David Flynn18 October 2007, 3:41 AM
The Finnish phone giant's Linux powered pocket tablet gets a major upgrade and will soon hit Australian shores.
It's been called Nokia's "best-kept secret that's not a secret". It's one of the few devices from the Finnish phone colossus that's not actually a phone (unless you count Skype over Wi-Fi). And in a roundabout way, it's also proof that Intel's Linux-powered mobile internet device concept has legs - and that Nokia is already striding several leagues ahead of Intel and its hardware partners.
Nokia took another long step today with the N810, the third generation of its ‘Internet tablet' line which began with the launch of the N770 in November 2005 and was followed by the N800 in January this year.
And here's the kicker: it will be launched in Australia in Q1 2008. (The N800 has already quietly gone on sale through Harris Technology, according to Nokia Australia -- but after you've seen the specs on the N810 you'll probably want to hold off and buy it instead.)
 Gmail on the go: Nokia's N810 sports a slide-put keyboard, although it still relies on Wi-Fi (or Bluetooth pairing to a mobile phone) to get online |
Like its predecessors, the N810 is powered by Nokia's own Internet Tablet OS, also known as
Maemo. This open source build is based on Debian and is topped by the same ‘Hildon' user interface layer as will be featured on the Ubuntu Mobile OS used by Intel's mobile Internet devices around the middle of 2008. The N810 runs the latest Internet Tablet OS 2008 release, aka Maemo 4.0 ‘Chinook'.
 Facebook on the fly: Yes, we're celebrating National Alliteration Day here at apcmag.com! Anyway, the N810's support for Flash and AJAX should make it a pretty good Web 2.0 client |
Under the refreshed and refined UI is a full Mozilla-based browser with support for Flash 9 and "rich AJAX" for bucketloads of Web 2.0 goodness, plus an updated Skype client.
New on the hardware roster is integrated GPS (no word on a mapping/navigation application for Australia yet though), 2GB of flash memory (with an optional 10GB memory card available) and best of all, a QWERTY keyboard to supplement the on-screen ‘virtual keyboard'. This slides out from under the top deck which holds the N810's 4.3in WVGA (800 x 480) 65k colour screen. A sensor adjusts the screen brightness and keyboard backlighting according to ambient light conditions.
Carried over from the N800 is the 802.11b/g wireless plus Bluetooth 2.0 for linking to mobile phones and getting online via 3G/HSDPA or (gulp) GSM when there are no hotspots to be found.
Coupled with a good value mobile data plan such as Three X-Series, it would not need to cost much to access the net using an N810.
The N810's powerplant remains a Texas Instruments OMAP processor, although this one is faster at 400MHz compared to the N800's 330MHz chip.
From photos alone, it's hard to get a grip on how compact these Internet tablets really are, but at 72mm wide and 128mm long the N810 has roughly the same footprint as a $10 bill, and at the current healthy exchange rate you'll need to count out 55 of those blue notes to buy an N810 when it's released internationally next month (the official ticket is US$479).
The rest of the box is a noticeable 1.5cm shorter than the N800. While the N810 retains the same 14mm thin profile as the N800 it's a slightly beefier 225 grams in the hand.
As to when the N810 may reach our land that's girt by sea, Nokia is promising it'll go on sale in Austraila in before March next year. Nobody expects the N810 to soar up the charts with a bullet - even in the US and Europe it's a niche device - but it will be of huge interest to tech enthusiasts including APC readers and staff!