The one thing that's really keeping me from using the N810 as a phone is that the speakers are always on loudspeaker mode. Is there any way to make it work so that sound comes softly out of one speaker (suitable for holding it like a phone)? Having to use a headset of some sort all the time sucks.

It should be possible by pushing all the audio to a single stereo channel, but I don't know how you would do that. If there was a real audio mixer it would be trivial.

You can use a standard Bluetooth headset; not what you asked for but possibly a workable solution.

I already have a device I can use as a VOIP phone with a bluetooth headset. It's called my computer. If the N810 is going to be usable at all as a phone solution I have to be able to use it like it's a phone.

Apparently this distinction is too fine for Nokia to grasp.

When did Nokia say the N810 was a phone? Marketing Internet tablet positioning aside, an N810 is a small pocket computer that runs Linux. Nokia does manufacture great phones as well as the Internet tablet.

Yes, I know. And Nokia themselves have already realized that their market position has eroded down to the enthusiast sector, which is never a good sign; hence the presence of a quad-band GSM radio in the N900.

Ultimately, I have nobody to blame but myself. I bought the device assuming "can use Skype and Gizmo5" equated to "useful as a VOIP phone". For me, this assumption has proven false.

(A lot of my assumptions about the N810 have unfortunately proven false. It's too bad, because I love the relatively open OS. I don't want to buy a smartphone because I don't want a data plan and don't want to pay a premium for an unlocked phone. I don't want an Apple product because their software ecosystem is too proprietary. I thought in the N810 I had found a device that would be cheap yet still useful, and maybe it is for you but it isn't for me.)

Hi,
it looks like Nokia 770 is exactly the right solution as VoIP, coming with one speaker only and VoIP, Skype support.
Nokia is live and back as VNC viewer-

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A VNC viewer for maemo

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a system which allows the user to view a 'desktop' environment from anywhere on the Internet. The VNC viewer provides a client that can connect to a VNC server running on a different system and display its desktop.

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In fact it doesn't go like this.
N810 like other similar mobile devices has only one antenna for 2.4GHz. Switching between wifi and bluetooth breaks the sound quality. Pops and drops occur.
Tested on n810 and e51 in voip mode with bt headset.

I can confirm that this also happens on my N800 when I tried to do the same thing using several bluetooth stereo headphones and earphones as well.

Didn't realize that. I don't use my N810 as a phone so I never came across this issue. I only tested my Bluetooth headset with the Sound Recording ap and that worked fine since it didn't involve switching the antenna from Bluetooth to WiFi.