WiMAX N810 Dies On The Vine

The WiMAX version of the N810 was never anything more than a curiosity this side of the pond given the limited availability of WiMAX even as a trial. Now it looks like Nokia have had enough of the tribulations of being a WiMAX front-runner and pulled the N810W from the shelves – indeed one report even suggests that dealers have been asked to return unsold stock to Nokia.

Its a shame that WiMAX never took off, but the various interested parties don’t seem to have done a very good job of delivering a credible system either side of the pond.

However, now that Nokia have proved that the N810 hardware will support a WWAN connection why not stick a HSDPA chip on instead and give the N810 new life ahead of its imminent replacement with a new hardware platform to support Maemo 5?

Fourth Generation Must-haves – Part Two

Having looked at what I consider the third generation internet tablet’s biggest hardware shortcomings its tine to look at where the software is lacking.

This actually amounts to less of an issue, as the very nature of software is that it can be fine-tuned, allowed to evolve or be replaced completely if necessary. That said some of the flaws which existed in earlier revisions of the OS still exist in the current Maemo release.

The biggest bug-bear remains email. The default client is dire and replacements offer only limited improvements. As new competition arrives on the market its unlikely that this situation will be acceptable to any of the target market. A full-featured client which looks less Soviet and supports niceties like HTML mail and Exchange Active syncis an absolute requirement for the new OS.

After email, multimedia handling is the next biggest issue – an iPhone, for example, manages music, video and photos brilliantly, in a slick, clean interface that draws users in and absolutely sells devices. And whilst Canola is good – very good actually – its also slow by comparison. Some optimisation and a little tidying of extensions should make for a class-leading media platform.

Next item to be addressed is video-calling. Why put the camera on unless you are going to make it easy to do video calling, by which I mean Skype. Give them money, resources, furry animals, in fact give them whatever it takes to get video calling into the Maemo Skype client. Once XP MIDS start arriving they will almost certainly have this ability.

The Internet Tablet needs a PIM. It needs to be a locker too – the Macs iCal for example or Palm’s own calendar app are both good examples of calendaring, contacts need to integrate with the email client, whilst Tasks should be handled as a mini-project ‘management tool, complete with hierarchy and timelines. It should also be possible to display tasks on the calendar on the appropriate days with reminder options. the calendar needs to support synchronisation – at least with the hugely popular Gmail calendar application.

Last change required is a really good Notes app, designed to handle free text notes handwritten on the screen: a little like Windows Journal on a smaller scale.

They say competition improves the breed – take heed Nokia, as competition is arriving in droves.

Fourth Generation Tablet Must-haves – Part One

The N810 is the most accomplished pocket internet device to date. Yes I am including the iPhone in that assessment too. Having owned both for more than six months I can definitely say that the N810 has much more to recommend it than the iPhone – for internet use anyway.

However the N810 is far from perfect as a device and there are several issues that Nokia must address in the next version to ensure that it stays ahead of the MID and Smartphone crowd with its Internet Tablet range.

Firstly battery life. This just isn’t good enough for this sort of device – about two and a half to three hours of usage. Not nearly enough to manage a whole working day away from power, even with judicious use of the power switch. Usable battery life needs a minimum of a 50% boost before this can be considered an acceptable everyday use device. Four and a half hours as an absolute minimum. Ideally somewhere closer to six.

Still thinking about battery life and usability away from the mains it should be possible to warm-swap the battery for a new one. Now this requires the use of a small cell to power the device whilst the change is made, but this only needs to cover a period of 30-60 seconds depending on how easy it is to swap cells. This makes it feasible to carry multiple batteries for those times that you aren’t going to be able to charge from a wall socket for extended periods of time, but still want access to the functions of the device. An obvious link here would be the provision of a standalone battery charger to allow charging of multiple batteries for just such a purpose.

Finally on the power front the connection socket for the power adapter should be changed to a standard USB connection – micro- or mini-USB – and should handle synchronisation too. This is much more convenient and if you find yourself stranded without power any USB port and readily available USB lead will get you out of a jam.

Another hardware change that Nokia needs to implement is an adjustment to the sliding mechanism which reveals the keyboard. The gap between the top row of keys and the bottom of the screen when open is too small and this makes typing un-necessarily difficult. As the keyboard is one of the big selling points of the N810 that should really have been picked up before it got to manufacturing. Another flaw in the N810’s design is the positioning of the 5 way controller beneath the slide. This would be much more useful if available when the device is closed.

With these hardware issues addressed I believe that Nokia can move the Internet Tablet into a different league of performance than its rivals. Which leaves only the software side of things to sort out – and I’ll discuss that in part 2.

Back From The Dead

Of course I mean the blog, not me!

Its been a while since I posted anything here – concentrating on developing my more mainstream blog at randomdumber too much I guess. That and distractions like the new iPhone.

However I’m going to try and post more regularly about the use of Maemo Internet Tablets in a corporate environment, not least because its useful to see how a consumer device (which is how I see the tablets) compare against more business focused systems from Microsoft, Blackberry and Nokia themselves.

Reverting Back To OS2007

Don’t get me wrong, OS2008 is good, very good in fact. But its plagued with problems that are likely to take Nokia at least a couple more updates to fix. Whilst my N800 is attempting to be my main computer I can’t really rely on a flaky OS. All the same OS2008 is a visual feast and the additional performance of the CPU speed boost is most welcome.

Problems I’ve found are (in order of severity): locking the screen and keyboard doesn’t kill the display which negatively impacts on battery life, a large amount of third party software remains unconverted, Chinook repositories appear to be broken which means that some apps that are available can’t be installed and finally the new home screen can’t be easily used as the applets get dragged around when you don’t want them to and don’t when you do.

The big plus points are the new browser (very slick), new themes (likewise) and functional Youtube. All of which mean that you astound users of lesser devices with Maemo’s good looks and performance. Shame the processor speed boost can’t be maintained after downgrading back to OS2007 – which I’m currently in the middle of doing…

OS2008 Officially Available For N800

Nokia have made good on their promise to deliver the N800 upgrade to OS2008 before Christmas, with the files being made available through the Nokia Internet Tablet Update Wizard earlier today. Unfortunately it looks like every N800 owner is currently in the process of updating their operating system, so the server is massively overloaded. If you get as far as downloading the file you’ll be faced with a lengthy download, as data is transferring at 28k modem speeds at the moment…

Wallpapers For N800, N810

I’ve selected a few 800×480 wallpapers which I use on my N800’s home screen as backgrounds. The images are, as far as I know anyway, in the public domain, however they will be removed if I’m informed otherwise.

First four are attached.

Abstract Lunar Landscape

Ferrari 599GTB

Heroes

Spyker F1 Car

Twisting The Knife

I’m somewhat bemused by Informationweek’s Mitch Wagner’s less than complimentary take on the N810 launch last month and now that he’s had a chance to respond to the criticism which found its way back to him via his comments I’m still not sure I understand his beef.

Mitch lauds the iPhone in comparison to the N8xx and complains primarily of the lack of built-in cellphone, limited feature set and a lack of purpose.

Lets take those in reverse order. The purpose is quite clearly stated by Nokia in all the accompanying literature and advertising: its an internet tablet. A pretty fine one too. The internet experience is better than anything else out there including some much larger devices – UMPCs I’m looking at you here. The large, bright screen has a phenomenal pixel density and renders web pages in true desktop format, unlike iPhone’s Safari browser which renders an illegible over-view of the page being viewed and has to be zoomed and panned to read the content.

The email client is okay and the supplied RSS reader does the job. The ability to stream Youtube video and vodcasts added to various VOIP clients makes it a super powerful web device and something with much greater utility than something like the iPhone.

Which brings us to the second point: a limited feature set. A complaint more fairly levelled at the device Mitch actually chose, the iPhone. The N810 supports GPS, expandable memory, an open architecture and a freely available software development kit. None of which are available for the iPhone, furthermore whereas shortcomings in the standard Nokia software suite can be (and have been) rectified by independent developers – its possible to sync with Gmail and Outlook, edit spreadsheets and word documents, even send audio over bluetooth, no such changes are happening on the iPhone, where developers and Apple are engaged in a bitter struggle to unlock and re-lock the iPhone and little else is happening.

So to the final ‘complaint’ that Nokia’s tablets lack a cellphone radio. For some that may be a show stopper, but for most it need not be. The iPhone sports a 2.5G radio, supporting GPRS connections. A handset with bluetooth to add the same capabilities to the Nokia tablet runs £40, without a contract. Even better, for another £45 you can add 3G to make for an iPhone-busting feature set.

And when next generation 3.5G phones drop to sensible prices you can upgrade the phone part of your package too. In fact over a two year contract the O2 iPhone costs over £200 more than a Nokia N800 and 6120c 3.5G combination on T-mobile.

Ultimately the Nokia N8xx range proves conclusively that a blind charge into the world of integration fails to deliver the best user experience and moreover, costs significantly more than a multiple device solution.

Technorati Tags: N810, N800, iPhone, Nokia

N800 Official Nokia Case

After a mighty delay and many false starts Nokia’s official case for the N800 became available about six weeks ago (in the UK at least) and being completely unimpressed with the OEM sleeve case I had to order one. I’ve had it for the best part of a month now so time to jot down some thoughts.

First of all the contents of the package: the case itself, a metal strip complete with 3M adhesive backing, two Nokia Nseries branded magnets and a screen cloth.

The first thing you need is patience. The metal plate – approximately a millimetre thick – needs to be stuck to the battery cover to allow the case to attach. After sticking the plate on you’re faced with a 12 hour wait before you can actually attach the case itself: pergatory! After waiting and waiting you can finally attach the case to the plate, courtesy of the powerful magnet sewn into the back. A second magnet at the front ensures that the case stays firmly shut when in your bag, pocket, etc. That magnet in the front means that the case snaps shut with a satisfying thunk as you close it, whilst also meaning that you’ll have to develop a system for opening the case and overcoming the magnet.

The case itself covers the front and back of the N800 but only the top edge, so its unlikey to offer a great deal of protection if you’re likely to be throwing your tablet around. It does, however, add nothing to the size of the tablet so that it fits comfortably into a trouser pocket or inside suit jacket pocket without creating an unsightly bulge. The materials are very high quality, the leather front and soft, felt inner add a very classy look to the N800, one that has prompted many questions in business meetings.

The two additional magnets are also backed with 3M’s VHB adhesive, which should allow you to mount them to non-magnetic surfaces as well as things like fridge-doors (Nokia’s suggestion, don’t ask me why, my time in Finland never led me to expect to find an internet tablet stuck to my fridge-door!) The idea behind them is that you attach to a suitable surface in an area where you’d like to use the N800, remove the case and use the newly installed metal plate/magnet combo to do the mounting task. I’m thinking that one would make a halfway useful car mount for my N800 – although to be 100% usable I’d have to spend some time getting Kagu Media Player and A2DP audio working over bluetooth.

Its hard to find anything negative to say about the case – despite being relatively expensive (around £26) it actually works out to be good value for money. It would probably be nice if the couple of millimetres of play in the battery door didn’t exist, as that would remove the occasional ‘wobble’ from the case – but that’s really clutching at straws for something to moan about. My recommendation is: if you have an N800, you need one of these.

N800 Certificate Based PEAP Authentication

The N800 lives or dies be connectivity, specifically Wifi connectivity lacking an integrated cellphone as it does. So connecting to my work network was going to be key to its utility for me. Which promised to be some fun and games, given that my work network is based around WPA, with a certificate and Active Directory based authentication. To my surprise connecting proved to be relatively easy, although some of the settings were counter-intuitive. I’m documenting the process here for anyone else faced with this, or similar network issues.

Step one is to get the certificate file from your server (a Windows 2003 based Radius server in my case) and install it using the certificate manager. How you get the certificate is up to you. As Network and IT manager at my workplace I just exported it from the server itself. You may have to cosy up to one of your network engineers or alternatively find a way of exporting it from a wirelessly connected PC. Once you have the file copy it to a location on the Internet Tablet. To install the certificate go to Tools, Control Panel and Certificate Manager and choose Import. Locate the file and ensure that WLAN is selected as allowed.

Next use Connection Manager to find the protected network and choose connect. You should be prompted for some settings. Use the following:

Set Network mode to infrastructure;

Security Method to WPA with EAP;

EAP type to PEAP;

Select Certificate to None(!);

EAP method to EAP MSCHAPv2;

User name to domain\username (i.e. the name of your AD domain and then your username);

When the wizard tells you its completed you will need to hit the advanced button and make a change on the EAP tab so that Use manual username is ticked, re-enter your username in the domain\username format and then make sure client authentication is unchecked.

You should now be able to connect to your secured network without any further problems.