Comments on: The un-iPhone: A Review of Nokia N810 -an iPhone User’s View

By: docpark

docpark — Wed, 12 May 2010 03:30:35 +0000

My rational self tells me with two iPads, a hackintoshed Dell Mini 10V, a MacBook Pro 15 inch, and a Dell 17inch laptop (from work), that I should sell the N810 on eBay, but so much about it appeals to me. Nokia really makes good kit, and for what it does, it is rock solid. In this situation, I usually bestow the item as a gift to the deserving (that’s what I did with prior Psion Series 5). I completely agree that the N810 has yet to see its full potential and makes me think it is silly to toss out excellent technology after a year or two of use. These are magic boxes people!

By: Donald Murray

Donald Murray — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:45:33 +0000

Oops meant to say my SD card on order is 16Gbyte.

By: Donald Murray

Donald Murray — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:42:07 +0000

I am a software engineer. I normally do algorithmic research using a pen and paper and a TI-86 programmable calculator. Often, I run into speed limitations on the calculator and I have to use a laptop, where I use a combination of octave (cygwin replacement for MATLAB), gcc to compile short algorithm simulations and gnuplot to plot my results if necessary.
This used to break up my design cycle and disabled me from doing my research armchair style, which I enjoy. So, I bought a used N810 from ebay for $159 and customized my linux. Some of the packages were hard to find and took a while to find and install correctly (especially when it came to dependencies). However, I did get gcc, gnuplot and octave all installed, so I can do everything I wanted to do on my laptop, in the same formfactor as a calculator.
It also has web browsing and a bunch of other office like tools (abiword and gnumeric offer replacements for MSWORD and Excel). I also love the use of Xournal, which is a close replacement of MS OneNote. Note that the product also has handwriting recognition, which is something I want to work with as it could be a useful integration into Xournal and supply a means to enter text much faster than the keyboard. I can get the keyboard to work reasonably fast, but not as fast as a full sized keyboard. I could get a bluetooth keyboard, but that kind of defeats the calculator formfactor purpose. I also want to get wireless crack utilities working so that I can roam wifi even when locked….not to steal but to get internet access. I’m not sure if this will work, but I may play about with it a little. I do have aircrack-ng installed….but haven’t played with it yet. There is a lot of extras that need to be played with, and there is work that needs to be done to ensure that your apps get installed in the limited 256MB of NOR flash as running from the internal NAND card or external card would be pointless….other than for my gcc code. I have a class 6 SD card on order, which should be fast enough (remember the class on the card is generally proportional to speed). Class 10 I think is overkill for this device, but I’m hoping the 16Mbyte card on order will work just fine.

As is my experience every time I work with linux, there is a lot of customization and it isn’t for the unexperienced. e.g. To compile a program and run it I need to make the permissions on the compiled program executable and chmod doesn’t work on a FAT partition, so I had to reconfigure the internal card to be EXT2. note that EXT3 is inappropriate for a flash device as it increases the writes due to journalling. You need to know all these little facts to really get the most from this kind of device.

However, I now have the coolest SuperCalculator in the world….for about the same price as a TI-89. Note that there is also a TI-89 emulator available for it.

By: docpark

docpark — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:04:57 +0000

update: still like it, even though the virtual keyboard on iPhone 3.0 makes it the equal of the N810′s keyboard primarily because the N810 keyboard is strangely suck-y compared to other thumb boards i’ve used. The fun is primarily in enjoying the total package presented by the N810. The audio is top notch and it plays flash. skype without video is disappointing, but its the same in iPhone. If you want to stay out of the iPhone world, this is the device for you.

By: docpark

docpark — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:26:10 +0000

فنحن نرحب بك!

By: kamel

kamel — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:48:25 +0000

شكرا شكرا

By: docpark

docpark — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:15:00 +0000

It’s slower than a laptop and in somethings slower than iPhone -it does text very well and email very well and blogging text very well. If you can wait, the word on the street is that Nokia is going to release a tablet netbook update to 810, and 810 will come way down in price.

By: Zar

Zar — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:49:39 +0000

thanks for this review i am surely gonna get a n810