Nokia N800: Review

The Nokia N800 is an exciting handheld product for Internet access, viewing videos, and playing music. The device runs on Linux software, comes with Wi-Fi, has a large touch screen, and houses two memory-card slots for storage. Straight out of the package, the N800 can be used for Web browsing, e-mail, video watching, and listening to music; but it cannot, for example, be used for personal information management. A growing selection of applications allows customization of the device, but you have to have the skills to explore and configure it by yourself.

The Nokia N800 is not a phone; it is not a PDA; it is not a smartphone; it is not a laptop PC; nor is it a UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC). The N800 is an Internet tablet. When judged purely by its features and design, the N800 is a multimedia player and Internet access device. The connectivity options (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), built-in applications (Web browser, e-mail, Google Talk, RSS news feed reader), touch screen, and two memory card slots demonstrate that the product is geared for multimedia and Internet.

The built-in Web browser from Opera is a solid piece of software. Common media viewers, like Flash, are already installed. One of the missing pieces is a media viewer for WMV videos and WMA music.

The browser software has a size-related problem. The most common screen width for Web pages is 1024 pixels, whereas the screen resolution of the Nokia N800 is 800x480 pixels. This causes an undesirable effect that forces you to have to constantly scroll both horizontally and vertically. It is possible to select Optimized View, which breaks the page design, but makes pages more readable because you don't have to scroll horizontally. The size of the text is another problem caused by the screen size. When we asked a pair of young eyes to take a look at the default font size, even they couldn't see the text without zooming in. There's a handy zoom function in the browser, but it can only zoom in predefined steps.

The Linux operating system is a different type of product than a smartphone operating system like the Windows Mobile or Symbian OS. Each one of these software products has its strengths and weaknesses, as described in our comparison of Linux, Windows Mobile, and Symbian OS. Even if you have never seen the Linux command line prompt, there's nothing to worry about; you won't see it on the N800 either (unless you install a shell application).

If you use the built-in features and pre-installed applications, the device is extremely easy to use. Making choices in the menu system is simple. It feels natural to directly tap the screen. Our innocent, unsuspecting, and untrained guinea pig users grasped the idea in five to ten seconds.

Inevitably, the moment will arrive when you have to enter some text on the screen. There are three ways to do it: handwriting with a stylus, allowing the built-in character recognition software to identify what you are drawing on the screen; finger writing on a virtual keyboard displayed on the screen; or tapping the virtual keyboard with a stylus. By far, the most accurate method was using the stylus to tap the virtual keyboard. Finger writing works surprisingly well, too. Its activation is a delightful innovation by itself; you simple touch the screen with your finger. The clever software senses that you are using a finger and automatically opens up a large finger-size keyboard on the screen.

Both the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity worked well for Internet access. If you use Bluetooth for Internet access, you must have a phone that can act as a modem for the N800. The image quality of the Web camera is – well - Web camera quality.

The battery life in the unit varies a lot depending on the time spent on the Wi-Fi connection. If the Wi-Fi connection was more or less constantly transmitting data, our battery life was about 3 or 4 hours. If you keep the device switched on, and only occasionally browse something, the battery can last for several days.

The touch screen is meant to be poked, drawn on, and tapped on. It has to stand plenty of mechanical wear-and-tear. The screen showed scratch marks pretty quickly at the places where we usually typed Web addresses or scrolled the browser window. It'll be interesting to see how the screen looks after a few months.

If you are interested in the N800 only because of its advanced media player features, products like the video iPod, Archos, or Zune can be viable alternative products for you. In addition to the N800's predecessor, the Nokia 770, there are not too many reasonably-priced Internet tablets available yet. Traditional Dell, HP iPaq, or Palm PDAs could be other alternatives if you want an advanced portable media player with Internet-access capability.