Thread: What woud you realistically like to see in the N900?
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johnkzin is offline johnkzin
2008-09-12 , 20:29
Posts: 1,878 | Thanked: 646 times | Joined on Sep 2007 @ San Jose, CA
#1295
Originally Posted by Benson View Post

As for the card slot "that can fit all card adapters", I'm not sure what that means, because none of my 3 laptops has any such thing. The union of my laptops' card slots would be: ExpressCard/34, SD/XD/MS, and type III PCMCIA, with no laptop having more than two of them. If you meant either an ExpressCard or PCMCIA, I can't see how those could be fit without substantially enlarging the device.

To support XD (which are much shorter than SD), the combo slot leaves the SD sticking out partway; none of these are suited to a pocketable device, IMO. One reasonable option would be a CF slot, which would allow a CF->PCMCIA dongle, except that PCMCIA is essentially dead; SD and USB seems like the most useful possibility without wasting a lot of space.
Actually, you could do a PCMCIA or ExpressCard slot the same way you do an SD/XD card slot: you have a shallow slot that leaves the card hanging out. If you put this on the top edge of the N810, with the "top" facing the back face of the N810, then you could put various cards in, have them stick out the top, and still allow the screen to slide up (because the card's top bulge would be facing toward the back of the NIT).

So, think about a PCMCIA or ExpressCard slot right where the N810's power button is. The slot's top side is the back of the N810. It runs the full depth of the N810, except for the connector space needed at the other end of the device. The rest of the card would stick out the top of the N810.

The advantage of picking PCMCIA would be that they make caddies for both CF and ExpressCard cards, so 1 PCMCIA slot could function for all 3 device formats. But, it also happens to have the largest door size, so that's a problem. And, I would argue against CF for the same reason you argue against PCMCIA -- it seems to be a dying format. I see fewer and fewer of the cards out in the wild. Especially for things like WWAN access.

The other problem is that this would probably have to do a bit a dance with the battery, and that area that the N810 WME uses for its WiMAX radio.

Such a slot would, however, give you several things like: no need for a second SD card slot, as those who want one can just plug in an SD->PCMCIA (or SD->CF or SD->ExpressCard) card reader.

Also, it would end the debate about WWAN radio access: you'd just get an ExpressCard WWAN radio, possibly an ExpressCard->PCMCIA caddy, and then just worry about having the appropriate card drivers.

Several other custom interfaces would also be taken care of ... they probably make CF IRDA devices, and things like that, for example.

I like the idea, but I also see that it has potential for being rather difficult to implement, even WITH the expectation that cards will stick out the top of the N900. It would be easier if the N900 had 2 small batteries instead of 1 medium size battery (the two smaller batteries I'm thinking of are the ones in the Nokia 6301, for example). Then you could just have the slot be center top, descending through the back of the device. And then put the two smaller batteries on either side of it. This would also give the added advantage of hot swappable batteries.
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