First things to do: 1. Charge 2. Wait
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This photo was taken on September 26, 2007.
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scriptingnews (69 months ago | reply)
Brett Nordquist asked about my first impression.
The Getting Started guide says:
1. Insert the battery. Check.
2. Plug it in to charge. Check.
3. Wait until it says its fully charged. In progress.
Comment. Apple ships devices with a charge so as not to interfere with an immediate first impression.
Nothing about this experience so far has been about instant gratification. If they want to build a relationship they need to work on that. I made a decision 7 days ago to give this thing a try. I still haven't gotten to use the product. So far they make Apple look very very good.
PS: This is not my first Nokia product. I've had two low-end Nokia cell phones and liked them, but that was before I considered mobility to be a lifestyle and a hobby.
Matt Gauger (69 months ago | reply)
It has that big screen and it doesn't have a progress bar for charge level?
The Morans (69 months ago | reply)
I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this, as someone yet to leap to iPhone (but dying to)
tantek added this photo to his favorites. (69 months ago)
mlevin77 (69 months ago | reply)
I like the advertised ease of using Skype at wireless access points. Now, if you're interested, take a look using the N800 browser at an app designed for the iPhone using a web develpment framework designed by Joe Hewett called IUI (formerly "iphonenav"). It's a site to check on movies by zip code. moviesapp.com/
I haven't tried developing using IUI yet, but the possibilities look big. I like the Javascript/CSS functionality.
I wonder what could be done with the phone as a target using Flex/Flash especially since these N800s come Flash enabled out of the box.
There's a very forward thinking company starting up in Senegal called "Mira" mirasn.wordpress.com/about/ whose flagship product "Slingshot" is an enabler for applications to run on mobile networks. But, the browser might make a lot of it unnecessary. Mira hopes to enable mobile banking, among other things.
I think the cellphone is the next big thing - biggest of all.
Frank Jonen (69 months ago | reply)
I for once am still between the Helio and the iPhone (I don't buy ugly devices). But still would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the browser. If it's as good as Safari or as bad as Opera.
Re: Flash I never cared much for Flash and don't really want it on my cell - maybe once Adobe sealed more than 70% of the 940 security holes (or what was the last count?).
scriptingnews (69 months ago | reply)
3 hours later and I still haven't been able to connect. I've tried all permutations, I'm now using an open wifi connection on my laptop and this same connection doesn't work on the N800. It works fine on the iPhone. Not happy. 3 hours is way too long. Never had any problems with the iPhone.
bootload (69 months ago | reply)
@dave when you connect the begger try this suggestion from the nokia site and go maemo and follow the instructions at HOWTO FlashLatestNokiaImageWithLinux.
Beats having to play with Uncle Bills software.
bootload added this photo to his favorites. (69 months ago)
Robert Scoble (69 months ago | reply)
Exactly my experience with my Nokia N95. Interesting hardware but totally unthrilling experience where the iPhone thrills on many levels. The only place the N95 thrills is when I look at my Flickr photos but that's a delayed thrill.
Pete Prodoehl (69 months ago | reply)
Dave, you have perfectly illustrated the difference between Apple's products and their competitor's products. It's the user experience. I had an MP3 player that had features the iPod still doesn't have. In the end, the iPod is much better due to the overall experience. Does it suck not having those features? Yes... Does it suck enough to outweigh the overall experience? No...
While I know the Nokia device would be a killer platform for hacking about, I also know the iPhone/iPod/whatever from Apple will "just work" and do what it does pretty damn good.
scriptingnews (69 months ago | reply)
Maybe Nokia will let us help them tweak up one of these products so the out of box experience is in the ballpark of Apple's. There's no mystery in how to do it. You keep giving it to new people ask them where it didn't work, then fix whatever it was that made it not work. Repeat until everyone gets up in short order. The first most simple thing I'd do is ship it with a charged battery. And I'd make sure that when you order one overnight, you get it overnight. If this means that Nokia has to get into the shipping business, so be it.
BTW, I have a sneaking suspicion from reading various discussion threads, that the problem is that I have 802.11n network in the house (in addition to A/B/G which is what I used to connect). I read that if you have a N network in range, the N800 just won't connect no matter what you do. Not sure.
scriptingnews (69 months ago | reply)
What I really want to know is if there's an Apache running on the device. If so, can the camera drop pictures into the htdocs folder? Can I record a podcast? Will it drop the MP3 file into the htdocs folder?
adamcurry (69 months ago | reply)
The N800 is designed to be an open platform, all linux amd completely modifiable. There's quite a community around this device and its predecessor the 770 at maemo.org. I've been waiting for you to show up on this radar Dave. Also have a look at 'Canola' and the custom python based pyPodder app.
The physical attributes of the N800 are pretty 'industrial', but the UI and functionality and development tools are a great package to build almost anything you can dream up.
mlevin77 (69 months ago | reply)
An FTP server would be great on the N800
adamcurry (69 months ago | reply)
Anything you can get up and running on the linux platform is available to run on the N800, including custom httpd servers, ssh, shell, specialized window tool kits (hildon) and many scripting languages.
EdSai (69 months ago | reply)
Nokia abandoned the development of software improvements for the Nokia 770. The software released for the 770 was pretty much beta quality for the first 9 months. I liked all the new functionality of the N800 but I refuse to buy something for ~$350 and watch it be abandoned. Much of this is discussed on internettablettalk.com. Hope you have better luck with the N800 Dave.
bici (69 months ago | reply)
to me it has the look of an expensive paper weight.
dangillmor (69 months ago | reply)
I had no trouble getting on my home network with this, but it's not 802.11n.
The N800 should be great, but it's surprisingly underwhelming. Maybe not so surprising, as Nokia still doesn't quite get software. A real shame given the fundamental openness of the product.
Best example for me is my continuing inability to rip a TV show to it in a format that looks good. (I have it now in MP4 format on my Mac, via EyeTV hookup to TV.)
Nokia would be very smart to locate the community that works on such things and create a pre-set for every kind of software (e.g. Handbrake, EyeTV etc.) that anyone could easily use.
I did manage to load and watch a movie on the Nokia E90 on a plane the other week. Nice, but the screen on the N800 is better.
Evan Sims (69 months ago | reply)
Well, it's a sexy looking device. Not iTouch/iPhone sexy, but sexy in a non-Apple kind of way.
BrianaFranco added this photo to her favorites. (69 months ago)
extraUNanonymous (69 months ago | reply)
Really good point Dave, I agree that having to charge something after you get it is equivalent to the "batteries not included" message I used to dread at Christmas time.
I'm sure that Nokia has some excellent business reasons to not ship with a charged battery, I can only speculate that it has something to do with their established logistics processes. I mean, they ship 1.1 million phones a day, I imagine that charging them all would be quite a big change somewhere in the process.
Anyway, the feedback is really good and I've at least done my small bit and pointed one of the product managers for N800 at this thread :-)
Cheers,
Karl
(yes I work for Nokia, but not in the group responsible for that device)
scriptingnews (69 months ago | reply)
Karl, thanks for posting, and good news -- I took the N800 to a local Internet cafe and it worked right away, so I think the problem is that I have an Airport Extreme at home (I wasn't trying to connect through it with the N800 though). So we know this unit works, but not at the place where I most want to use it.
extraUNanonymous (69 months ago | reply)
Mmm, apparently Dave the N800 ships with a charged battery (with at least half a charge in it). If that is the case then it's the getting started guide implies that getting started requires a full charge, right? If the getting started guide said
1. Put the battery in
2. Enjoy
maybe that would have been a better experience?
cervus and Jezlyn26 added this photo to their favorites.
scriptingnews (69 months ago | reply)
Karl, yes, of course that would have been a better experience.
To tell me to wait until the battery is fully charged before doing anything is shooting yourself in the foot. iPods ship with half a charge too, and they don't tell me to do that. Esp for a product like the N800 which clearly requires some understanding of how mobile devices work, I think you can trust the user to charge it up fully after playing with it for a few minutes.
scriptingnews (69 months ago | reply)
Okay, this thread had the answer... I have it running with no security, but it works, with the settings tweaked as indicated in the thread. I will have to get it working with security, but for now, I am able to connect.
scriptingnews (69 months ago | reply)
This comment was posted from the N800.
extraUNanonymous (69 months ago | reply)
Hey Dave, I just read what you were trying to do with podcasting and images on scripting.com - that is a very cool idea IMHO. I tried to solicit some ideas on my blog a while ago as to what features a "social media phone" would have, generated some interesting discussion, but it sounds like the N800 might be a great platform to build it yourself:
experiencecurve.com/archives/a-phone-for-blog gers-and-pod...
mlevin77 (69 months ago | reply)
Dave,
At first, I loved the idea of a webserver on a N800 or a cellphone. I think it would be extremely useful in some situations. But, it would have limited storage, run the battery down and be intermittent in some areas with spotty coverage. Flicker has the email access to post photos, but FTP gives you the opportunity to ship that file out to a proper server.
I'm voting for both, but given the choice, I'll vote for FTP.
Michael Levin
Pete Prodoehl (69 months ago | reply)
@mlevin77 By FTP I hope you mean SFTP. Although you should be able to do what is needed with HTTP...
mlevin77 (69 months ago | reply)
@raster Interesting. Why do you suggest SFTP?
Pete Prodoehl (69 months ago | reply)
@mlevin77 FTP is insecure, I'd recommend not using it anywhere as it sends your login info as plain text for anyone on the network to catch. SFTP is secure, and it's always better to be secure than insecure. :)
[Beta] added this photo to his favorites. (69 months ago)