Fun, pocketable, good looking, easy to use. I’m loving the N810 so far. Really loving it. Its such a…..gadget! The unboxing was great, the device feels good, the slider works smoothly, the metal finish looks and feels good. Nice to see a car holder in the package, multi-lingual instructions. GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi. SIP phone calls worked on second attempt at configuration (incoming too.) I’m very excited about the N810!
But there’s a long way to go in my testing. I can already see that web browsing is much much slower than with my Everun and really, that’s the main focus of this device. Google reader was very slow. Gmail too. Meebo was almost unusable and these are critical applications for me. I know I can switch to low-end versions of these pages but why should I? Its like asking someone to use OpenOffice when they normally use Microsoft Office. Its like telling someone that Linux is fine for a Windows user because it has the same capability. Or even the other way round! Its a pain in the neck to have to re-learn Internet applications or switch interfaces. I want to go straight from my desktop to my mobile device and use all the same Internet applications with the same interfaces and have reasonable response speeds. Further testing will reveal whether the device is too slow or whether its portability and features outweigh that speed disadvantage.
One thing that’s for sure, compared to my early hands-on with the N800, the user interface is vastly improved. The N810 isn’t the ‘innovators’ device that the N800 was with its first Tablet OS!
SO here’s the unboxing video. (WMV download, 750kbps.) Its a 640×480 video.
A shortened, lower quality youtube version is shown below.
Update: I’m writing notes and taking questions in this forum thread on UMPCPortal.
More on the N810 on the Carrypad product page.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Steve — I am really happy to hear that you have an n810! I am very much looking forward to your review of it, and especially in comparison to devices like the Everun. I am strongly considering getting an n810 for simple web browsing and being my “pocketable” device, and then replacing my Everun with something like the p1610 or eee. It seems that the Everun tries to be both a PDA and a laptop, and does fairly well, but in the end it is too small and clunky and slow to be a laptop and too large and heavy to be a PDA.
I am very much look forward to your insights!! Please post lots of demos of the true internet speed for various sites so we can really get a sense of the speed. A great “ultimate” test for speed and features is a complicated, busy site like ESPN.Com with lots of flash, streaming videos, and lots of content. Too much and too busy in my opinion, but something I always find interesting to throw at different mobile browsers to see how they do in a “worst case” scenario.
- Jeff
December 11th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Hi Steve,
nice to see that you finally got your hands on one of those N810! I am really looking forward to your experiences and a full-size review.
But I have on short question: Where have you bought it? The Nokia onlineshop says they have it in stock but none of the german onlineshops has it yet…
Take care,
Florian
December 11th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Hi FLorian.
I bought it from the Nokia online shop (de). Was more expensive but it was worth it for me to get it a bit earlier.
Steve