N810: here

January 11, 2008 10:15 am Sergey Udaltsov hardware, maemo

So, yesterday I got it. Again, thanks to Nokia for the developer device program. Nice piece of hardware indeed – but nothing revolutionary, as I expected.  Some comments (mostly rants – but my gratitude is still there and it is huge):

  1. Built-in GPS is cool. But why does it take ages to establish the connection (I do not even mention the fact that it does not work in the room). I hope Nokia would fix it in the updated software (hopefully it is not a hardware issue).
  2. The car mount is well-thought. But I am not going to use screws to attach it to my dashboard. Probably there must be some other way to use it…
  3. The keyboard … well, I guess it will take some time to get used to it. I still did not figure out how to switch between English and Russian layout (which was trivial on n800 on-screen keyboard).
  4. Nokia added special lock/unlock hardware switch. Nice touch. But IMHO much more useful would be two hardware volume control keys (or dial or whatever).
  5. Why oh why they switched from SD to MiniSD? My 2G card I bought for n800 is useless here :( And now I cannot take SD card from my Nikon D80 and show just made photos on shiny n810 screen :( (( Seriously, could anyone explain? It seems MiniSD standard is dying (if you check on ebay). I could better understand switching to MicroSD… Strange move indeed. (as a side note, I do not quite understand the change of the USB socket as well).
  6. They added 2G unmountable internal flash. Good and wise decision. But why didn’t they move /usr to that volume (may be, along with /home)? Having 256M for all filesystems is not too much – I noticed it in n800 days. I simply cannot install all interesting stuff from Application Manager!

Overall – I think Nokia is moving in the right direction. My only concern is the pace of the move. While the change from 770 to n800 was a huge leap, the change from n800 to n810 is a small step. Lads, please do not slow down. You are making a very cool gadgets – and there is still a room for improvement, I strongly believe you can make great gadgets.

11 Responses

  1. Johan Thelin Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    There are techical limitations for the connection time to GPS satellites. Apparently the time synchronization requires approx one minute of communications without any serious bitfaults. I would not call it a hardware fault, more like a limitation of the protocol involved.

    As for using it indoors – that would indeed be a hardware (antenna) issue.

  2. Sergey Udaltsov Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 11:35 am

    Johan: well, it takes >1 min. And regarding indoors: last I heard, latest SirfStart chip is able to work with reflected/weak signals.

  3. Sergey Udaltsov Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 11:36 am

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiRFstar_III

  4. Johan Thelin Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 11:50 am

    Quoting the article you refer to “…maintain a signal lock in urban or densely covered forest environments…” does not really mean indoors in my ears.

  5. Sergey Udaltsov Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 11:59 am

    Ok, may be “indoors” is a bit of exaggeration – but I know it works ok in cars (not necessary right by the window) and other similar environments.

  6. GPS » Sergey Udaltsov: N810: here Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    [...] Here’s another interesting post I read today by Planet GNOME [...]

  7. pH5 Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    also getting and maintaining a signal lock seems to be easier than actually downloading ephemeris data after a cold boot. you could try getting a fix under clear sky and then take it indoors.

  8. Rob Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Probably you are just unlucky where you live. Mine works flawlessly indoors, in an urban neighbourhood.

  9. wulff Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    there is a company that makes car mounts that require a bit of dismantling of you dash, but provide a universal(i think because i’ve used it for phones, satellite radio, and other things) mount point that should be compatible with. The company I recall that makes it is called Panavise. They sell them as mobile phone mounts.

    I will admit that I have not verified this, but when you look at them you should be able to gauge whether the nokia car kit looks compatible, since I dont have one yet.

  10. Sergey Udaltsov Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    wulff: thanks for the reference, I’ll check

  11. Wahez Says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 6:27 pm

    I do not own an N810 (yet), but I think they want the 2GB accessible over USB.
    And you can’t have a filesystem accessible over USB and locally.
    That is why you can’t put any critical directories on the flash.