Joy of Gadgets

Last week at Evening With S60, I did get to see a Nokia N810 very briefly. Major differences between my N800 and this device:

• Slide-out keyboard (N800 has no keyboard)
• Camera isn’t on a pop-out cylinder, but on the outside
• Built-in GPS
• 2gb of internal storage (versus an SD slot)
• Different battery, but same capacity

It is quite the device. I can tell you that the N810 software (OS2008), which also runs on the N800, is a definite step-up from the previous version (OS2007). While I’m playing with OS2008 now, thanks to being a Nokia employee and knowing the right people, the rest of you will have to wait until it ships.

Meanwhile, the folks at Laptop Magazine thought the N810 was pretty keen when they saw it at the recent CTIA conference in San Francisco. They awarded it Best Overall Device at CTIA. That’s funny, because it’s not a mobile phone. Then again, with Skype and Gizmo Project installed, you can make and receive phone calls on it.

The folks at Creative Weblogging–the people behind Gadgets Weblog, VoIP Weblog, and a slew of others, were serving up a “compromised” creative–a ad with malicious intent. In short, what it was doing was redirecting people to a site that, if you were running Internet Explorer and had scripting turned on, would install malware on your box. I announced it on both my CW blogs here and here.

Fortunately for me, I usually browse with Firefox and the NoScript extension–on my Mac. Needless to say it didn’t do anything to my machine when I ran across it. I personally recommend browsing the Internet with that combination. Or, if you’re stuck on using IE, disable active scripting.

Anyway, with the help of the various editors at CW, the malicious ad was tracked down and removed from the CW network. There was much rejoicing.

Meanwhile, you can safely look at the following articles I wrote this past week:

• Airports Charging For Power (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Skype 1.4 For Linux Now Available (From The VoIP Weblog)
• Alaska Airlines To Bring WiFi To Planes (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Cubic Telecom’s CEO Admits To Errors (From The VoIP Weblog)
• Sushi-Rolling Machine (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Jangl Partners With Fubar (From The VoIP Weblog)
• Universal Power Adapter (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Mobivox Gets 11 Million In Series A Funding (From The VoIP Weblog)
• Vringo Wins MIPCON’s Mobile TV & Internet Award (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• Connecting The Islands Of VoIP (From The VoIP Weblog)
• White LED Lights Coming! (From The Gadgets Weblog)
• T-Mobile Being Sued For Locking Mobile Handsets (From The Gadgets Weblog)

You know, I hadn’t really thought of the two devices as comparable until Om Malik mentioned it. The two posts he did (here and here) generated a fairly active thread related to this. Here’s my take.

I have not seen the iPhone up close and personal, though like every gadget geek, I read the reviews. I know the iPhone isn’t perfect. It’s locked to AT&T in an evil way–the phone functionality won’t boot unless it sees a specific kind of AT&T SIM card. It’s tied into iTunes, for better or worse.  It’s got a nice browser, plays music and videos from iTunes, and makes calls, all in a nice “Applefied” package.

The Nokia N800, on the other hand, isn’t a phone. Though with both Skype and Gizmo Project on the device, if you’re in WiFi range, you can make and receive phone calls all the same.  You can pair your N800 with a mobile phone with Bluetooth to take advantage of the data network of a mobile carrier.

Here is a comparison of the two devices. It’s kind of like comparing apples and oranges, but I’ll do my best to make the comparisons similar:

iPhone has over N800:

• Synchronizing data with iPhone + iTunes is a heck of a lot easier than with the N800, which has no out-of-the-box sync.
• User Interface. While both the iPhone and the N800 have a touch-screen interface, I think you’re going to have a hard time arguing that the N800’s interface is better than the iPhone.
• iPhone can make calls over a mobile phone network, N800 can’t. The N800 isn’t a phone, duh.
• Size. The iPhone is a little smaller than the N800.
• PIM. The iPhone at least has PIM stuff. The N800 doesn’t (see the sync point above), or has very anemic capabilities in this area.

N800 has over iPhone:

• Applications. The N800, taking advantage of the fact it is Linux-based, has a lot more third-party applications than the iPhone. You can quite simply do more with the N800 than you can with the iPhone.
• N800 can make calls with VoIP. Google Talk, Skype, and Gizmo Project are all supported on the N800. The iPhone has no VoIP capability because it’s a cell phone tied to a carrier who thinks VoIP is evil
• Flash support. The iPhone doesn’t support it, the Nokia N800 has Adobe Flash. With the recent firmware update, it now supports Flash 9. This seems to allow Pandora to work on the N800, too!
• More potential storage. The iPhone is limited to 8gb. With the latest firmware update, the N800 can sport 16gb, or possibly more. The memory is removable in the N800–not so in the iPhone.
• Touch-screen keyboard. I feel a bit unnerved about trusting the iPhone to “guess” what I’m typing correct. On the N800, the touch-screen keyboard can take the whole screen.
• Cost. The N800 is clearly a better deal at $400 versus the $500 or $600 an iPhone costs. Not counting the 2 year AT&T contract, which is another $2,000. If you want extra storage on the N800, you will have to buy SD or SDHC cards, which brings the cost up closer to the iPhone’s hardware cost. But the N800 isn’t tied to a mobile phone carrier, so once you’ve bought your hardware, you’re free to use it anywhere.

Areas where the iPhone and N800 are comparable:

• Bluetooth support. The iPhone only supports headsets for bluetooth. The N800 doesn’t support headsets, but supports keyboards, sending files, and pairing with a mobile device to use it’s Internet connection.
• Web browser. Neither one support a “standard” web browser (where “standard” means either Internet Explorer or Firefox). The iPhone uses Safari, which is based on WebKit, the same rendering engine used on the KDE web browser and the S60 3rd Edition browser. The N800 uses Opera. Yes, I realize both of these browsers probably follow “standards” more than the other two dominant browsers, but most people code to the dominant browsers, not to “standards,” sad as that is.
• Video and Audio support. Both play videos and audio nicely. The N800 likely supports more formats natively. Canola makes audio/video on the N800 a really nice experience.
• Seamless connectivity. The iPhone might be “better” since it has to seamlessly switch between GPRS/EDGE and WiFi, but the N800 can switch between known WiFi access points fairly seamlessly as well, and I believe you can throw Bluetooth to a cell phone into that mix as well.

Are there any points I missed? Given a choice between an Apple iPhone and a Nokia N800, which would you pick and why? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

As you can tell by the crappy video I posted yesterday, yes I know I need a tripod, I got a Nokia N800 yesterday. I’ve been trying my best not to let it monopolize my day because it’s a freaking cool gadget.

What have I done with it so far?

• Using the web browser, of course. It works really well, even working well with GMail. It doesn’t support Google Reader, however. It works, but the browser chokes often enough that I use the Mobile interface to Google Reader. Leaves a little to be desired, but I can read stuff.
• Using MediaConverter, I’ve been able to take some videos I’ve pulled off the Internet and watch them on myN800. I will be doing some extended video watching on next week’strip to NYC.
• I loaded up the N800 with some media cards. I tried both old MMC cards I had as well as bought a couple of dirt cheap 1GB SD cards at WalMart. Can hot-swap the cards. Sweet.
• I upgraded the firmware. Something I highly recommend doing before you dig too far into the device.
  I did this from a Windows machine, but supposedly you can do it from Linux or a Mac as well.
• I paired my N800 to my Nokia N80 Internet Edition. It worked without too much mucking about.
• I set up the IM client and eventually got Twitter working with my GTalk account on the N800.
• I installed some third party apps. I didn’t play with Rhapsody–lord knows I want to actually spend $10 a month to stream music to my device when I’ve got just about every song I want encoded in MP3 already.
• I plugged the device into my Mac. Both SD/MMC cards showed up as drives on the Mac. When I tried to unmount them, though, they came right back. Had to pull the USB cable. A little disquieting, if you ask me.
• Used the software keypad to type a lot. I generally like the predictive “suggestions” the text entry system comes up with, though it would be nice if it did a better job cascading the suggestions. For example, I’ll type in “fo” and it will suggest “rbear” (to make the word forbear). That’s cool. If I click on that, it complete the word. However, if I wanted to type the word “forbearance” I have to manually enter the “ance.” The system seems to “forget” other stuff may have preceded the completed word that may, in fact, also be part of the word you are entering.
• I tried using the built-in camera. I took a picture. The quality leaves something to be desired, but then again, the camera is for video conferencing.
• I called Ken Camp with Gizmo Project without a headset. Works really well.

I sat down in my living room in the quiet of the evening earlier and used the tablet. Typed up, slowly, a few emails, and browsed around. Stuff worked. I like it. It’s a little big in the pocket, but I think it’s something I could carry around with me.

What remains to be seen is what the battery life will be. I am going to put it through that test next week while I’m on the road.