N810: here
January 11, 2008 10:15 am hardware, maemoSo, 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):
- 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).
- 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…
- 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).
- 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).
- 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).
- 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.
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.
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.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:36 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiRFstar_III
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.
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.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
[…] Here’s another interesting post I read today by Planet GNOME […]
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.
January 11th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Probably you are just unlucky where you live. Mine works flawlessly indoors, in an urban neighbourhood.
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.
January 11th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
wulff: thanks for the reference, I’ll check
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.