Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Nokia N810 Tablet + WiMax

April 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Nokia N810 Tablet + WiMax

TAGS: Open Source

This week at the CTIA conference in Vegas, Nokia showed off their next generation N810 Internet tablet now with WiMax access, giving even higher speed browsing than Wi-Fi enables. This is the 3rd (or 3 1/2?) iteration of the Nokia tablet and it shows that Nokia is committed to continuously improving the internet tablet platform.

Which is a good thing, because the more I use the N810 Wi-Fi version, the more I think it still needs more work. On paper, the N810 is a great device. It's got a beautiful touch screen, a slide-out keyboard, Wi-Fi access, built-in media player, open source Linux operating system and Mameo user interface, email, etc. And for some applications, especially web surfing and video / music, it's a good platform. But for other things, like email, it's frustrating. The keyboard needs another couple of milimeters slide-out distance to make it work better, the user interface is pokey and the email application is just awful.

So WiMax is a good start, but at this stage its seems like more of a "science project" than anything else. Sprint has announced delays in rolling out their Xohm service. (Maybe they could work on a better name while they're at it.) And Intel is even acknowledging growing pains for WiMax. (Maybe more apt to stay birth pains.)

Folks who want the latest in high-speed browsing will want the WiMax N810 tablet, but its not clear how big an audience that is for a while. For the rest of the market, Nokia needs to do a better job on the usability front. Don't just put windows and dialogs and three levels of pulldown menus. Make the applications usable, intuitive and easy to perform common tasks without drowning in dialogs. Guys, this is not rocket science.

For many people, myself included, email is an application that we can't live without. So I'm looking forward to an update to the email application in the summer. I'll continue to use the N810 for browsing, but while I'm on the road, I'm still using my Palm Centro for email.

What do you think? If WiMax is the answer, what's the question?

Posted by Zack Urlocker on April 3, 2008 09:58 PM

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