Nokia N810 Screen Shots

Here are some screen shots to assuage your curiosity and give you an idea of what this nifty little device can do. Keep in mind that somethings may be blurred out to protect sensitive information of others and myself.

Here is the main page of the tablet. As you can see, there are a number of widgets that are both pre-installed on the machine and that can be download from the maemo.org website:

From Nokia Tablet

The file manager is both simple and intuitive. Moving  files is as easy as dragging and dropping or opening up a dialogue to decide which folder to place a file. Creating, renaming and deleting files and folders is similar to a desktop operating system like Windows, MacOS, or a desktop variation of Linux (i.e. Ubuntu, RedHat, openSuse). Anyone who has ever used a computer before of any type should find this system simple to navigate and use:

From Nokia Tablet

From Nokia Tablet

From Nokia Tablet

You'll notice that in the bottom left hand corner of the next image, the tablet is suggesting what the rest of the word that is being typed might be. By simply touching the word on the screen, the word is completed. The Nokia actually learns what words you type most and begins suggesting those as well. This function is present in any text field that is being typed in, not just in the file manager. I have found that this feature works well and learned my word preferences quickly:

From Nokia Tablet

There is an internal memory card (2GB) that is separate from the main memory. It can be used to store files and/or be used for extended ram to speed up performance. A separate MiniSD card or MicroSD (using an adapter) can be added as well. They can be either standard format or SDHC. I assume that it will show up in in the file manager in a similar fashion to the internal memory card :

From Nokia Tablet

The file manager will also show you any shared drives of any machines on the network you are currently connected to (you can set your sharing preferences on your tablet so you don't have to share all your files with everyone on the network either):

From Nokia Tablet

Interestingly enough, when I connected my tablet to my desktop via USB, WMP (Windows Media Player) saw the tablet's internal memory card as a syncable media player. This makes sense as the tablet is preloaded with a simple, but powerful media player that supports mp3, wma, avi, mpeg and other formats. It can also play DRM laden files via some business deal Nokia made with RealPlayer (I dislike DRM altogether, but at least my N810 can play nice with it when it needs to). So, I synced my music collection. WMP even created a file structure so all the audio files were placed by Artist and Album. The only problem was that after WMP had finished, the Nokia file manager saw my internal memory card as read only! I couldn't move files from my main memory over to my card, have the web browser save downloaded files there or anything else involving writing to my memory card. Bummer. I backed up the files, reformatted the card and dumped the files back on it. The card can be written to again, so everything is hunky dory now; it would have been nicer not to have had to do the work around in the first place though. I will have to try to figure out what happened, use a media player that is free and open source, or simply drag and drop my files myself. Probably one of the latter two.

The media player is simple and powerful. It reads the Artist and album information without any hitches and organizes the files inside the media player (without moving the files from their original location) according to that information. So far, I really like the media interface and have found it play pretty much anything I throw at it; the one exception being ogg vorbis, but a quick plug-in download fixed that in no time. So far, so good:

From Nokia Tablet

From Nokia Tablet

From Nokia Tablet

Overall, I am loving this little device. Still some hiccups in the phone calling department. It can be done, but it requires workarounds; ugly workarounds. I will post a full update on that situation soon. I am optimistic as to the result. Adios until next time.

First post made from Nokia N810 Tablet

First post made from the Nokia N810. This is an incredible little machine. It has far exceeded my expectations. I have already installed the Gizmo SIP application (I learned that it integrates with Google Voice by design, making it the clearer choice over Skype). I can receive calls on the tablet, albeit with some work arounds. Hopefully I will have these cleared up soon. I will post a more thorough step by step review in the next few days (on a larger keyboard). For now, let us leave it at how amazing this little machine is: mind-boggling amazingness. Adios until next time.

The Experiment Begins

Some may be wondering what The Nokia Tablet Experiment is, or why my wife and I have decided to embark on it. So, let me explain.

First, the reasoning. My wife and I are poor college students. We currently have a family cellphone plan for the two of us with a major mobile phone provider which has recently expired. We are paying month to month now until we can find a new solution or decide to renew our contract for another two years. As we have been crunching the numbers for the budget lately we have noticed that our phone plan (the cheapest one the provider offers) was adding up to about $1000 per year! This is with a 14% DISCOUNT tacked on that we received as a promotion! That is money that could go towards tuition, books for classes, dates consisting of more than a walk to the park and a shared $1.50 ice cream cone, etc.. We have shopped around at other mobile phone carriers and the price is comparable. At most we could save a couple dollars per month.

Thus, an alternative had to be found. Internet connectivity is found in most student housing in our area and we already own a wireless router. In addition, BYU (the university we attend) has WiFi in almost every building on campus. And lastly, every job I have had has either had WiFi available and/or a strict no cellphone use policy during work hours. This got me to thinking "If I could find a way to make calls over the internet via WiFi with a device the approximate size of a cellphone, I could cut our mobile calling bill down to almost nothing." Thus the hunt was on and the experiment began.

Requirements of the experiment:

1. WiFi capable device that must also be comparable to a cellphone in size and weight
2. SIP/VoIP application (preferably free) that can run on said device
   
3. Phone number that can reroute calls to either SIP/VoIP number, home land line number, or other phone numbers as needed
4. Centralized location to save all voice-mail, text messages, etc.

Solutions thus far:

1. The obvious choice for a WiFi device was a Nokia N series internet tablet. With the Nokia N810 finally falling to a reasonable price, still being in production, and still being supported via the open source Maemo project it became the product of choice for my wife and I. Besides, being a huge FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) supporter made the move to a Linux based device an easy choice for me. The total cost of it being $440 including tax and shipping for two tablets. They are currently in the mail and should arrive in about 2-3 days from now.
   
2. For an SIP/VoIP application, this became easy. The Nokia Tablets have had support from both Skype and Gizmo (both have limited free plans) for quite some time. The applications from both companies for Nokia N810 are well tested and stable. As of now, we have not decided on either provider. Any input from you (the readers) regarding the pluses and minuses of both options would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to leave comments on this or other posts with suggestions.
3. Google Voice = mind-boggling amazingness. It can reroute calls to multiple phone numbers, reroute the call to a certain phone depending on who the caller is, block callers, etc.. Both my wife and I have Google Voice accounts and they are awesome. Sadly, there is not enough room here to explain all its greatness. Check it out if you don't know what it is yet.
   
4. The last problem of voice mail and text message storage is also answered by Google Voice (again, more mind-boggling amazingness).

Thus the experiment begins. There are still a few unanswered questions including: porting our old cell numbers to Google Voice (not yet supported), getting permanent numbers for free with either Skype or Gizmo, and others that I can't currently remember. This are minor, but somewhat problematic. We would rather not have to try to get all our friends, family and businesses we are associated with to begin using our Google Voice number, thus porting over our old numbers would be a much simpler solution. Getting a permanent Skype of Gizmo number is cheap (in the vicinity of 5 dollars per month), but free would be better considering this is an experiment of cutting costs. I am sure solutions to these problems will reveal themselves as we go deeper and deeper into this new adventure of technology.

Again, this is why we need your help. Our knowledge is limited and our experience with certain aspects of this problem are as well (VoIP apps like Skype and Gizmo being a good example of this). Thus, your knowledge and experience are critical in making this as successful as possible for us and others who might follow in our footsteps. Thank you all in advance for your support in this new endeavor.