N800 en-route

by on January 22, 2007 in Random

Tonight I got an invitation code to buy a discounted Nokia N800 under the developer programme. Thanks to whoever recommended me! Order has been placed and it gets here later this week. I am quite looking forward to poking around with it – looks like a nice chunk of hardware and an awesome platform with all that free software goodness ploughed into it, particularly GStreamer. :)

  • Nathan DBB

    The N800 is so close to perfect. I Just wish it used a low-power x86 CPU and had a single powered USB host port.

    The powered USB port could be used for high-quality audio capture devices, or could be used for a USB Memory device. It could also be used to add directional Wi-Fi, out-facing webcam, keyboard, etc. The device would just be much more flexible.

    I don’t see why Nokia can’t get one of these with a Geode GX/LX solutions. While battery life might fall from 3.5 hours to 3 hours, I would be more willing to shell out for one. The OMAP2420 takes about as much power as the Geode GX processors (~ 2 watts) and the LX takes about another watt. This would allow the use of all the sweet x86-only stuff that we encounter.

  • http://tieguy.org/blog/2007/01/22/i-want-linux-in-my-pocket-asap-kthxbye/ Luis Villa’s Blog » I want Linux in my pocket, ASAP, KTHXBYE

    [...] Unlike some people, I appear not to have been swank enough to score an N800. This probably indicates good judgment on Nokia’s part, given how little I’ve been able to contribute with my 770. :/ The really unfortunate part, in my mind, is that I’m not that disapppointed. I love my 770, but the complete flakiness of getting internet access with it (even here in New York City where the density of wifi is very high) is very frustrating, and means that I rarely take it anywhere anymore. If I could reliably get internet with the 770/800 (read: cell/EDGE) I’d christen it the Greatest Device Ever; it would always be in my pocket and I’d frequently abandon my laptop. But I can’t, so instead most of the time my 770 is a very nice paperweight- and sits with my other paperweights, on my desk. (Easy/transparent calendar/addressbook data sync, like iPhone promises, might be a partial replacement for always on networking, but that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon either. :( So… I’ll probably look at getting an openmoko after my spring exams. The spec looks solid if not great (no EDGE?), my motorola has shitty, shitty software that deserves to be ground into the earth, and an always-ish on data connection sounds like a blessing I can’t get in the N800. The software load will probably be determinant here- how flexible will it be? Will it really sync with my laptop’s calendar/addressbook? But at the moment it at least looks promising in a way that the N800’s lack of reliable network and sync does not. Tangent: it seems odd that maemo, the platform, won’t be used by the openmoko folks- instead it looks like they’ll be duplicating(?) work by having their own maemo-like gtk-derived base classes. Not sure why this is (perhaps the various proprietary bits in maemo?); it would be interesting to find out, but I’m not holding my breath. [...]

  • Laszlo

    Another one? :) What happened to the N770 that was given to Jokosher? Last I heard Aq was gonna do something with it but I haven’t seen anything come out of Jokosher remote. If its not being used can I have it now that its second-gen? We’ll talk on IRC ;)

  • http://www.pobox.com/~meta/ mathew

    I’d love to see some screenshots of it reading The Guardian Digital Edition (or the sample copy thereof) at http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/

    That’s my killer app for the N800, but I wasn’t able to get the one I tried at CompUSA to connect to the net.

  • jono

    Yeah it does seem like a really nice device, and the integrated camera means that video conferencing from hotels is a possibility which I will find useful. :)

  • http://up3n.wordpress.com Javier

    As potential buyer of a N800, I’d like to hear a review of it in LugRadio. Once you have it, is there any chance you prepare a segment about it?

    Well, in fact, I don’t think I’m going to buy one in the near future. The combination Nintendo DS+Opera works just fine for my needs. Although the chance to read PDFs is very appealing to me.