OSnews has a nice review of the N800. Its unfussy but seems to highlight quite a few important points.
- Poor YouTube compatibility. Flash video support is so important these days.
- Mpeg4 playback not supported
- Camera position isn’t optimal.
The review also mentions wasted screen space which is something that’s often seen. The simple browser on my Nokia 6280 wastes space too and it annoys me no end. UI design is critically important and this is highlighted in another review I’ve seen on the N800.
Sean Luke has written The Nokia N800 – And Its GUI Shortcomings From a Newton Developer’s Perspective. Its a really interesting and detailed read and I learned a lot from it. It rips apart the GUI and analyses in detail how things could have been better. Right down to icons and wasted space (again!) I highly recommend reading the article.
To be honest, I’m a little disappointed with the N800 now that I’ve read the reviews. I was hoping for full screen Mbps-class video and full support for complex web sites but it’s just not quite there with the N800. The question keeps coming into my mind – should we really bother with RISC based PC’s any more. x86 devices are getting more and more efficient and I think it would be better to spend effort on design rather than all the time need to port software. Take the Pepper Pad 3 software for example. Its Fedora Core 4. No messing around with porting. Just install most packages straight from the Pepper server. If you could do that with the N800 then maybe someone would have time to improve that GUI.
More N800 review links here.
Steve / Chippy.
