The Nokia Internet Tablet, started with a simple idea with the n770 back in 2006. So as the path grows, n800, n810 and now the n900.

I personally feel it cannot be called a Internet tablet anymore, since it’s really a phone, a smartphone at that.

These days, it isn’t a real smart phone, unless you can surf the net, watch movies, listen to music, has a gps, emails and more thrown in.

So anyways, if you are looking at upgrading to the n900, go ahead to check out this post to give you a clear idea of how it compares to your current n810.

Ever since my post on the Asus Eee PC T91 with multi-touch using Windows 7, I have been waiting for a chance to play the touchscreen netbook.

Is this going to be a replacement for my favourite HP TC1100, the tablet pc? Or, gasp!, a bigger more usable version of the Nokia N810?

So far, its been released in the UK for months and just last week for the US. There’s still no official word for Singapore or pricing yet. It’s retailing of US$499 for the basic set.

My first impression was how SMALL and light it is!

To give u a idea, I have a A5 sized notes folder and its just a little smaller than that!

This is prety much the standard set, not sure how close this is to the release final hardware, though it has a 30gb SSD (Solid State Drive) and a digital TV tuner, and NO multi-touch, NO Windows XP Tablet Edition, no GPS, no 3G circuit board.

As it came straight from Asus’s Taiwan factory and I have to return it, I will be trying to preserve the original Windows XP Home Edition, and install Windows 7 RC to put it through the paces.

Over the next few posts, I’ll share my experiences with the touch netbook.

But it’s terrible at some sites.. e.g. Facebook and other javascript heavy sites.

Mozilla’s port of FireFox over to a mobile platform is still in its beta stage – Fennec.. and though the interface looks quite promising.. its still unusable.

It’s built on the web kit (same as Safari/Chrome) and its blazing fast for Facebook (compared to the built-in browser).

It has the Chrome/Opera like start up page – where you get 9 most visited sites thumbnails…(as seen above)

When you hit the full-screen button, it allows you to use up the full 800×480 screen real estate – hiding unnecessary info and by having a small line at the bottom as the progress bar.. Brillant, if you ask me.. do we really need to see big turning arrows or bars?

The only site I have encountered some issues using Tear is.. Gmail. Somehow it’s too heavy for Tear.. but the built-in browser (handling it at a lower feature set) works fine.

So give Tear a run.. its my favourite browser on the Nokia n810/n800 for mobile browsing.

For installation, more information and latest updates, check out the wiki.

In case you are not sure what this means, this opens up the 30,000+ of palm applications/games already out there and most very polished and useful stuff, to be used on the much better device, the Nokia n810.

I suspect very much the Garnet VM beta testing of applications’ compatiblity is to help Palm with their new Palm Pre virtual machine too.

Both the n810 and the Palm Pre both use a version of Linux, both are newer machines, and it makes sense for the n810 community to help tests things out.. The n810 community is filled with programmers, early adopters and more than causal users who know their way around technology.

So having these people give their feedback and suggestions are valuable for the time/effort spent to cover the 30,000+ programs!

This beta is release as of 29th May 2009.

I love to run Google Maps on this, since the built-in GPS for the n810 isn’t the best of its class.. Google Maps helps and better on the big screen of the n810 then the mobile phones.

Click here to download.

I was half suspecting an update is due, since the last one is more than 3 months ago and Firefox v3 has been officially released. BTW the browser on the tablet is based on Firefox v3 Alpha version.

But apparently the browser has not been updated to the full Firefox v3 but has lots of incremental updates to the whole device.

New firmware Update Observations

From what I have been reading from the forums; these are what the users are reporting.

1. The internal mail program has been updated to Modest. Though some prefer the old.
2. Reports of a more responsive overall usage.
3. Browser is also faster
4. No more flashing for firmwares… all updates are done OTA (Over The Air) via WLAN or Wifi as commonly known.
5. Support of IPv6
6. Built-in media player can play FLAC file
7. Support for Chinese fonts in the various built-in applications, e.g. RSS / Mail / Menus
8. Update for Adobe Flash – Youtube videos play better

Here’s the link for direct downloads.

Link to N800 download: http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/nokia_N800.php?

Link to N810 download: http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/nokia_N810.php?

Here’s the link to check out what’s changed (too long for me to list).

http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/changes/23-14_vs_50-2_changes.html

Ok, I have a number of tech toys to play with but let me start with what I use almost everyday.

On the left a picture of all of the stuff I carry. Let’s dive into it!

1. Sony MDR-KX70 Earphones – these are retractable so I don’t have to worry about messy wires!

2. Apple’s 2G Ipod Nano 4gb – I know this is kinda outdated now but it still stores my music and like the slim size of it. : )

3. Nokia e51 Business Phone – a phone that has almost everything I need, Bluetooth stereo music ad2p, wifi, 3.5G download speeds, Exchange support, good web browser built-in. Love the keys and it’s a nice slim size!! I only wish the camera is better than the current 2.0 mega pixel.

4. Canon Ixus 860IS – This camera takes great pictures! I love the compact size and now with CHDK, an open source firmware, you can hack more features out of it! Colours are really nice too!

5. Nokia n810 Internet Tablet – Been searching for a good Palm device replacement and this comes to matching almost all that I need. With the 800×480 screen, surfing is much better than on my mobile and it runs loads of programs, watch videos, listen to music/audio books, play games, take notes, read pdf/ebooks… and almost everything available from the internet of course!
With Access releasing a Palm emulator (beta 2) for the n810, now I can port all my Palm programs over! Yay!