As for the tri-fold, or mini-laptop design, that's what Sharp had with their C750 designs.

There was 2 issues:
1) I was afraid I would twist the screen the wrong way and snap it off
2) it made for a much heavier device.

Which brings me to my $0.02 worth of a topic.

Can we have something that can be placed in the pocket without ripping my shirt off my back. Makes for an awkward social situation.

But I like the idea of the tri-fold where 1 is the cover for the screen.

I don't think the tri-fold is at all the same as the Sharp Zaurus line. They were bi-fold.

The twist screen isn't part of the tri-fold. The "tablet" functionality for the tri-fold comes from hyper-extending the hinge between the screen and keyboard, not by twisting the screen. You don't twist it, you just "keep opening it past 180 degrees", and then you fold section 3 to cover the keyboard. (section 3 never covers the screen, the screen gets covered by the keyboard)

And I don't think it necessarily makes for a heavier device. If you take the same parts that are in the N800, and just move some of them to different sections, it should work fine. Possible examples:

section 1) screen, chat camera, speakers, mic, headphone jack, and buttons*
section 2) thumb keyboard, batteries, and power plug
section 3) memory cards, USB Host and USB Client plugs, and picture camera

(* both face buttons and edge buttons, like zoom in, zoom out, full screen, and power, just like on the current design)

The only weight I've added is: hinges, thumb keyboard (should be very light, given the size and weight of the freedom input slim bluetooth keyboard), a second keyboard, a USB Host plug, and some extra plastic for the extra casing. Though, I bet you could add a second battery into section 2, and it wouldn't be a problem.

The question is: where do the logic boards for the CPU, internal memory, and wifi go? Maybe spread throughout all 3 sections. Dunno.

I tried to do a more explicit ascii-art rendering of the tri-fold idea, but couldn't get the editor to preserve spacing and such.

I'll try to draw one up later, and post an link to the image.

Oh, one more feature I want:

charge via USB. These days, people make wall->USB chargers, car->USB chargers.... seems to me, the idea of a separate plug for charging is a waste.

The only thing I can think of to justify it on the n800 is the way you do flashing and initiating USB client mode ... but I bet something else could be done for that.

I guess this conflicts with usb host mode. Both electrically and also from the usability point of view. I'd like to charge the device when I have USB peripherial (keyboard,mouse, ... whatever) attached so separate plug is definitely not waste of space. It could optionally charge from usb when attached to computer and set to client mode but separate plug is still needed.

They all use the headphones as an antenna though. AM is different, that can use a very short antenna from what I remember (not all that useful though)

mplayer does most of its decoding on the ARM processor (except for sending mp3 to the dsp with the appropriate command line switches), there's presumably nothing stopping people from compiling and optimising the remaining gstreamer components (as the N800 only uses a few of them) to do decoding on the ARM (+DSP) and output in the standard video player.

I have some stereo bluetooth headphones, I can listen to music using them and my n800 and they work like a hands free kit with my phone, I've never tried making a call with my N800 so I can't tell you whether the microphone works with it (but the hardware is there so I see no reason why it couldn't be made to work).

We used to have this on the Cxxx(x) Zauruses, I certainly wasn't all that fond of it - generally I had loads of free space on my /home partition and had filled up /. Equally, when you upgrade, the configuration files left behind in hidden directories under your home directory almost always screwed something up. I suppose the same problem with occur if one uses a backup tool, but one of these could be rule based to avoid some problems.

I think that unless it's small patches or updates, you'll end up preferring to flash a new image after making a backup (this assumes a really good backup tool, which can backup a list of installed applications, etc.). It's simply faster and cleaner - any 'fixes/hacks' you've made to the underlying system (which will hopefully have been addresses in the update) will not remain lying about breaking things.

On the Zaurus (OpenZaurus), depsite my not using a backup tool (other than copying data to the flash card), I think it was easier as the package manager would let you select a whole raft of packages to install and then do it all in one go, rather than having to select, install, wait for the list to refresh, find your position again, and repeat.


Simon

How about this "High Definition" radio I'm hearing about?

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio

I would love to see an upgrade radio chip that supports RDS (especially RDS-TMC) decoding.

RDS can carry all kinds of metadata that can be useful to people, especially while on the road:

• TMC: Traffic Message Channel
• CT: Clock Time
• AF: Alternate Frequency (when a signal is getting weak, an alternative frequency for the station can be indicated)
• PS: Program Service (station identification)
• RT: Radio Text (artist, title information, etc)

If it was "2 USB ports, one host and one client" I wouldn't consider that to be a waste of space. But "1 USB port and one power plug" I do consider to be a waste. A power plug limits your charging options (has to be a charger of some sort), where a second USB port gives you more flexibility (a charger with a USB port, a USB port on your desktop compter, a USB port on your laptop, etc.). I think it's just a more universal plug format: "the charger" becomes a commodity, instead of having to own X different chargers for Y different devices. If they all use USB, then you just need 1 powered USB hub that has enough ports to charge all of your devices.

Neat ... but in order for Nokia to sellt it in both the US and Europe, wouldn't it have to support both RDS and RBDS?