David Siegel - The Plenitude of Arboreal Beauty

I recently bought a Nokia n810 internet tablet because with all the iPhones and Blackberries and Treos around me, I felt like I was behind the curve for not having a fancy gadget. I also wanted to take a crack at getting Do running on Maemo. After a week of using the n810, here is what bugs me about it:

• The interface could be more finger-friendly. Sometimes you can use your fingers, but you’ll find yourself needing to pull out the stylus more often than you’d like.
• The screen has a plastic digitizer, making it feel mushy.
• It’s awkward to use single-handedly.
• Flash video playback feels like watching a slideshow. One of the main selling points of the device is that it puts the entire web in your hands, with YouTube and other Flash content often explicitly included in this claim. It simply doesn’t provide adequate Flash video playback.
• It seems like a lot of thought was put into the hardware, but the software feels like an afterthought. Maybe Nokia is hoping that Linux developers will step up to the plate, but a compelling suite of basic applications (email, media player, GTD) would go a long way in convincing users and developers to invest in the platform. Also, because Nokia set the bar pretty low, you’re going to see mostly poor to mediocre apps from third parties.
• GPS should be left out. The device could be slimmer without it, and Google has shown us that you can determine your location with wifi and a dash of cleverness.
• For a device built on Linux and still targeted at early adopters, many of whom are Linux users, documentation and utilities cater to Windows users, while Linux users are left to fend for themselves as usual. Please, Nokia, I paid hundreds of dollars for this device, can I have better instructions and tools for flashing the device?
• PRICE. Nokia, isn’t it overwhelmingly likely that people will choose to SAVE $80 and buy an iPod Touch with 16GB of storage space (the n810 comes with a puny 2GB, and can only be expanded to 8GB by purchasing memory cards), great syncing software, and a rich experience with polished apps that make the n810 look like a paperweight, all in a slim, sexy package? Did I mention that the iPod Touch uses Google Maps to provide rich, updated maps of the entire world, while the n810 is pre-loaded with 1.5GB of map files leaving you with 400MB internal memory for your stuff, not the advertised 2GB? Nokia would argue that the n810 has an advantage because it lets you make voice and video calls. This would be an amazing feature if implemented correctly, but the small, grainy, miscolored picture taken by the webcam just doesn’t do it for me.
• Bloatware. The n810’s main menu contains entries for Rhapsody, Skype, and Gizmo. They all ask you to sign up for trials for this or that, and there’s no straightforward way to remove them from the menu.
• Keyboard and other physical buttons. The buttons on the device are really spongy, feeling very FischerPrice-esque. The keyboard is actually pretty nice, but it would be nicer if it occupied the width of the entire device to allow for some separation between the keys.
• The web browser is painfully slow. Nokia, are you drawing off-screen web content? Is that why it’s so slow to scroll large web pages? Tisk tisk. Also, when typing in gmail, the text entry lags about 10 seconds behind what I’ve typed. Unacceptable.

Despite these faults, I really like the n810! Seriously! I love that it uses mostly free software, runs Debian, has cool package management, and I’m surprised by how much I like using the hardware keyboard. I typed this up on the device while listening to Radiohead and signed into GTalk. It’s really liberating to be able to leave my laptop at home.

When I use the n810, I feel like I’m only a little ahead of a trend that will soon revolutionize personal computing. Someday, what we now call the iPhone will be called the iMac. The n810 will cease to be an internet tablet, and will become the PC. Nokia actually hit the nail on the head with this little piece of crap! It’s still very much for geeks and forgiving business users, but the hardware has a lot of promise; with the right software, the n810 could allow you to be much more productive than you could be on an iPhone or even your laptop. My main advice to Nokia and others developing software for palmtops is that you first need to throw out all of your old assumptions about UI and start fresh… Aww, hell, that’s too hard. Just copy Apple.

A question on the minds of many people interested in the n810 is “so, how does the n810 stack up against ENIAC, the world’s first general-purpose electronic computer?” For starters, I can hold the n810 in one hand. In the picture, a relatively small piece of ENIAC sits behind me:

Obviously, the n810 beats ENIAC on weight and thinness. Also, ENIAC does not come with Flash or any media codecs, and when you run ENIAC the lights dim in downtown Philly, whereas the n810 can run on battery power all day. Finally, ENIAC required nearly $5 million to create, so price might be a dealbreaker.

All things considered, the n810 is pretty neat. Maybe if the price were $250 less, I would recommend that others buy one too. Nokia has been consistently improving products in this form factor, so there’s hope that they’ll learn from their mistakes and deliver something great.