Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

This is my first post here. I am seasoned Nokia N95-3 users and now i am thinking about buying N810 to replace carrying laptop with me when I travel. I have searched for reviews but my couple question could not be answered. I am writing this hoping that N810 owners can answer some of my questions.
BWT I have Nokia N95-3 with AT&T 3G data and I plan on pairing with it.

Questions are in order of importance to me

1-Can you create,view & edit office docs (Word,Excel etc) on this out of the box? If not can any installed app would do it?

2- Are you limited to Nokia maps on it or can you install Google Maps, Tomtom and/or Garmin on this thing?

3- Does it have contacts AND calendar built in? Can you import/export and later sync your contacts/calendar items to PC (say outlook) or online services? Is there a app like "Nokia PC suite" for this thing?

4- Can it do VOIP like N95-3 or better? Support for outbound proxy & stun? I know it supports gizmo but i want to configure any other SIP say voipbusters.com or broadvoice.com etc

5- Does it have real player like N series phones? Can you stream bbc news stream from url like
rtsp://rmlive.bbc.co.uk/bbc-rbs/rmlive/ev7/live24/worldservice/livenews_v8.ra

6- Does it have many third party apps available (preferably free) that would enhance productivity?

7- How hackable it is if you are a linux guy? Can you develop stuff on it with gcc?

I appreciate all the help provided. It will definitely help me device.

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

There's one of these posts a week. There's a lot of overlap between questions-before-I-buy-of-the-week posts, so you really should search for some of those, and read them.

That said:

No.

Gnumeric is available, and quite handily does spreadsheet work, with Excel compatibility. I use and recommend.

For word processing, Abiword is now an open beta, but (as I understand) it's only useful on N810s or with a BT/USB keyboard due to onscreen keyboard issues. I have an N800 (they're practically identical internally, but among hardware differences, we lack a keyboard), and my BT keyboard's dead ATM, so you'll need advice from others on usability; there's a couple threads around you can read.

OOo is available, either natively in Debian, or by installing Debian as a chroot environment, rather than as a boot environment. It's even slower than on a desktop, of course.

KOffice is in KDE, which Penguinbait has built, and also has some success; I think it's slower than abiword and gnumeric, but it's definitely faster (and less MS-compatible) than OOo.

No, no, no, and/or no.
There are other mapping softwares available, but not any of those. Maemomapper is the one I use most.

PIM is sorely wanting, if you want it. Possible solutions are GPE, pimlico, gvm (Palm emulation) and probably some others. None of these is really considered satisfactory by those who want PIM, I guess.

Dunno. Has generic SIP support, but I don't know enough about VoIP to talk.

I don't know about N-series phones, but it plays that just fine.

I've no clue what you want to produce. Check http://maemo.org/downloads/

Finally, a real question. ;) Absolutely!
As alluded to before, you can install Debian as a boot-time alternative. You can also (after cloning the OS onto an SD for more room, at least) set up with gcc and the works under ITOS, and gleefully build stuff, yes. If you're asking that question, it might very well be the device for you!

"Help me device"... Say what?

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

Thanks!

correction.
It will definitely help me device=> It will definitely help me decide

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

My basic answer: you can use this instead of a laptop. But it is often implied that someone is going to use their tablet instead of a laptop and do work-related stuff. Fine, but do you think I am going to ask my employer to throw out all the desktop and laptop computers at my job and put in tablets instead? No, laptops and desktops are better for doing work-related stuff. If you are on vacation, you can use a tablet. You can do light work-related stuff on a tablet. But I don't think the world is going to throw all its desktops and laptops in the dumpster -- they have their functions.

There are more third-party apps available than I can keep up with, and I try.

As Benson mentioned, we get posts basically identical to yours on a weekly basis. You might benefit from clicking on Wiki at the top of this page and reading the information there. Any information you see there about the N800 or N810 is what you are looking for. Any information you see about the N770 is probably too dated.

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

Only thing i can add to Bensons is that maemo mapper allows you to use google's maps as one of many repositories.. there is also yahoo maps, ve street, open street and some others. if you have time to plan ahead you can download and save the maps before hand.. otherwise it requires an active internet connection.

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

Agree, i am not looking for a work replacement but mostly when i am traveling and want to do light browsing, finding restaurants, flight status, blogging,checking email, im.
Again i am few so i will try to search and use Wiki before posting. I did google on my questions but could not get any definitive answer except finding this site :)

EDIT: i heard bad reviews on the GPS functionality of this thing. i have Nokia N95-3 with Tomtom running on it and it rocks. I was hoping to get that software on N810 and use the big screen instead driving with directions on a small phone screen. thoughts?

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

with the new firmware, diablo, my gps problems are gone. By the time I get to the end of the street, its locked and giving me directions. You guys forgot to mention that google docs also works.

Just FYI, there is not much commercial software for the tablets, and only two "need" money (i.e. better Maps, Rhapsody). Everything is basically open source or at least free. So don't expect things like the universal support for the iphone or windows mobile (you know, like the million of iphone optimized sites).

As for VOIP, the n810 does it fine with the built in client. You can even get free calls to landlines with Gizmo, Grandcentral, and Grandcentral-dialer

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

All I've heard against it is hardware issues with acquiring satellites, not much against the software... If you've got a GPS S60 phone, I've seen a reference on here to some app which makes the phone look like a BT GPS, allowing you to use that instead; the available apps then will probably do well.

Of course, the Diablo update has helped some (with the locking issue), and not others. YMMV on that.

Maemo mapper does driving directions quite well if you download the routes (it uses google maps online), but you'll need a BT link to your phone and a data plan to get updated routes while driving (if you go off course). Maps, I think, does on-the-fly routing with no internet, but that's the paid version.

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

The GPS usually takes about 5 minutes for the initial lock, but has taken a bit longer at times for me (using Diablo). GPS was more of a toy for me, but the lack of offline routing (without paying, anyway) is kind of disappointing.

I think RoadMap actually stores the street data and I had seen references to routing in it -- it would be very awesome to use Maemo Mapper with RoadMap as a service to get basic routing directions. Of course, the main point is: if you want accurate routing, be prepared to pay for it. While Maemo Mapper can get them online, you never know when a service like that might be disabled by the providers.

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

@andreww What are you talking about? RoadMap does give routing, for free, without Maemo Mapper, and stores everything in vector format so its fits on a SD card. I use it every day just to hear the annoying "Approaching XXX street" from flite to keep me awake.

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

I'm also considering buying a n810 with the new lower price, however paying for the gps too kinda cuts too much price wise being a college student and one of the things i'd really like about it is gps navigation.

@thesandlord how well does roadmap work? it seems all the free versions of maping can't route on the fly, and some can't update without internet access. care to explain more how roadmap routing works?

i saw on their site they offer a download to maps for the entire country and by state. if these files are downloaded can it update on the fly? or just visually can see a route if pre-planned and routed by internet earlier?

Thanks!

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

Ordered mine, should be delivered 7/22
The first thing i am trying to find is how to tether using N95-3 because i will be carrying N810 with me so i want to surf web by tethering to N95-3. So far have not found a tutorial on how to do that.
Still looking...

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

There is an app "Navit" which will read unlocked Garmin maps. Sort of.
Worked for me with some topographic maps.

The Nokia Media Player plays realmedia streams, but not Windows media. Mplayer plays those AFAIK, but is not yet an integrated app
(I haven't managed to launch it from a web link)

Typically use scratchbox cross-compile environment on a desktop. Yes, infinitely hackable though source code is not available for all the Nokia apps and drivers.

Yet another FAQ :
http://andrew.daviel.org/N810-FAQ.html

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

Looking at your block of questions as a hole, have you considered an eeePC? It's not quite pocketable but it about the side of a book and definitely does the stuff you want. If you're a Linux guy as #7 eluded to, you can chuck full fledged distros onto it if you like. Mine is running the latest version of Ubuntu and it's fine.

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

Those damn elusive block holes!

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

I am also thinking of buying one, but i have had second thoughts about iPhone :eek:
Can anyone help me decide? (you can also offer a alternative device)
I have my nokia 5700 for calling so that isnt important..
What i would excpect from my device?
Good video playback, nice web browsing experience(maybe playing sum games too if the device can handle it), gps would be great, also i use my device to listen to music.. And also, some fun apps would be great(games maybe).. Iphone nails the video playback with tv-out, tho the n810 has a better screen for single person viewing.. I don't know about apps and such but the nokia n810 pwns iphone by texting, since it has qwerty and afaik the iphone isn't very friendly against new hardware (keyboard, hdd aso) and i don't like on-screen tipping (at least i think so, since i havent really tried it).. So can you guys please help me to decide?

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

One weakness in your list is video playback; I don't watch video on my N800, so no real first-hand experience, but recoding for 400x240 and moderate bitrate is often recommended. This situation is, if you don't mind a little fooling around, improving, as mplayer has a relatively new and little-known option for decode-time downsampling.

Web browsing is different on the two devices; they both make some effort to bring you "the real web"; the N8x0 does an excellent job of delivering the experience of a pocket laptop (and is fairly stylus-heavy), while the iPhone does zoom-and-pan stuff that works on the same pages, but is... different. My impression is it's easier to pick up and check the headlines quick, but you wouldn't want to read tech docs online. (I've never actually used one, so FWIW.)

Some games are around; depends what you're after of course, but the addictivity of Tyrian is never to be underestimated. Q2's not actually that bad, though you can feel it's getting towards the upper end of capabilities... Doom suffers a bit from the peculiar stylus control, for me, but on an N810, I believe you can remap all that to keys. Q1 plays smoothly and awesomely.

GPS performance is variable, some report horrible troubles, some report 'works fine here', and some reported troubles that are solved with Diablo and/or the AGPS tool. Can't comment on HW, myself, but SW-wise, Maemo mapper does everything I really want. (Oh, that and cyborg.py, of course...)

Music-playing? Mpd FTW, IMO, but we have mpd with a variety of clients, canola (slick finger-friendly interface), and a slew of others. The N810 pretty much matches the iPhone in capacity, although the N800 can take up to 64 GB right now (2 32GBers); I'd guess these are pretty much a match, unless your idea of listening to music requires watching a bunch of covers flipping past...

iPhone at present has zero BT capabilities. (OK, it does HSP and HFP, but AFAIK that's it, even with the new firmware.) So no external peripherals at all, typing is on screen or not at all...

We've got some USB flash/HDD drives (direct connect), all other (high-current) flash drives and HDDs via powered hub.
USB and BT keyboards, limited capabilities with USB/BT mice.
USB or BT-RS232 (some models; pl2302 works great), USB-100baseTX (Linksys USB100M and others), and even USB CDROMs and the odd USB webcam, DVB-H tuner, WWAN card, or VGA adapter... (Some of these need a powered hub; pretty much the things you'd expect to need more power.)

Honestly though, I have an N800, and the lack of a built-in keyboard doesn't bother me much. My BT keyboard's been dead for almost a month, too, which is only mildly annoying. So I'm not sure the iPhone is all that bad that way. Of course, it's a smaller display, though, and you can't use a stylus.

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

the 800 or 810 is what it is, an internet tablet. quick story, I was at the Microsoft Partner event in Houston.

My hotel was swamped with people going online and downloading videos (or whatever) so I wasn't able to get enough bandwidth to VPN and couldn't get to my work email. So while I was at the event and had wifi there, I thought "why not? and used my 800 to connect to the internet version of my work email.

No problems! I have an Apple BT keyboard which connects without fail to my 800. So I left my laptop in my hotel room. I do Google docs (tho slow) and hotmail all the time. For this and for looking at Websites, the 810 or 800 is just fine. Beyond that, you really need something larger to do heavier work.

I'd love one of these with a 8" screen and a little more horse power and the ability to print from the machine (Nokia, are you listening?).

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

So your saying that it's no good for video playback and james ur saying that the internet tablet is ONLY and ONLY for internet?

Re: Thinking of buying N810, please help with questions
 

It's fine for video playback (as long as you work within its limits) and it can do plenty of other things besides internet.