On 7/10/07, Peter John Hill wrote:
>I looked at Nokia's page on the N800, and I must say, I'm not too
>impressed. Just looking at the chat demo, the keyboard takes up all
>but one line of the screen. How good is the Internet really on this
>device?
The iPhone and N800 have some similarities, the main one being
'the Internet in your pocket', but are very different devices
that would appeal to different markets. Here's a few areas where
I think they really contrast:
* Interface: The iPhone is basically a clean-sheet reworking of
the way you interact with a handheld device, based around direct
manipulation of the interface elements. (Examples: flick the
screen to scroll instead of tapping on scroll bars, pinch/spread
to enlarge/reduce.) While the N800's interface has been reworked
in many ways to fit a handheld screen, it's still a pretty
traditional GUI, with scroll bars, pop-up menus, dialog boxes,
and the like - and using it still feels pretty much like a
traditional PDA running PalmOS or Windows Mobile (or a
traditional desktop OS).
* Software: The iPhone uses a highly integrated and polished
software suite that covers its main functions very well, at
least on a consumer level (features like the e-mail aren't
geared for an high volume/corporate environment, but I'd argue
that's not the target market for the first gen iPhone) - but
it's a closed system currently, with Apple the only one able to
add to the software package. The N800 runs a Linux platform
called Maemo, customized for operation on mobile devices, and is
open to all kinds of third-party software - but while the
included applications are generally polished and work well
enough, they're even more limited than the iPhone's (there's no
calendar, for example, and the contacts application is limited
to e-mail, phone, web address, and GoogleTalk account), and
third-party applications are highly variable and rarely consistent.
* Communications: The iPhone is designed to work over either
traditional cell networks or WiFi, and uses traditional cell
networks for voice. The N800 is like a laptop; WiFi (b/g
variants, no -n support) is the primary network access, though
it can use a regular cell phone as a modem via Bluetooth. You
can do VoIP over WiFi, but only through something like Skype or
the Gizmo project; it's like using a computer to do VoIP, not a
standard cell phone.
* Internet - web: Both the iPhone and the N800 promise 'the
Internet [read: the Web] in your pocket', but take different
approaches to providing it. The iPhone doesn't try to
re-render/re-flow pages for its small screen; instead, it
renders pages as if for a full-sized screen, then provides
various shortcuts for zooming in/out and scrolling around
various areas of the page. It generally worked well for me, but
it felt like viewing the page through a window/magnifying glass.
The N800, OTOH, uses its 800x480 screen (not far off a common
full-size computer screen from a few years back, and I still
know a couple of people who regularly run their computers at
800x600) to run the web as if it were on a regular computer
screen; you can get a feel for it by setting your monitor to
800x600 in System Preferences. Most of the web is perfectly
readable, but since a lot of pages are designed to expect
1024x768 (or higher) resolution, you're going to have to do
horizontal scrolling on a fair number of sites. (The N800's
browser, an Opera variant, has an 'Optimized View' that tries to
re-flow the page to fit the screen; I've had mixed results with
it.) And here's the kicker: Because it's squeezing those 800
pixels into a 3.5" wide screen, nominally 12-point text comes
out at about 5- or 6-point. It's still readable, but is enough
to cause eyestrain for me after a few minutes; you can easily
zoom in and out using dedicated hardware keys, but then you have
to do a lot more scrolling both horizontally and vertically -
and scrolling is nowhere near as smooth or easy as on the
iPhone. Both systems make serious compromises to fit the Web on
a handheld device, and I haven't use the iPhone enough to say
which one would work out better on an extended basis; I do know
the N800's experience is compromised enough that I prefer to use
the laptop for browsing if it's feasible. (Note this is not a
knock on the N800's screen; when using the FBReader e-book
application, I think it's by far the best e-book reader I've
ever tried.)
* Internet - other: I didn't get a chance to play with the
iPhone's e-mail at the store, so I can't really comment on it;
I'd call the N800's standard e-mail program 'barely adequate',
and frankly don't use the N800 for e-mail at all. The iPhone has
several dedicated widgets for accessing internet services like
weather and Google Maps; they seemed very polished, but you're
limited to what Apple provides. The N800 has an RSS reader that
I tried using for a bit but found too limiting, a streaming
audio player that seems nice enough (I don't normally listen to
streaming audio), a GoogleTalk client that I can't really judge
as I never use IM, and various third-party-hobbyist dedicated
information widgets (I tried a couple of the weather-related
ones and couldn't get them to work; I just use web-based weather
info). The N800 also has third-party clients for standard 'net
services like VNC (remote computer screen viewing/control), FTP,
and command-line SSH; the iPhone currently doesn't have anything
like that.
* Media: No contest. The N800 has a 'Media Player' application
with a semi-serviceable but very clunky interface that feels
like something out of the late 1990's, skips when playing audio
(though at least it does support AAC files from iTunes), won't
play DiVX 6.0 files or MP4 files encoded for an iPod, and did I
mention CLUNKY? There's a third-party player application called
Canola that uses a Front Row-style interface and has been
getting good reviews from N800 users; this conversation has
inspired me to go ahead and give it a try, though the amount of
configuration computerese makes me think it's still not quite
ready for average users. Compare this with the tour-de-force
that is the 'iPod' interface on the iPhone; I'm not sure I like
it better than the standard iPod interface, but it's light-years
ahead of anything I've seen anywhere else.
To sum up: The iPhone feels like a new category of device all on
its own - a 'gadget' with a uniquely integrated interface and
operation style that stands on its own, apart from anything else
- but that has to be treated as a unitary whole, because it
can't be modified or expanded beyond what Apple's provided.
Operating it feels like a new experience apart from anything
I've tried before. The N800 feels more like a traditional
computer squeezed into a handheld; you run traditional
applications with a traditional GUI, loading and saving from a
traditional file system, with standard computer-y ways of
working on networks. This has advantages and disadvantages: you
can do many of the things you're used to doing with regular
computers, in the way you're used to, but trying to squeeze a
traditional computer into a handheld entailed a number of
compromises and they're going to bite you from time to time.
Also, if you want to do anything beyond the web or the very
limited applications bundled with the N800, you have to depend
on the 770/800 hobbyist culture - and while that has produced
some very nice applications like FBReader, the quality is
hit-or-miss, even the best apps have some rough edges (FBReader
forces you to wade through unix directory trees, for example,
instead of using the standard Nokia user-space directory
browser), and availability depends on whether some hobbyist
found your need interesting enough to work on. Standard PIM
applications like an address book are only available as
quick-and-dirty ports of mediocre Linux software, and
installation often requires a certain amount of technical sophistication.
The iPhone aims for the 'average' user, with a controlled set of
functions executed with a high amount of polish; the N800 might
be trying to aim at average users down the road, and as long as
you stay with the web browser it's actually usable by
slightly-above-average tech users, but for anything more than
that you really need to be a tech or gadget enthusiast to get
much out of it. Which is a shame; the equipment itself has a lot
of potential, but the software support just isn't there for
anyone but hobbyists who enjoy tinkering and going out and
browsing the Maemo wiki and Internet Tablet Talk forums for new software.
Travis Butler
tbutler
mac.com
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