I haven’t had a tremendous experience with Nokia’s very-beta internet calling, but what I’ve had makes me think that webcam plus VoIP is less like a phone call and more like IMing without typing.
When my kids tried out the N800 look-at-me calling, they didn’t act like it was a phone. They stayed connected for forty minutes or longer and treated the NITs like video walkie-talkies, roaming around the yard (and neighbors’ yards) and even playing “you can see what I’m looking at” hide-and-seek.
I tried but wasn’t able to connect when an N800 was temporarily at grandma’s. Connecting to her, I expect, would have been more like a phone call with faces.
But I think the IM generation will make this walkaround webcam into just a really practical — no texting charges! no keying! — form of visual messaging, with bursts of messaging interspersed with periods of being connected but not communicating.
Thoughtfix advised me this week that webcams are becoming standard issue in the second-generation UMPC tablets, which means Skype cam calling will work between the Windows and Linux tablet communities.
And you put mobility + visuals + internet-pricing together and you have a killer app for the, um, VM generation.
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.
What accounts for the improved score of the N800 Internet Tablet at C|NET, do you think? (7.7 out of 10, up from 4.9 last year.) Is the OS that much better? The webcam so dazzling? The new, sleek appearance suddenly, reassuringly au courant? Maybe it’s just the step up to Flash 7?
Plus Origami (the ultra-mobile PC) showed up. And the iPhone. The super-hype around them validated the existence of this not-a-replacement-for-your-computer, bigger-than-a-PDA, keyboardless device with its wide-as-a-web-page screen. That’s what happened.
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Here’s what C|NET doesn’t give the Internet Tablet credit for:
- the pocket-sized, wide-as-a-webpage display (225-pixels-per-inch!)
- the $400 price
- hitting its second-generation before anybody else can match its capabilities
- Nokia’s astute collaboration with the open-source community and the bounty of applications users have access to, free
- that under-8-ounce weight
- the no-sleep-mode, always-on responsiveness
Plus one more thing — super-simple, internet-priced, see-me phone calls with Skype. [OK, just the simple face-to-face thing for now, with the universe of Skype users still to be delivered.]
I tell you what, Bonnie, I give it a score of 18 on a scale of 10, and mark it down 1.2 points for making me go to Orb to watch YouTube videos.
Gosh, when do you think a UMPC will be as small, as light, as inexpensive as the N800? Ever? Maybe you want to re-think what’s important in your grading.
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 …
There’s nothing outside the standard press release info in the brief writeup on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet at the New York Times today. But I think the article is worth noting, if only for its headline: “Take an Internet Call or Some Notes, or Just Doodle”.
Well, there is the power of marketing too. Here’s the lede: “You can’t put the world in your pocket but you can put the Web there ….” Yes, the idea of accessing the internet while untethered from your desktop or laptop is fully insinuating itself into the Zeitgeist. As is the notion of using one’s WiFi carryaround to take (or make) phone calls obviously, based on this headline. (If only Ivan Berger, esteemed audio writer* and avid reader, knew how apt his opening sentence’s comparison of the N800 to a paperback book really is! Hopefully he’ll get to try FBReader soon.)
I think the day is nearly over when people wonder why someone would buy an internet tablet instead of (hm-m, let’s see … ) a UMPC, a PSP, an OQO, a myLo, a LifeDrive or even an iPhone. And that’s the news I see in the Times’ brief.
* Full disclosure: Twenty years ago, Ivan and I were colleagues at CBS. Not only do I admire his writing and his brain, I like him personally. Ivan was one of the first to see the real potential in microcomputers. He was such an early adopter that the Smithsonian gratefully accepted the donation of his first small computer, an original Altair 8800b.
In the blitz about the new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, one thing that seems to be underplayed in my opinion is Nokia-Skype collaboration to “develop a new mobile experience.”
With the N800, Skype frees itself from desktops and laptops. Now Skype is mobile, like any cellphone.
With Skype, the Internet Tablet acquires real phone capabilities, able to connect not just to millions of Skype users’ computers but to any phone.
But beyond that, you have video with your conversation. And not at the sky-high cellular carrier prices but at the opposite end of the price spectrum where VoIP and Linux and the internet in general are camped.
See, for instance, Festoon, where there are Skype and Google Talk video plugins. Up to 8 callers with cameras can participate in a Skype video conference with Festoon without bankrupting themselves. Who knows? I expect Nokia-Skype will have its own video plugin by the time the collaboration comes to fruition in six months, don’t you? With all the software comfortably built-in, of course.
So the N800’s webcam and WiFi and mobility make Skype limitless. And Skype makes the N800 a true two-way communication device, where the walkaround web meets the talk-all-day crowd. What a combo!
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.
Waiting for the news to break officially and musing …
The New York Times ran an article today entitled “A Personal Computer to Carry in a Pocket.” Even though it carries a photo of four OQO founders, the story is really more about cellphones and specifically about tomorrow’s likely appearance of an Apple phone.
But the key takeaway from the article, I think, is John Markoff’s statement that “the newest screen is evolving to adopt more and more characteristics of a personal computer.”
That is clearly the space where the Nokia Internet Tablets (770 and N800) fit. And notice the emphasis on screen as opposed to computer. How often should the 225-pixel-per-inch, 800-pixel-wide screen be mentioned in regards to the Nokia siblings?
Of course, because it’s an article about a cellphone, Markoff’s next statement concerns “the convergence of many forms of communication encompassing voice, e-mail, instant messaging and video telephony.” This is the cellphone take on the world. Note how different that is from Nokia’s emphasis on communication as beginning with web surfing and including streaming audio and video.
Years ago, the New Yorker magazine was beginning to lose advertising and looked like it would enter the long decline of high-class magazines. I knew someone who worked there and owned a few shares of stock (about $500 each) and who suggested I buy some, to help support the magazine. I thought about its prospects and decided there was no way to make money positioned where it was. I thought the end was inevitable. I didn’t invest any money.
Condé Nast Publications, however, saw the New Yorker as a cheap way to supply a ready-made outlet for its high-end advertisers buying pages in other CNP publications. And selling those pages pre-empted the ads’ going to competitors. The New Yorker completed Condé Nast’s suite of offerings and saved the company from having to launch a magazine from scratch. CNP had a way to make money with the New Yorker, and indeed it has prospered since then.
I wonder if in the same way the Nokia 770 isn’t so valuable on its own but invaluable as it completes Google’s package of attractions.
The Nokia 770 might not be able to singlehandedly create this new niche of handheld web tablets, but it gives Google an opening into the walkaround web. (You think they want to promote Microsoft’s UMPC initiative?) Now you can check your gmail from anywhere, not just at your desk. Now you can use Google Talk from anywhere — now you can really talk using Google Talk.*
You think I’m exaggerating when I say “from anywhere.” But isn’t Google providing a WiFi cloud over all of San Francisco? What do you bet that every city large enough to have a pro sports franchise gets a WiFi cloud within the next three years? And maybe Google will be helping the effort. Remember: the more WiFi, the better for Google.
And maybe Google will be a broadband provider. Bet you see “free Nokia 770 with 1 year signup” offers then. Actually, I bet we start seeing it from all sorts of broadband suppliers soon.
We’re all going to live in the walkaround web sooner or later. Google benefits from that, especially in its head-to-head competition with Microsoft. Like the New Yorker was to Condé Nast, the Internet Tablet is more valuable to Google than to anyone else — and you know they have a way to make money from it.
* I wonder if this is why Google chose to use a standard protocol for its Google Talk rather than set up something proprietary like Microsoft and AOL did. It means that people using other applications — like Gizmo, right? — will be able to connect with Google Talk. Could be a hard shove downward at Skype’s prospects too, eh?
Full disclosure: Years ago, I used to work for CNP as an editor.
Years ago, the New Yorker magazine was beginning to lose advertising and looked like it would enter the long decline of high-class magazines. I knew someone who worked there and owned a few shares of stock (about $500 each) and who suggested I buy some, to help support the magazine. I thought about its prospects and decided there was no way to make money positioned where it was. I thought the end was inevitable. I didn’t invest any money.
