Rui Carmo does a head-to-head of the Touch and N810 :

http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2008/03/08/2245

While a few of his points are valid (speed, UI experience, integration, email), I was quite surprised at some of his conclusions. This particular comment touched a nerve :

heh, not surprised...

It's on a mac site, what do you expect?

I don't know what else you could expect on a site called the.taoofmac.com. Of course he's biased to the Apple, Inc. product. Just look at how he considers the iPod's OSK to be on par with the N810's keyboard. =|

I had actually seriously considered this product before buying my N810. But the main reasons I got the Nokia over the iPod were: 1) replaceable battery 2) upgradeable/swappable memory 3) linux-based, welcoming of third-party software 4) no need to pay for the ability to use said software ($20 for a wifi gps update is ridiculous) 5) self-supporting and doesn't require a proprietary (non-linux) front-end app to interface with/file transfer. 6) no integrated file manager 7) Stylus > finger, try playing transport tycoon on the touch and I think most will agree (well if it even runs on it) 8) physical keyboard 9) real gps receiver, the wifi gps will only work in populated places where there is wifi, not in the wilderness where you need it the most... 10) over twice the pixels, even though the display size is only slightly larger (153600 vs. 384000 on the N810) 11) not designed to be obsoleted/disposable, it seems Apple makes most of their products to be intentionally obsolete after about a year or two, even if that doesn't bother you, remember that its non-replaceable battery isn't going to last forever. A "portable" music player that only works while plugged in, kind of defeats the portable functionality.

I think the iPod touch is a fine product for video and music, and it certainly has a well designed interface for what it does, but for new software, and especially for openness... I think the ITs have it beat quite soundly.

um... i think i agree with the acheving things part, i mean come on guys, what have you achieved with it,
you can do a hell of a lot of things, but to be honest i havent gotten much work done on it....
and to be honest, i good percentage of stuff has "dubious usefullness"
a win on the hardware side, absoulutely, 100% agree for that (cept maybe memory, i mean 16gb>max like 10, and 32>10 even more...)
but by software, i think the potential over there is high, not to mention the sheer effort, and willpower placed over there, vs nokia of course, not our own magnificent developers
mostly unsuitable package manager, sure
but the missing thing here is where the touch fails at about half of those too, as they dont yet have any software worth mentioning outside of jailbreak, and we dont have anything even close to the power of their video player, we're way limited on that part, so i say he's right, just neglected to mention the other products problems, i guess

You can't do much work on an ipod touch either...

This being said, I use the Nokias for:
-general web browsing
-checking e-mail when travelling
-videophone (I sent a second one to my mother just for that)
-general telephone (skype) when travelling
-put some pictures on a blog for my extended family when travelling
-general entertainment, like watching movies, listening to music and reading books when travelling
-listening to French radios (both on travel and at home)
-checking on the weather and the news
-having saved maps of the city I travel to (maemo mapper)

less often:
-keeping accounts on a spreadsheet
-editing text

None of which counts as "work", but it is still quite useful. For example, the internet radio function alone is worth the (latest) price of the N800 for me, because there is no cheaper portable device that will do that (and not be linked to a windows PC or limited to what the manufacturer's web site allows you to listen).

The ipod touch can only do a fraction of that. The iPhone can do more of it, but using it abroad (outside of my home network) is prohibitely expensive in network charges (what most US residents don't realise). I mean 100€ per travel or more...

This being said, the ipod touch and iphone are very nice devices, no criticism on my part.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this... it seems to me we can play many more formats with our tablets than the iPod owners can, correct? At least as far as I'm aware the touch is limited to only AAC, MP3, AIFF and WAV for audio and H264/AVC in your choice of container formats. Through the power of MPlayer, VLC and the others, we can play all those plus plenty of others... DV, H.263, HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, RealVideo, Sorenson, Theora, WMV, and in audio we have AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, FLAC, MP3, RealAudio, Shorten, Speex, Vorbis, WMA... I mean, do you really need more formats? =|

I agree....it's pretty obvious the reviewer had already determined the winner before he even reviewed the two devices. After that it was just a matter of making the review match his preconceived ideas. I'm not saying the N810 is better in every area (that would be just as wrong), but he sided with the Touch in every area, even going so far as to completely blow off the benefit of Flash support when iPod owners have been screaming for Flash support almost since the day it was announced. It definitely wasn't a fair and unbiased review.

Not to mention that you don't always have to transcode files, which is becoming more common (at least for me) as software improves.

I think he could mean the Touch having an 18-bit screen or, I believe, a hardware decoder. You still scale videos down from the maximum supported resolution (640x480) for display in the end, which is a shame considering the addition of higher resolution content to the iTunes movie store.



I do have a question about his review. He mentions that nearly all his site links were added from his Touch. Did he type them by hand, or did 1.1.4 add copy and paste support? Seems like this would be one area where the N810 would shine, and at the very least it can't be much different to use a web form to submit links on either device.

- i'm a big Mac fan... in fact, i'm typing this via my iPod Touch using a bluetooth keyboard and wifi connection...

- oh, wait... i can't do that!

(seriously though, i *am* a big Mac fan but i love my n800... which, with 32GB removable storage, still cost US$200 less than an iPod Touch)

:-)