Hey Folks,

I'm new here and am about to get the Nokia n810 non wimax version from craigslist. I've been doing a lot of reading and the general consensus seems to be that the camera and built in GPS suck. I was wondering is it possible to disassemble and replace the camera with another from say a nokia phone with a better picture quality cam? Any thoughts as to which cam might work?

Here is a video of someone disassembling the N800:
http://www.itechnews.net/2007/01/29/...sembled-video/

I'm thinking about giving this a try in the future and see if I can upgrade the camera. Assuming I can find a compatible camera.

Any thoughts?

The camera is hard wired to the board. If you're good with a solder gun and aren't worried about possibly destroying your n810, then feel free to try and exchange it. But given that you've got a greater than 90% chance of destroying the unit, and voiding your warranty, I'd say don't do it.

I admit that the camera does suck, but it's gotten a lot better than it was day one. The CCD isn't really that bad (it's a 2mp ccd if memory serves me right), but the software hasn't advanced far enough to make full use of it yet. However, what the camera used to be and what it is now is night and day. So give them a bit more time and it should give you at least decent 2mp quality soon.

If that's correct, it would correspond to an 800x600 RGBG array (1.92 Mpx), not 1600x1200; CCDs are grayscale devices, and you have to take three or four CCD pixels, with a color mask, to get one color pixel.

... I'm an idiot, but does that mean our tablets could potentially take an almost 2mp photo, as long as it was in black and white?

Depending on how much of the image processing is handled by hardware, maybe.
But you'd need to remove the Bayer filter in any case, which, if even possible, probably has an insanely high risk of failure...

2 MP? I know the quality of the CCD is important but I thought MP was 0.5 or something like that. It is a 640x480 pixels VGA camera. My old phone had a 640x480 pixels VGA camera with 0.3 pixels and the quality is approx the same as the N810 camera.

While one doesn't need a top notch camera for video conferencing this one is below my standards.

See above; this would require about 1.2 Mpx CCD; not far off from 2.

Thanks for all the responses guys. I'll be picking up my N810 tomorrow. Got it for $220 on craigslist. And perfect condition...at least that's what I'm told, but I'll find out tomorrow. Just missing the Manual, orginal box, and car mount. I don't care about the box. As for the manual, I downloaded the pdf version. And I'll be getting a universal car mount from ebay or something.

Back to the camera. I am good at soldering. I do it as part of my job when needed. I do not feel like breaking this however since I don't even have it yet. Lord Raiden, If you are right about the potential of the camera then I will wait. 2mp for video conferencing is good enough for me. It's good to hear that the quality has improved with software updates.

What about the internal ram. Can that be upgraded? I assuming it is soldered in as well.

this has nothing to do with cameras but my nokia n810 has a problem with the screen and i would like to fix it i have bent back the slider enough to see the inside and a cord is lose how would i fix it without a big bill and does the slider come off easy or would i have to take apart my whole device i need this for on the go because i dont have room for a laptop

ps and the nokia matinace just suckes the ywhere no help at all!!!!