Nokia N800 Internet Tablet review

The N800 is the first major update to Nokia's 770 Internet Tablet.

It's a compact Linux-based handheld designed to surf the internet, send and receive email, and play music and video. It can also run third-party open-source or commercial software such as Navicore's GPS navigation software.

The N800's design is significantly different to the 770's and looks neater. There are stereo speakers on either side of the touch screen and, instead of a hard plastic cover, the N800 has a soft cloth wallet. The screen has the same resolution of 800x480 pixels, but is brighter and less grainy than its predecessor's.

The N800's Linux operating system is broadly similar, but is faster and more responsive thanks to the tablet's faster 330MHz processor. The interface is reasonably simple to use. The home screen has three Windows-style Start buttons, split into web, messaging and utilities, and settings.

Setting up an internet connection is simple. The N800 has no SIM card, so you have to connect to a wireless network or use your mobile's GPRS or 3G connection. When you first turn on the tablet, the setup wizard takes you through pairing the tablet with a phone via Bluetooth. The N800 comes with internet settings for most UK mobile networks, so once you've paired with your phone you just need to select your network and it should work. Setting up wireless is simply a matter of selecting a network and entering a WPA or WEP key.

The web browser is excellent, and far better than anything you'll find on a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile PDA. You can set it to fit pages to the width of the screen or leave them in their original format, but the display's large 800-pixel width means you don't have to scroll horizontally too often. The browser supports Flash animation and can even play videos on YouTube, though the frame rate was poor. The N800's email client has support for POP3 and IMAP4 email accounts, and there is a built-in PDF viewer. There is also a chat and internet telephone client, which supports Jabber and GoogleTalk clients.

The Internet Tablet has a strange memory card configuration. There is an SD card slot under the battery cover and another slot on the side of the case, for a maximum of 4GB of storage. The N800 can play AAC, MP3, Wav and WMA files, and while the integrated speakers have no bass they sound clear. The supplied headphones have reasonable sound quality, but have little bass. The manual says the N800 can play MPEG4 files, but it couldn't play any of our Xvid or DivX video test files.

Nokia's N800 is an improvement on the 770 and is a powerful handheld that is perfect for surfing the internet on the move, but it's too expensive for most people. We'd make do with the browser on a smartphone such as Nokia's E61.

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Author: Chris Finnamore