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S60 Google Maps on N95 Rocks
I my recent post “N95 GPS Revisited”, I mentioned that I’d be trying and reporting on the new native Symbian S60 version of Google Maps as an alternative to the pre-loaded Nokia mapping application.
Well, in short, the Google app blows the Nokia one away, IMHO. It finally makes the GPS function of the N95 useful and totally changes this phone for me.
Quick Overview
The Google application integrates with the N95 GPS hardware and it shows your current location as a blue dot on the map. You can jump to your current location at any point using the 0 (zero) key. The 1 key zooms out and the 3 key zooms in.
The search function has been amazingly impressive in finding the right location with a small amount of text entry (even with misspellings). It must use the GPS position to make a lot of assumptions about what one is looking for, prioritizing local places, and so on.
Click ‘Directions’ and you get a ‘Route overview’ screen showing the step-by-step turns. Click ‘Show’ and the route is shown on the map. You can move from step to step with the 4 (Prev) and 6 (Next) keys.
Hit 0 and you go to your current location (with the route still overlaid on the map) and then press 6 to go back to the ‘route’ again. Even when in ‘route’ mode, your current location is shown live, moving on the map, at the same time as the ‘route’ overlay. This feature alone is a tremendous improvement in usability over the pre-loaded Nokia Maps app.
You can do other stuff like show traffic (for selected areas) and show a satellite view if you prefer (although it’s more data, so it can slow things down). As a native S60 app, it doesn’t use as much RAM as something like the Java-based Yahoo Go 2.0 app. It also integrates with Contacts and Web in nifty ways.
The speed of the app is pretty much dependent on your Internet connection speed. Also, all the maps all come in over the data connection, which may impact your bill if you don’t have an unlimited data plan.
In summary, this is the best mobile phone GPS app for practical use in driving that I’ve seen yet and really improves the value of the N95.
N95 GPS Revisited
I previously have written about the N95 GPS in August 2007: My love/hate relationship with the N95 GPS .
Since that time, Nokia has released new software that improves the utility of the GPS significantly. Opinions vary about the N95 GPS, as can be seen from the comments on the above post. However, the fundamental flaw back then was that it took so long to get a fix (to figure out where you/it are), that it was effectively useless.
With N95 firmware version 20.0.015 that problem has been corrected. The N95 now gets a fix within the same time as dedicated GPS devices from Garmin, Magellan etc. That means it’s usually nearly instant, or within one minute (It can be longer in rare cases).
So with that problem behind us, I recently had an opportunity to spend time with the N95 GPS again, in real-world driving situations (i.e. when I actually wanted to know how to get from point A to point B). Here are few highlights:
- Never use the GPS yourself while driving - let a passenger use it to help guide you. if you’re alone, pull over, check out the maps, and then drive again.
- The N95 will now create a “route” (driving directions) from Point A to Point B, without requiring any additional purchases.
- Turn-by-turn “navigation” (spoken real-time navigation) is optional and must be purchased on a subscription or pay-per-use basis - I did not test/try this and, therefore, I can’t comment on it further.
- While the driving directions (routes) seem accurate enough, they are difficult to use. I could not figure out how to display both the route and my real-time position on a map at the same time, which kind of defeats the purpose of having GPS.
- The point of interest database is very incomplete and, as a result, its practical utility is limited.
I think I still have a love/hate relationship with the GPS. The love is better, but the hate is still there, albeit to a much lesser degree than with previous versions of the N95 mapping software. Perhaps something that best captures the state of the N95 GPS is that, in real-life situations, I found times when it was “easier” to load Google Maps on the laptop, manually figure out where we were, use Google Maps to create a “static” route to where we wanted to go, and then follow that, rather than use the live, real-time GPS and routing of the N95.
Next time I’m going to try the S60 version of Google Maps, which now comes as a native S60 version that runs directly on the N95 and uses the built-in N95 GPS hardware, to see if it works better than the standard N95 mapping application.
UPDATE: Check out my mini-review of the native S60 Google Maps application: S60 Google Maps on N95 Rocks
Alec’s iPhone experience
Alec Saunders has a terrific post: iPhone: Brilliant. Frustrating. Alec has pretty much echoed my sentiments described at iPhone - Look but don’t touch and summarized beautifully with “I want to love this phone - it’s that good” but in the end he can’t due to its limitations, saying “The iPhone has the most potential to change the mobile phone industry of any device out there today, but it’s not the best phone … yet.”
Alec and I are in almost 100% alignment, but here are a few details I can challenge.
The network. [The Edge network is] so slow as to be unusable outside WiFi hotspots.
One man’s “useless” is another’s “adequate”. Edge is indeed slow. But it’s not useless on the iPhone. At least it provides a functional connection out of the box, in almost any area. The slow speed constrains what it can be used for, but it does work and permits on-the-go Internet access when there is nothing else available, for travel, news, and even Youtube movies, if you have some patience. Don’t forget that there is still a significant population of Internet users on dial-up and Edge is about the same performance, and somehow those users still find the Internet useful.
Stability. My other two favorite phones (BlackBerry 8300 and Nokia N95) crash, probably once a day.
Unrelated to the iPhone, but my N95 used to crash frequently. However, with software version V 20.0.015 and disabling a certain app (that shall remain nameless - you know who you are), the phone now essentially never crashes - it may still do so, but it’s infrequent enough that I can’t even remember the last time it crashed.
The browser. It’s a desktop class browser. Websites that don’t render correctly on any other mobile device work fine here
The exception is flash sites - The iPhone does not support flash in any way, shape, or form. Some say flash support is coming soon while others say it will never happen.
I’d also add a section on Fragility. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why I cannot make iPhone my primary mobile phone. It is simply too difficult to protect, and putting it in a large protective case sort of defeats the purpose of it being so light and thin.
Many people would also consider battery life an issue and in this regard, iPhone beats the N95 hands down.
Summary
As I state above, I think Alec highlights some key points, which I’d summarize as follows:
- So-called “Smart Phones” like the Nokia N95 have better hardware specs, but the iPhone does a much better job of making these features accessible to us mere mortals.
- Blackberry is still the number one device for extreme mobile email, bar none.
The iPhone is an incredible achievement for a first attempt at a mobile phone, but still has a way to go to be “the best ever”.
Symbian Signed Followup
Bruce Carney from Symbian was nice enough to comment on my earlier “Why Symbian Signed must die” post.
There is no intent to prevent long term access. The Symbian Signed infrastructure hit a step change in demand. In periods of overload we have a policy to prioritize the service to ensure professional users can continue their work.
– The problem is shown in this link (i.e. a massive spike)
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/symbiansigned.com
– The underlying reason was posted in our developers forums here https://developer.symbian.com/forum/ann.jspa?annID=36
– Free Developer Certificates *already* downloaded over the past years are valid for 3 years, There are millions and millions of developers who *are* not being impacted by this outage.
– We have been trying to contact the developer of RotateMe to get the app signed (for free) and awaiting response?If anything, this underscores
(1) How Symbian OS is around an order of magnitude more popular than iPhone or any other mobile OS.
(2) As the smartphone OS market leader, Symbian OS is solving real world mobile developer problems every day, not preaching to the faithful on podiums with powerpoint.We just ask our developer community to be a little patient
Bruce Carney
Director, Developer Programs & Services
Symbian
Thanks for posting, Bruce.
I’m sorry I missed your call and I hope you are able to call back.
It’s great news that Symbian intends to restore the ability of people to get devcerts. And I understand and have read all the reasons and reported causes for the Open Signed outages.
I also agree that the volume of certs does suggest the popularity of the platform.
However, all that misses the point. The Symbian Signed server being down is just a symptom, as is the load on that server caused by the volume of developer cert requests. People are requesting so many certs because the signing restrictions are broken. The problem isn’t that the Symbian Signed site is down - the problem is that people have to use it in the first place. The problem is that apps need to be signed to be installed and the mechansm for freeware developers, or even small-time corporate or in-house developers, to get certs and manage getting apps signed (and tested and “approved” by Symbian) is defective. It’s untenable.
This is how we end up in the situation where developers release the apps “unsigned” and have the users themselves sign them (and thus, the high volume of “developer” certs). The arguments in favor of the signing requirement are about making phones “safe” and ensuring users can “trust” the apps. However that trust model is antiquated 20th century thinking. Look what they have to go through now to try to get freeware installed (getting a “devcert” and signing the freeware apps themselves). If they are willing to sign it themselves, it suggests that they “trust” the app, even though it has not been “blessed” by Nokia or Symbian. Why? The reason people trust these apps is not because some authority in the sky, like Symbian Signed, gives it a “thumbs up” but because the community provides a powerful degree of trust. Applications that jack around with people would be immediately discredited by the Symbian freeware community - everyone would know about it, and people would avoid the app like the plague. This works with things like Linux and Firefox and it would also work with Symbian freeware.
The current Symbian Signed process creates the opposite effect of its stated objectives. I’d suggest that Symbian Signed apps are actually less trustworthy, in the true sense of the term - it’s more likely for “official” apps that have been “approved and tested” to have bugs than the freeware ones because it takes months to get an app tested and approved (and it cost $$$) so bugs never get fixed; whereas problems with freeware get reported all over the place and they tend to get fixed quickly.
The solution is to release a version of S60 3rd edition that lets those users that are willing to take the risks install unsignd apps and grant the features, privledges, capabilities they wish to the apps, even if this is a “unsupported” “hacker” version of Symbian with “forfeit all rights to support” restrictions or some such - that would still be vastly better than the situation those people have today, where the only officially supported options are to not install the apps at all, ever or switch platforms/phones - and the “unofficial” solution is to overload the Symbian Signed site with “developer” cert requests.
So save yourself some money on upgrading the Symbian Signed server crypto hardware and instead release a simple version of S60 3rd edition. You’ll be happy, I’ll be happy, and users will be happy. And your phone manufacturer customers like Nokia will be happy too, happy that they don’t lose their customers to Windows Mobile, the iPhone, or other alternative platforms.
Why Symbian Signed must die
With the latest S60 “3rd Edition” phones (such as the N95, N81 etc), Nokia in their infinite wisdom, has decided for us that we users don’t want to install “freeware” apps any more. These phones now require all apps to be “signed” - they don’t give the option to the user to install an unsigned app.
Nokia says this is supposed to protect users from “bad” apps. So what is the result? Freeware developers now release “unsigned” versions of their apps and provide step-by-step instructions for users on how to get their own “developer” cert and sign the app themselves.
See the irony yet? Nokia told us that users wanted to be “protected” from “bad” apps, yet what we really see is users going to the trouble of acting like “developers” so they can sign these “bad” apps and get them installed on their phone. They clearly want freeware, whether it’s officially “approved” by Nokia’s “Symbian Signed” or not.
And with all these pseudo-developers requesting certs so they can install these “bad” apps, guess what? Nokia’s certificate creation site “Symbian Signed” can’t handle the load. It has been mostly down for weeks. Here’s what it says today:
Not to mention all the support costs for Nokia and the overall costs to the entire ecosystem (where about 90% of S60 3rd edition discussion seems to be about signing and certs). Hopefully Nokia will wake up and put an end to this ridiculous nightmare soon. Here’s a few reasons why the time has come for enabling users to install unsigned apps on their 3rd edition phones, just like they can on 1st and 2nd edition phones:
- The overhead of depending on Symbian Signed for signing promotes bug-ridden software that is never updated.
- It is destroying the Symbian third-party ecosystem (which is where all the best Symbian software has always come from)
- It leaves the door open for competitors like Apple, Microsoft, RIM, etc. and dilutes Nokia’s significant lead in third-party developer support.
- If plain users, through step-by-step guides, are signing apps, there is really no argument for the “all apps must be signed” restriction
The signing debacle is nothing new, but the prolonged downtime of Symbian Signed is.
Nokia, please. It’s time to close the door on the the Symbian Signed experiment and let us install the apps we want on our phones again.
UPDATE: Monday February 18, 2008:
Today the site says:
Note their words “huge demand for developer certificates”. Nokia doesn’t that tell you something? And by the way, it is Monday February 18, folks, and the ability to get certs is still down.
UPDATE: Weds Feb 20 the saga continues:
So now it looks like end-users and hobby developers cannot get certificates at all, meaning they cannot write code or experiment with freeware on their Symbian S60 3rd edition phones anymore. I cannot tell from the above message whether this the new permanent policy or just more “damage control”.
Reviewing the Nokia N81 - a teenager’s perspective
[Editors note: When I was asked to look at the N81, I decided, since Nokia is targeting youth with this new phone, who better to review it than my 16-year-old son. Thus, what follows is his opinion of the N81 8GB]
When I first got the Nokia N81, I was pleased at its sleek look and relatively nice size. Its weight is a little on the heavy side but that does give it that overall Nokia “tank of phones” feel which I like, as opposed to the awkward skinny light phones whose purpose of being small and light is totally countered by the fact that you are so scared of dropping the tiny piece of plastic, that you have to go out and buy a massive cover that defeats the purpose of having a small and light phone anyway. The Nokia N81’s interface is the classic Nokia [Symbian Series 60] interface which I am a big fan of and I enjoy that Nokia keeps a constant user interface rather that scrapping it every time so you have to learn how to work a whole new type of system with every new phone.
The battery life on the N81 is rather impressive, going for roughly three days without needing a charge.
The phone has a N-gage application, which from playing the demos, looks solid but I cannot picture anyone who would really buy the actual games and not just play the demos to death. The fact that Nokia is now trying to incorporate one of the most failed gaming systems in the history of man back into their phones makes me chuckle at how horribly N-gage failed in the past and how imminent its future failure is.
The music player is quality and simple, operating very similarly to an ipod. Nokia does not yet offer the downloadable software for the N81 that allows it to sync with itunes, so I had to place music on the phone by plugging it in like a flash drive and dragging and dropping songs into it. This method is tedious but works fine and I have full confidence that the N81 software will work just fine when it is released. The likable things about the music player are that for a phone, 8gb is pretty large and definitely enough to have a good selection of music. My favorite feature of the music player is that it takes a basic headphone jack. Most phones require that you buy an adapter or use the strange uncomfortable ear buds that come with the phone but being able to plug any old headphones you want into the jack makes it seem o-so-much better. Oddly enough, the music player also has one of the least thought through features I have ever seen, which makes operating the phone insanely frustrating. The aforementioned problem is the combination of small buttons and the fact that the play button works no matter what else the phone is doing. The play-stop-pause-rewind-etc. buttons encompass the up-down-left-right buttons. So when navigating around the phone, it is easy and almost unavoidable to hit both up and play at the same time because both buttons are so small and so close together. Now normally, no harm no foul, you’re not in the music player so nothing should happen - but since Nokia always has to have one massive flaw that was probably thrown in thoughtlessly towards the end of production, no matter what you are doing, the play button still plays music and since the speakers are rather loud and startling when you did not plan or even think that random music could suddenly stream from your phone, it is often an embarrassing moment when you are trying to text whilst walking down the street and Hardcore gangster rap blasts out of your phone unexpectedly. This is something I have yet to learn how to fix. This dilemma continually frustrates me to no end and is the only thing that would make me consider not using this phone.
I’ve discovered several things with the N81 that I consider bugs that could use fixing. The first is that the phone has trouble finding service and once service is lost, you have to turn the phone off and back on for it to start searching for service again. This bug is surprisingly not as inconvenient as one would think, although the phone would be greatly improved if this was fixed. The only other bug that is worth mentioning is that text messages sometime take five to ten minutes to send or be received causing you to seem rude for taking too long to respond [editor: that may be T-mobile]. Other than that, it has no actual effect being that eventually the texts get sent or received.
The N81 is a good combination of the classic, simple “Nokia sturdy brick” and the advanced little flashy features like music or gaming that make a phone sell these days. Overall the Nokia N81 is a quality phone that has potential for excellence, with the right subtle tweaks.
Hands-on with iPhone - Look but don’t touch
As many reading here know, I’ve been using an N95 for some time now. After one day with the iPhone, here are some first impressions.
First, of course the two phones appeal to different kinds of users. There may be overlap, but for the most part, the N95 is for the self-proclaimed ultra-geek while the typical iPhone buyer is more likely to be less tech-inclined, perhaps one might even say “the average phone buyer” (with a little bit of extra cash). So to a large degree any comparison is somewhat lame. There will not be a lot of common ground between the two camps.
That said, here’s my quick take. Some things are easier and more comfortable on the iPhone. At the same time, the closed nature of the phone surfaces frequently and in ways that effect more than just geeks. The N95 is open to the extreme. Somebody that paid $750 for it will probably find all these deep and powerful features (why else would they pay that much). But if you just gave the phone to someone as a replacement for a common phone, that kind of person is probably not going to know how to use the majority of the features. These people might buy the iPhone. They will just accept that it is AT&T only (that’s all they know anyway). But even they will eventually wonder why it’s so restricted.
For example, take something as simple as ringtones. The iPhone can play MP3 files. Yet Apple wants to force customers to buy ringtones for $2. Yes, there are hacks to overcome that, but the point is with the N95, no hacks are needed. Any media can be loaded as a ringtone. Apple had to code specifically to block this capability (i.e. it’s more work to prevent it than allow it).
The two phones are at the EXTREME ends of the spectrum in terms of openness. The N95 is incredibly powerful but requires a serious geek to operate. The iPhone is easy (mostly), but closed and annoyingly so.
So for me, the first impression is I kind of wish I could use the iPhone as my phone, but Apple’s decisions to make it closed, keeps it just out of my reach, like it’s behind a window. I can look, but I can’t touch.
Video on the N95
I keep trying out more things on the N95, as my schedule permits.
I can guarantee I at one time have said something like “who would want to watch TV on a two inch screen” when all the hype around video on mobile phones started up a few years ago.
I pretty much felt that way even as I ventured into a project to try loading my own home-brew videos on the N95 and see if I could get them to play. I should note that there is a “user friendly” way to put videos on the N95. Specifically, there is the Nokia Video Manager (I could only find a link on the European Nokia site). But I figure that has already been talked about elsewhere. I wanted to see if I could create my own files that played on the N95 from video content I have.
In short, to tip the ending, I have successfully taken videos from Tivo and played them on the N95. I did it on the Mac and on the PC, just to show that it’s possible (Nokia’s official Video Manager only works on the PC). I have to say, I was (a) amazed it worked the first time (figuring I’d surely get something wrong) and (b) shocked at the quality.
So assuming you already know how to get video off your Tivo (an exercise for the reader), that gives you a pretty high quality MPEG2 file at roughly 700 x 500. After reading around, I found that the format the N95 seems to like is MP4 at 320×240 encoded with the H.264 codec. I was able to successfully convert my MPEG2 video to mp4 and load them into the N95 using the following tools:
- Mac OS X
ffmpegX
I believe both of these use the open-source ffmpeg tools underneath the covers (which explains why it worked on both the PC and the MAC), but it was nice to know it could be done on either platform.
I was surprised that the resulting 320×240 MP4 file was nearly the same size (in megabytes) as the original Tivo 700×500 MPEG2 file. A 30-minute video was about 320MB. The settings I used were:
file format: MP4
video encoding: H.264, 320×240, 30 fps
audio encoding: AAC, 44100 Hz, 96 kbps
I can tell no difference between the playback of the files made on the PC versus those made on the Mac. They both look and sound TERRIFIC on the N95 player (Realplayer).
When it comes to actually getting the large video files on the N95, I used both Bluetooth and a cardreader directly attached to the PC. The latter is much faster, but still slower than you might expect (about 10-20 minutes to load the MMC card with a 30-minute video). Bluetooth is much slower - I think it took almost an hour to transfer a 30-minute video.
With the 1Gig memory card I have, it looks like I could put about two hours of video at this quality on the N95, or certainly a 90-minute movie. I don’t know yet if the N95 battery would play a video for two hours straight.
Overall, it takes a rather painful couple of hours to perform all the video file conversions and write a 30-minute video to the phone. But I have to say, it is pretty cool to take a program off my TV and have it on the N95. Now that I have this capability, I’m torn regarding what shows or movies I want to load onto the phone.
My love/hate relationship with the N95 GPS
I have a fair amount of experience with GPS devices, going back over more than 10 years. My first device was an Eagle Explorer (I still have it) and I’ve used countless GPS systems since. I also developed a GPS-based vehicle tracking system. So I can speak with some authority on the technology.
Compared head-to-head with modern dedicated GPS devices, the Nokia N95 falls well short. The drawback that surprises me the most is the time it takes to get a fix. This is of course an area where early GPS devices were highly criticized, so it was a key area of research over the years and is now rather well known technology. Nokia seems to be back in the 90’s with the basic ability to obtain and keep a fix. Typical time seems to be about 10 to 15 minutes whereas a modern dedicated GPS typically gets an initial fix (the first time you turn it on) within 5 minutes and subsequent fixes within 2-3 minutes (often far less).
That said, the N95 is not a dedicated GPS device - it is a cell phone. As a cell phone, it is a pretty nifty GPS device. Let’s put aside the matter of the length of time it takes to get a fix and focus on the GPS once it has a fix (although this alone often makes the GPS worthless, since you are already where you want to be, or hopelessly lost, by the time the N95 GPS is ready to use). The N95 pulls maps down over the air (using your data conection), so without an unlimited data plan, you might want to steer clear of the GPS feature. It also means the N95 is useless as a GPS for hiking or use anywhere that you cannot get a data connection. On the other hand, it means you do not need to have a lot of internal memory for maps, use CDs/DVDs, or pre-load specific maps for a specific region. As a device that pulls map data in dynamically as needed, it is one of the slickest I’ve used. The user interface in general, however, is difficult to use, a bit slow, and missing many features of a real dedicated GPS. Things like waypoints, routes, track-logs and such are nowhere to be found.
On the other hand, if you are lost, and the N95 is all you have (and you can get a data connection), it’s a godsend, even if a horrendously frustrating one. What I found particularly frustrating is that the N95 requires you to subscribe to a “service’” to receive navigation capabilities. You can search for a location on the device, but if you click ‘navigate’ you get a screen requiring purchase. In practice, this purchase experience is very awkward so I have never actually purchased it. It felt like the phone was running an extortion scheme, saying “buy this or get car-jacked when you get lost in the wrong neighborhood.” Supposedly, you can buy one week for about $10 or three years for about $100, and it works. But I wouldn’t know, and here’s why: It’s not a good enough GPS to justify using it all the time as a replacement for a “real” GPS (which provides navigation without any additional fee). If the rest of the GPS features worked really well, and if the purchase experience were simpler, and clearer, I might be a bit more inclined. But there still is this fundamental hurdle that those of us that have used GPS systems for years have come to expect navigation to be a feature of a product, not a service we subscribe to.
The one-week navigation subscription is probably worth it, if you are really stuck somewhere and perhaps sometime I’ll try it and report on it. Without it, what you have is a live map that shows your position in real-time. That’s a pretty clunky way to navigate, and certainly not something a driver should try to alone - leave it to a passenger.
As a close to this post, to illustrate further the love/hate nature of my experience with the N95 GPS, I have used the GPS to help get “un-lost” and for that I’m grateful for it, but it has also crashed (the entire phone) mid-navigation which really screwed me up. So there. 
Nokia n800: A pleastant surprise
It would be easy to be skeptical of the Nokia N800. Tagged as an “Internet Tablet” it is neither a phone nor a computer. It’s too big for a phone and too small to be a tablet PC in the typical sense. It could be said that it’s trying to fit in the same space as the old Apple Newton or the Sharp Zaurus (In fact, there is even a Newton emulator called Einstein that runs on N800’s predecessor, the 770).
As noted before, I was skeptical of the little N800 when I first layed my eyes on it, but it has suprised me. A few years ago, I had become fed up with lugging around a 10lb. laptop, and tried to turn a Sharp Zaurus into my nomadic computing device (more info here). Ultimately, this failed. The Zaurus was a pretty nifty little machine. Like the N800, it ran Linux. What eventually limited its practical utility was very simple: Browser compatibility, too many sites that didn’twork on the little screen or required features the Zaurus browser couldn’t handle.
The ultimate jury is still out on the N800 as to whether it survives beyond the “it’s cool” honeymoon, but it certainly has passed the first trial exam. Right now, in our household, we often find ourselves asking whether to take the N800 along (it is known around here as “dad’s little computer”). I’m already noticing that it comes along a little less frequently than it did at first. but it’s still far more likely that we’d toss the N800 in the car than a regular laptop.
The N800 has a terrific color screen, along with built-in 802.11 and bluetooth. On the Zaurus and Newton these would have to be achieved with add-on hardware modules. As I’ve noted before, the N800 browser is very capable and supports JavaScript and Flash. It deals with even the most buggy of web sites — about the only sites that don’t work are those that are heavily dependent on Microsoft Windows-only technologies.
While the N800 is obviously designed for portable and nomadic use, I have also used the N800 around the dinner table and while watching TV at home too, where it is a lot easier to grab the N800 than a full-sized laptop.
I have not yet had the guts to forsake a real laptop on a business trip, but I’m pretty close to giving it a try and taking just the n800 with me instead. In my case, one thing that I needed to even consider this was a keyboard. The N800 supports bluetooth keyboards, so I grabbed a Stowaway and it has worked great with the N800. You can see it in the photos below.
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| Keyoard closed | Keyboard open |
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When folded, it’s not much bigger than the N800. When open, it’s a very usable keyboard. It’s still not quite like using a real full keyboard because it has fewer keys and so the way one has to produce numbers, punctuation, and other characters is using extra color-coded function keys (like additional shift keys). This can mess you up for touch typing. But it is much better for heavy text related work than the stylus or N800 “finger keyboard” (which I just don’t find useful at all - maybe it works for others).
One of the reasons I’ve had to take a real laptop on all my recent business trips is because I’ve need to hook to a projector to make a presentation. There is no VGA output on the N800 and even if there were hardware for it, I’m not sure I’d have the guts to hope it would work when I needed it to give a presentation at a conference (on someone else’s projector). For the next business trip where I don’t expect to be presenting, I will try to go laptop-less and report back how it works out.
One should note that the n800 is still to be considered “early-adopter” with all that goes with that, including an OS that is a bit fragile. One disadvantage of it being so open is that anybody can write code for it, and it can be hard to tell the compatibility or quality of a given bit of unofficial software. Crashes and lock-ups are not that hard to produce. My N800 has become important enough to me that I’m much more careful about loading software onto it than I was at first (I already had one lose its mind to the point I had to start all over).
Here’s a short list of some of my observations:
- X-terminal crashes. I must be able to use ssh if this device is to be useful to me. Unfortunately, the X-terminal (console) application seems to be a bit buggy and can crash mid-vi. This seems ot happen less when using the Bluetooth external keyboard.
- Weird idle/sleep-mode lockups. Sometimes the N800 does not come out of sleep. It seems to depend on what apps were running when it went to sleep.
- The Gizmo VoIP app causes crashes on my N800, espcially mid-call.
- While only somewhat annoying, I consider it a BUG that when the screen goes dim, taps with the stylus still take action, so effectively you are punching in the dark. I have to remember a “dead area” on the screen that is safe to tap to bring the screen back so I can see it. When the screen is dark, the first tap, no matter where on the screen, should just bring the screen back, and not actually take any other action.
I don’t want to make it sound like the above happen all the time. They are rare, and often just a minor annoyance. If they happen at the wrong time, they can be major pain, but in practice that has been rare.
As much as I might like to think I’m some kind of a power-user, the fact is what I do most often on this box is web surfing. IM/Chat (AIM and IRC mostly in my case) perhaps comes next, or maybe it’s a rough tie between mail and ssh (used for remote access to mail and other things). So many apps and services can be accessed via the web nowadays, that the browser, and support for as many websites as possible, becomes the most important function of an Internet connected device. In this case, the N800 is pretty darned good. In my case, in additon to that, all of the apps mentioned above (mail, IM/chat, ssh) are must-have requirements too and if any of them fail, the box fails for me. The n800, combined with my mobile phone (for a data connection when there is no wi-fi), and the stowaway keyboard, finally looks like the portable device that can substutute for a laptop, at least in many situations - and it’s a lot easier to get through airport screening!
