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Handhelds Software Hardware Linux

Nokia's Linux-powered N800 Tablet Sneaks Out 107

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-lick-it dept.
sjvn writes "Officially, Nokia Inc.'s new Linux-powered N800 Internet Tablet doesn't exist. In reality, it's already for sale in the United States and boasts double the RAM and Flash Memory of its predecessor and it has a faster processor to boot."
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Nokia's Linux-powered N800 Tablet Sneaks Out More

Nokia's Linux-powered N800 Tablet Sneaks Out

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  • Will it totally replace the 770, or will it be a big brother?

    I hope it brings the 770 price down a touch, its just over my novelty price bracket at the moment.

  • Finally... (Score:3, Informative)

    by mriya3 ( 803189 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @11:32AM (#17497694) Homepage
    more information at http://thoughtfix.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
    I hope it features a powered USB connector (unlike the 770)
    • Thanks for linking to me. My interview with Nokia is Tuesday morning at CES and I will be watching this thread for additional interview questions.
      ---Dan (ThoughtFix)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by oever ( 233119 )
        Will it have desktop search like Strigi or Beagle? As Strigi developer I'd be interested in porting it.
    • Seriously, if it can do USB host, then I am sold. It can then be a hand-held oscilloscope, handy terminal (via USB->RS232 adapter) for embedded devices, etc.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RossyB ( 28685 )
        The 770 could do USB host, by running flasher --enable-usb-host-mode. I expect the N800 can do this too.

        Of course the socket isn't powered and you need a weirdo adaptor to plug anything in, but it does work.

  • skip the blogspam (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07, 2007 @11:41AM (#17497752)

    as the link in the submission doest even have any pics just fluff leading to the real article here (with pics)

    http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9981902594.html [linuxdevices.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Emetophobe ( 878584 )
      There is a video of the N800 in action on this guys blog [tokash.org] (I'm not promoting this guys blog, just found it through google). It looks pretty cool, but one of my concerns is the battery life, previous models suffered from a short battery life (3-4 hours between recharges). Hopefully Nokia addressed the battery life with this model.

      Also, that blogger was playing a video on youtube on his N800 and he said, and I quote, "UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Youtube videos play at a brutal 1 or 2 frames per second. Yu
      • The videos from youtube might play @ 1 or 2 fps because the tablet is used to decode the video frames.

        Would it be possible to turn the n800 into a passive receiver, all decoding done somewhere on a server and only the frames displayed on the tablet ? =>strong central computer and "passive" receptor... I'm sure I saw it somwhere, maybe in vlc ?

        Would be ideal @home where I have some computing power available...

        Still no strong IR emitter to turn the tablet into a universal remote... Anyone knows of a 8-10 m
    • Thanks for the pictures!!

      Reading the article and posts, couple of hours ago, just after submission, I thought this was 'THE ONE TO GO FOR'. Would make my ideal moving maps / GPS platform.

      But now having seen the photos, IMHO it's a pretty lousy design. I love the technology behind it, but just the design doesn't appeal to me at all. And you pay big bucks for being an early adopter, so the design better be right.

      It has all this rounded off, soft cornered look and feel. Which IMHO doesn't match with the rest o
      • my ideal moving maps / GPS platform.

        Buy one. Buy it today. Buy a bluetooth GPS receiver. Install Maemo-Mapper and configure it to download maps. Happy Happy Joy Joy. Crunch GPS map goodness.
  • I'd be curious to see how fast this unit runs in real life. I purchased a 770 to run small flash presentations/slide shows, and it performed rather dismally. Not the market I'm sure, and I love the concept, but if your going to have an internet/s tablet it needs to be able to see typical content...

    • No Free Power Lunch (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @01:18PM (#17498400) Homepage Journal

      Do remember that ultraportables deliberately sacrifices performance in favor of battery life. They'll always be inferior to bigger machines in raw processing power.

      That said, I would think that a 220 MHz processor would be fine for most Flash presentations. Perhaps the ARM implementation of the plugin is less robust than the Pentium version. Or perhaps you're doing fancy animation that overtaxes the system.

      And don't make the usual mistake of fixating on the CPU as the sole provider of application performance. Any application uses many different resources, and a bottleneck in any of them (in graphics applications, it's usually the video adapter, not the CPU) will screw you over.

      • Re:No Free Power Lunch (Score:5, Informative)

        by msh104 ( 620136 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @02:17PM (#17498924)
        try the mplayer port (with basic gui)
        http://mplayer.garage.maemo.org/ [maemo.org]

        it is said that it runs 25/30fps when running optimized movies..
        (there is a conversion script out there too..)
        • Transcoded a movie from DVD to this format using the script to which you refer. It uses mencoder. The movie was about 2 hours and widescreen format. Output file was 400MB.

          I can't speak to how good this looks on the device, but it looks ok and sounds ok for TV output on my linux box.

          I use ffmpeg to transcode DVDs to mpeg to play on my Treo 650. The Treo is not an ideal platform for video playback.

          Completely separate subject, I'm having trouble getting matrixview to work. I think reencoding a video in

    • I mentioned this already elsewhere, so I will just link to my previous comment: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21551 4&cid=17498444 [slashdot.org]
      Youtube videos run at 1-2 frames per second if that's any indicator of processing power.

      • Re:Processor (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Sunspire ( 784352 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @01:37PM (#17498588)
        Probably it's a problem/limitation of the Flash plugin, and can therefore perhaps be fixed, because the device itself plays Xvid/Divx at decent resolutions and framerates.
        • A question now comes to me: Does it uses the flashplugin from Adobe, or it uses an open-source implementation?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by RossyB ( 28685 )
            It's not an open source implementation, so it's probably the Adobe source licensed by some other company and ported. I can't recall what company offered binary Flash plugins for embedded devices though.

            Remember that writing a compliant Flash implementation is very tricky, the rendering model is very precise and simply saying "I'll use Cairo/GL/X/etc to draw" results in an incorrect implementation.
  • What about just the lightest, foldable-smallest, cheapest tablet that is just a high FPS streaming/VoIP/VNC client with WiFi? Everything else but the AGUI can go on a server, if the WiFi can keep the streams over 24FPS and the audio over 80Kbps, with minimal jitter and framedrops.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cnettel ( 836611 )
      Even if the Wifi bandwidth can sustain it, high Wifi usage is a battery killer on many devices... Higher compression or some features provided locally can actually make it lighter while still useful. It's a tradeoff and I note that you didn't mention battery life at all. P4 laptops were also quite cheap and they had those wonderful fans and > 90 W chargers :-)
      • I'm sure eliminating everything but the video, soundcard, network, Flash/cache and minimal CPU make for a lot more WiFi and a lot of extra weight capacity for 8h battery.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @12:05PM (#17497916)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Sounds good, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by mbrubeck ( 73587 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @12:15PM (#17497980) Homepage
      The latest OS upgrades have made my 770 a lot more stable and a little faster than it used to be. It's still slower than I'd like. I can't wait to try the 800.
      • True, but it's still too slow to be useful for anything. I have one. Still trying to figure out what to do with the thing. It is neither fish nor fowl. If it were lightning fast it might actually be useful for viewing web content (if you have good eyes). Even though it does run linux, there isn't much out there for it software wise, especially if your not a geek type person.

        It looks like Nokia is taking a page out of Microsoft's book. Version 1, utter crap - Version 2, almost useful, Version 3 - DRM'

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by antime ( 739998 )
      The OMAP ARM+DSP combo is what Nokia use in their telephones, so they basically used what they had and know. The choice of GTK+ was probably due to the programmers on the project (at least some were recruited from the Linux iPaq project, which uses GTK+).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebassi ( 591699 )

      What I am curious about is the processors in some of the PocketPC handhelds like the Axim are pretty powerful. Why didn't they go for similar hardware specs in the first place with the 770? With those, they might have been able to get embedded Qt instead of Gtk.

      and that (choosing qt over gtk+), pray tell, what would have accomplished? I'm not aware of benchmarks showing incredibly blazing speeds of qt over gtk+ on the embedded platform.

      by the way: don't try the "gtk+ is slow because of cairo": the 770

      • and that (choosing qt over gtk+), pray tell, what would have accomplished?

        The availability of Qt apps for one. This is where the Zaurus won - they had an amazing line of software developers ready to develop for the platform. Plus most Qt/desktop apps can be ported easily - it is either just a recompile or minor changes to the source code.

        I'm not aware of benchmarks showing incredibly blazing speeds of qt over gtk+ on the embedded platform.

        Maybe not, but gtk has never been the choice inside the emb

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by feijai ( 898706 )
      When it wasn't crashing, it was often too slow to do anything really cool with besides surfing the web.

      Reminds me of an old motto we used to have for WordPerfect. WordPerfect: it may be buggy, but at least it's slow.

  • Better Photos (Score:4, Informative)

    by Henry 2.0 ( 1017212 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @12:18PM (#17497990)
    Better photos over here [carrypad.com]
  • Well, let's hope that it's not too drunk when it comes home. That N800 is a hell-raiser, for sure. It's girlfriend is a pink Sony Ericsson but its parents would never approve of a mixed relationship.
  • At least the price point is within reach. I'm looking forward to it! Esp. all the hacks that are sure to come down the pipe! SSH to my server and get some work down from the crapper!

  • Video (Score:4, Informative)

    by nursegirl ( 914509 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @12:45PM (#17498146) Journal
    One of the people who owns one has posted a video [tokash.org] of it booting and some general use. It looks slick.
  • anyone any idea if it supports voip calls (sip or h323) ??

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kimanaw ( 795600 )
      There was a big announcement about supporting GoogleTalk [blogspot.com] on the N770 last year...I guess it works, but I can't find anything about it on the actual GoogleTalk site. I'd assume the 800 supports it too.

      I nearly bought the 770 last year, but decided to buy a XV6700 [mobiletechreview.com] instead. After playing w/ the 770 awhile, it just seemed to need a few extra bells/whistles (e.g., a camera - which the 800 now has), and the size/resolution of the screen wasn't that much better than the 6700. (Plus my carrier made the latter re

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by chill ( 34294 )
      GoogleTalk and GizmoProject both work on the N770, so I'd be surprised if they don't support the new N800.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kimanaw ( 795600 )
      Skype on N800 [com.com]

      And they also showed the pricetag...ouch. So my earlier estimate of 2.5x more for a UMPC is now closer to about 1.8x more. Which makes the UMPC an even more attractive choice.

      While I wish them the best, I fear it may be another Zaurus debacle (I personally got burned by that one). I know when I was researching the 770 last year, I had the same reaction as when I was using the Z...info was scattered everywhere...except on the manufacturer's own site. Getting basic info about what s/w was on

  • Looks like an improvement all right (Score:5, Informative)

    by tjcrowder ( 899845 ) on Sunday January 07, 2007 @02:27PM (#17499032) Homepage

    I have a 770. First off, it's brilliant device, I love it. Definitely using it on my next long-haul flight rather than the built-in video players on airplanes. (I wouldn't use the built in video player, but mplayer has been ported to it and plays 400x240 movies full screen [hardware pixel doubling to fill the 800x480 display] at full fps, 128k audio, and about 500k video. Very watchable, and a full-length movie fits on a 1GB MMC with plenty of room left over for a couple of TV shows.) And of course there are various PIM style apps available for it over at maemo.org [maemo.org], not to mention VNC, xterm, ssh, ...

    From what information we currently have (including the pics and video referenced above), I have to say I think they've addressed several of the biggest issues with the unit, specifically:

    • Moved the ports to the side - on the 770, they're on the bottom, which is a problem if (say) you're plugging the 770 into an external amplifier to play some tunes, and want to put it on its stand so you can see what's playing. You have to put it up right at the edge of a book or something so the audio (and, frequently, power) connections coming out the bottom have room to protrude. Dumb. And fixed with the 800.
    • Faster processor. Yum. The 770 definitely has speed issues depending on what you ask it to do.
    • More built-in flash RAM -- excellent.
    • Built-in stand. Very good idea. The little stand that comes with the 770 is fine, but not convenient to use. Looks like the built-in stand has at least two different tilts, as well, which is good.
    • Stereo speakers built in. Very nice, the poor little one in the 770 does surprisingly well, so I'm guessing the 800 sounds pretty good (for what it is).
    • Built in webcam. Excellent. Now it's a videophone!

    From the good close look we get at the connectors in the video nursegirl linked to [tokash.org], the USB connector is still unpowered. Frankly, I'm not sure how big an issue this really is. Yes, it means you can't use your existing USB keys with it even if you had an adapter cable, which -- true -- is less than ideal. In terms of other devices, you wouldn't want to power an external keyboard of the poor little 770's battery -- you're better off getting a little portable Bluetooth keyboard. I haven't felt the lack of the power on the USB port yet.

    Looks like a great upgrade, good to see Nokia thought it was worth pursuing the product line... I hope the next focus is on software -- improving the handwriting recognition, doing some Nokia-tested and certified PIM apps (calendar, etc.), improving the little desktop area, etc. Doing this device with Linux, documenting the API, and fostering a development community were all masterstrokes, but you can't leave everything to the community, too many users won't be able to handle the complexity (not to mention that, er, some ports are done better than others...).

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by antime ( 739998 )
      But it still looks like it's not designed to be used upside-down by left-handed people.
    • You mean a little Bluetooth keyboard like my Chordite [russnelson.com]? It's not in production yet, but I'll make a custom one for anybody who asks politely.
      s/ask politely/asks politely and has $200 to spare/.

  • Competing with OLPC? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by feranick ( 858651 )
    I am provocative here, but think about it, in terms of specs not target. The specs are VERY similar. Yes, the form factor is different, but many things are definitively similar. The biggest difference is the price, Nokia being 2.5x more expensive. Is it really worth? I hope OLPC will show that you can produce these tablets at reasonable price and drive the overall market price down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by /ASCII ( 86998 )
      The OLPC will be sold with no (or very little) profix, and will cost ~$150 if bought in loads of a few thousand. Sold over counter, the OLPC price would be comparable to the Maemo.

      That said, the dual mode screen and the added keyboard of the OLPC might still make it a very interesting competitor.
  • After reading this thread and the lined stories (yeah, i RTFAd), i called CompUSA who confirmed that the store closest to me had 7 in stock - despite it not yet being on their web site. i drove down to the store and the employee i talked to said it didn't exist - and as proof, pointed to their web site. i recounted the call to CompUSA, including that i'd clarified with the guy on the phone that it was an N800, not an N80 (a common mistake); the guy called his manager, who checked some other inventory system
    • I guess the Des Moines, IA CompUSA hadn't heard that, because I picked one up Sunday afternoon. Sweeeet little device.

      I did the same as you; called and gave them the item number, and they said they had 2 in stock. When I arrived, they couldn't find it up front, and had to get it from the receiving department, but they did sell it to me no problem.

  • ...have not changed - my new 770 off ebay gets here tomorrow, dammit...oh well...
    • Tell me about it. I ordered one from the US (not sold in Australia) on Jan 1st, still waiting for it to arrive - and then they tell me the new model is on the verge of release!

      Them's the breaks, I guess.
  • The last year (over the summer to be exact), I bought a 770. The idea was to used it with a bluetooth cellular phone to connect internet. As a linux user, that seemed to be the logical choice. Over the one week period I owned 770, it only once worked more than 10 minutes. Other than that, it crashed frequently, even when booting itself. I tried several firmware, the one shipped with 770, the updated one from nokia website and another one from maemo. Before buying I read the reviews and I found that nearly

  • The problem is that Nokia is a cell phone company, and the 770 seems to be a side project that gets little support. Nokia needs to back the product line for it to be successful. The Nokia 800 will likely be another dud simply because Nokia defines itself as a cell phone manufacturer.

    I have a Nokia 770 sitting here that I bought as a project for work as we are a Linux-based shop. The wifi simply does not work with many routers and the reception seems to be poor when it does work. The Maemo operating syste

    • Nokia - not just cellphones at all! (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Most people forget that Nokia is a pretty big company with a lot of products. From roots in paper, rubber, and cables, in just over 100 years Nokia became a powerful industrial conglomerate. The corporation also produces telecommunications network equipment for applications such as mobile and fixed-line voice telephony, ISDN, broadband access, voice over IP, and wireless LAN. Not to mention satellite receivers, [Linux based] set-top boxes etc etc.
    • Had the 770 (and now the N800) been a cellphone as well, I'd be on this device like flies on ... well, I'd buy one. I had a word with one of the Nokia developers and they couldn't see why having an integrated GSM/GPRS transceiver wouldn't be better than having the 770 AND a separate cellphone communicating with each other either via Bluetooth or what-have-you. The savings on the number of items in ones pockets alone is enough reason to go integrated. Add to that possible incompatibilities with Bluetooth imp
      • I'd rather have a Nokia N800 which fits in one product, and a cellphone which fits in another, than a brick which fits in neither.
  • I'd like to use it for browsing my recipes and playing music mostly, but being able to watch TV, even on a small screen, would be nice, too. But, I see it's an ARM processor, so the atrpms site won't have a precompiled install. Has anyone tried to compile mythtv from source for a Nokia 770 or this new 800?
  • Can anyone explain the rationale of using this over the more powerful, more versatile Dell Axim? Prices are comparable at the least, and Dell runs specials often enough to make the 624 mhz x51v version price competitive.
    • Dell Axim is Windows-based, so it's shit.

      770 offers good, free SDK. Built-in Python libraries for everything. Free OS upgrades.

      • I suppose, though for non-developers the free SDK is irrelevant and the CPU is hardly powerful enough to decode h.264. And I'm confused about the ad hominum Windows CE hate ... other than DIY coding (and most people aren't going to be coding up their own media players or web browsers), what advantage does running Linux on such a device have over running Windows CE?
  • Enjoy [nseries.com].

  • Sell your 770 now (Score:3, Informative)

    by rgavril ( 805158 ) on Monday January 08, 2007 @09:02AM (#17507002)
    Nokia is slowly dropping support for 770. Looking on maemo.org's faq [maemo.org] you can see that OS2007 won't run on 770.

    4.10. Can I upgrade the OS 2006 of my Nokia 770 to OS 2007 ? Unfortunately that is not supported. Internet Tablet OS is still evolving fast to support the desirable hardware and software features for ultra portable computing with Internet Tablets - things like bigger memory configuration, webcam and finger use in OS 2007. At this stage fast development with early and frequent releases is preferred over design compromises to support wider range of older hardware.
  • Nokia so endeared all of the early adopters of the 770 by dropping all support of the platform and screwing all those customers out of the 300 to 400 dollars they spent. Do you really think they'll treat the people who buy the 800 any better?

    The 770 was plagued by poor code, a lot of bugs, updates that had even more bugs than the code it was patching, no customer support and hardware that was broken fresh out of the box at least 50 percent of the time. In short nokia ran a beta test on the market and made t
  • They didn't release the 770 in OZ and they ain't releasing the 800.

    From their "Careline":

    Thank you for emailing Nokia Careline.

    In response to your inquiry, please be advised that the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet will not be released within the Australian market. However, it is released to the European and United States market.

    We suggest that you use the following link should you wish to make a purchase online: http://www.nseries.com/products/n800/#l=products,n 800 [nseries.com]

    Kindly be informed that the warranty is limited to the country of purchase.

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