Also, this discussion is worthless unless we state our objectives before saying one device is better then another device.

For me, small size rules the day and thus my ideal device is the size of a deck of cards and fits my front pockets.

For someone that always carries a backpack or always wears cargo style pants, then, if I were them, I would carry a lot of different specilized devices also rather than the N9X which does evrything however doesnt do any of those things without a lot of compromies.

For instance I was blown away by the N8XX flash player with a webbrowser feature which is something the N9X just doesnt have.

qole, if you are serious and do not have a cellphone than I have to say I truly admire you.


fatalsaint, you should never refer to the N8XX as having a camera. It makes me think your quality standards are low and further makes me wonder if your word processor is of the same quality.

Also, if you are talking about using your wifes camera then I know already you have no interest in divergence.

Ah.. well.. I do wear cargo's.. so having 1 phone on my hip and the 810 in my leg pocket is OK with me... and that's it.. all I need from home to mobile.

ETA: I do not do anything with a camera that warrants having some super high quality cam in my phone. A quick snapshot to send to buddies to giggle at is not something you need 1080dpi, 8 megapixel, 35mm, whatever resolution for. My wife has a professional multi-lense camera because she is a photographer.. I would not try and even remotely ask her to use any form of phone for her "camera" to take real photo's... And anything I would use for just a "funny" camera can be done just fine with a crappy n810 camera.

I see. You never said whether or not the word processor or other desktop app are practical to use on the N8XX.
Are they ?

That's a personal preference.. they certainly aren't as fast a Dual core amd64 with 4GB memory is going to run them.. but I use them just fine..

OpenOffice takes a minute or two to load all the way up, same with gimp, but once it's loaded and running I have little problems with them.. but YMMV and you may be less patient than me.. I am a rather impatient person though.

It also has a lot to do with what desktop environment you pick.. KDE4 or Enlightenment and you are killing yourself.. IceWM or running in maemo under chroot would be the fastest.

Personal preference.

Thanks. Thats all I need to know.

I can say unequivically the the N8XX is very awesome. If phone capabilities were added I have no doubt it could rule the universe as we know it.

I might do without hi-rez camera capabilities however I cannot do without phone capabilities.

I hope you are listening to me Nokia.

Oh, Nokia, please dont listen to thoses requesting phone capability be left out. They are wrong : )

If you really need OpenOffice you... like... run it on a faster computer on which you log in with SSH or whatever. Although unfortunately given the N8x0 only has WiFi it isn't a device which is perfect for travelling being online 24/7.

Symbian has rdesktop and ssh support for ages. The maemo platform also provides different applications than the Symbian platform.

All in all, I agree with the general tendency you outlined, and I will seriously consider to buy a N96 soon (or buy an older model like N82 or N95) because these devices provide more capabilities, and DVB-H is a very nice add-on because some broadcasts are for free.

Why??? It isn't unusable on the tablet for on-the-go document editing. It's great for sitting at a starbucks or something and working with what you need to work with...

For major stuff you COULD use X forwarding I suppose from a desktop machine.. I don't anymore though... I only use my tablet. Sometimes I go to the basement if my tablet is busy compiling or installing something but *shrug*.

The N810W is a better convergence device than the N95, hands-down. It can make and receive phone calls as easily as the N95 (and it can do it for "free" via GrandCentral), it can surf the 'net, watch movies, run OpenOffice, etc., etc...

What's that you say? It doesn't work outside a very limited coverage area?

Well, you can't blame the fact that the support infrastructure isn't in place on the device! The problem is that there's no homogeneous high speed global wireless data infrastructure in place... yet.

Convergence, in any meaningful sense, can't really happen until you can use a single radio & protocol for all of your data and voice needs. "Smartphones" are, at best, hack jobs on the same level as my Debian chroot hack. They cleverly disguise the fact that they are putting two separate worlds (voice and data) side-by-side, and make it look like those two worlds are "converging". They aren't. The fact they are living on the same device doesn't make them "converged". They're not truly united, they're only uneasy roommates, always jostling each other around in your tiny box.

As I've said before, I blame the entrenched telcos for this. As long as they control the infrastructure, you're never going to see true convergence. They know that if they were to create a widespread, high-speed wireless data network, nobody would use their voice networks, and more importantly, they wouldn't be able to charge 15 cents a text message any more!

To put it bluntly, there's no profit in convergence. The only chance we have at convergence is a rogue third party to enter the scene, someone with deep pockets and no history in the wireless voice marketplace, someone who sees a profit in undercutting the telcos by creating a huge wireless data network... It would also help if they had some kind of infrastructure in place for something else, where they could piggyback their antennas on their existing infrastructure... Perhaps an association of cable TV companies, or maybe power companies? They could put the antennas on their big electrical towers...

Or... a telco? one that realizes having the whole pie is better than having one-fourth of a pie twice the size?