Nokia N810 Review

January 8, 2008

Slow, buggy, unpolished and frustrating. Yes, Nokia’s N810 sucks big time. I hoped I could have told you the story of how I fell in love with my little Nokia, but she’s a real bitch and we’re through! Back in the box she goes. Off to a landfill where she’ll leak heavy metals and probably cause birth defects in future generations. It’s a sad pathetic little device.

There are tons of problems with this device, but all that really matters is this: Does the device’s function outweigh the effort to operate it? In this case, it doesn’t. The N810 is just a pain in the ass to use. It’s frustrating at every corner. Every action is incredibly slow and painful. If the processor were 20x faster it might be usable, but even then there are still lots of bugs and bad UI to deal with.

General usability

When using a tiny computer like the N810, it becomes obvious very quickly that scrolling is the most important UI action. You’re constantly scrolling content around its tiny screen. Apple obviously understands this well with its perfect implementation of finger scrolling on the iPhone. Nokia is absolutely clueless. Scrolling on the N810 is abysmal. It does have finger scrolling, but it rarely works the way you would hope, and half the time it thinks you want to select text or select an item in the list. Using the tiny scroll bars requires that you use the stylus. Using the stylus isn’t that bad, but then you run into the other problems with scrolling - for example one click in the scroll bar often gets sent as two clicks. Dragging the thumb is hit or miss. Most of the time miss. Even when you do it just right, the OS frequently just hangs so you’re not sure if the click or scroll actually registered, so you try again, and again and eventually it will click or scroll 10 times and take you somewhere you didn’t mean to go.

Scrolling also flickers like crazy which is really disconcerting. It’s always erasing the screen and redrawing and your eye can’t follow where you are going. Trying to scroll slowly by dragging the thumb results in a back and forth wiggle effect. Scrolling quickly leads to blurred drawing and massive flicker problems. It’s hard to write down every bit of detail on why the Nokia is a poor scroller, but I can tell you it makes it extremely frustrating to use.

Zooming is equally important and the Nokia also fails horribly. There is a zoom button on the top of the device. Hit it and it erases the screen white, then delays, then it decides it will slowly redraw. Flickery, ugly, slow and confusing sums it up nicely.

Main features

WiFi access is why I bought the device. The plan was to use it primarily as a VoIP phone and a web surfing device. The N810 actually works well as a VoIP phone. I am using Gizmo Project and the client is well designed (relative to the rest of the OS). There is also a Skype client that I assume works well, but I haven’t used it much. The problem with WiFi on the Nokia N810 is that it just takes way too long to find and connect to a public WiFi spot. The UI is terrible and it rarely remembers your previous choices for WiFi network. Everyday when I come to the office it doesn’t want to automatically connect to my WiFi here. I have no idea why not, it does work fine at home. I am forced to manually select the network everyday. Scrolling once again makes the UI horrible when choosing an open WiFi network. As it is refreshing it’s server list (which is often), it scrolls to the top every time, therefore it’s very hard to scroll down the list. It also just takes too long to connect. And takes to long to tell you when there was an error connecting (which is 90% of the time). Pulling out the Nokia at a random coffee shop to try to surf a bit can turn into a nightmare of trying, failing and retrying the different networks until you find one that works. It really ruins the moment and is not something that is quick or convenient. I would be better off to leave the Nokia at home and enjoyed my coffee and pick up a newspaper.

The GPS system is completely useless. I got it to find satellites once when driving. I was half way to my destination and it finally got a signal, but every other time it failed. I purposely went to Golden Gate park on a clear sunny day. Got in the middle of a large field with no buildings or trees around and waited for the GPS to connect (I was hoping to locate where I was so I could find my way out). After 30 minutes I gave up. It never connected. Nokia, WTF!?!

Oh, and another big reason I purchased this device was the promise of doing video conferencing. It has a video camera, but unfortunately there are no apps that currently support it. So it just doesn’t work. Scratch that feature off the list.

Operating system

The operating system is this thing called “Maemo”. It has probably the dumbest name in the history of computing. I still have no idea how to pronounce it. It’s unpolished slow and seems very influenced by Windows with it’s annoying ugly dialogs and “wizards”. It’s based on Linux, and it’s unpolished like Linux. If you’re currently a Maemo developer I’ve got some advice: Switch to Android or iPhone SDK. Maemo is a dead end and will end up in the trash heap of forgotten technology. It’s pathetic and there’s no hope.

The N810 requires a Windows machine to upgrade the OS. There is an undocumented way of upgrading using a Mac, but it fails to properly update. This is unacceptable. It also works for Linux with some command line tool. I don’t have Windows or Linux, so I had to go to a neighbors’ house to upgrade mine. Nokia, it’s not that difficult to wrap a command line tool in a simple Cocoa app. Send me some $$ and I’ll do it for you.

I don’t understand why a large rich corporation builds a device that’s basically unusable. Anyone who uses this device for more than a few days could fill a small notebook with suggestions and tweaks. I wrote such a document, unfortunately the N810 ate my file when I updated the OS. How’s that for “engineering”! Updating the OS erases your memory card. Is that the best you could do, Nokia? Is it that hard to write an installer that preserves the Documents folder?

The rest

Here’s a huge list of things I found annoying. Not in any order, just notes of things I wrote down when using it:

• Web browsing is super slow. Scrolling webpages impossibly slow when there are many images.

• Some videos play, but most do not. You get about one frame per second and the audio is choppy most of the time. It’s worthless if you like watching youtube vids.

• Windows always stealing focus at the wrong times. Say you’re doing IM. Someone sends you a link. You click the link, start reading the page and then your friend IMs you again. Now you’re forced back in to the IM client. In order to read the web page, you either have to tell your friend to STFU, or you have to quit the IM client. Unacceptable.

• Bluetooth connection fails I wrote some notes on the Nokia and thought it would be simple to bluetooth it to my desktop. It failed. It sees the machine, it tries to send to the machine but I just get a failure with no further information. It works with my MacBook, so I know I’m not doing something wrong.

• USB is completely unusable and totally broken Maybe this is just a problem on the Mac, but Nokia should have resolved this before shipping. I couldn’t get bluetooth working, but I remembered that it has a USB port so I hooked it up and it mounted a drive on my mac. But it only seems to work. It actually fails to open folders and show the contents. But for some folders it works. It also fails to unmount cleanly. And while we’re at it, USB mini cable is impossible to tell which is the top or bottom. This is true with all USB types. Who’s the genius who decided this? 50% of the time you’re going to attempt to plug it in upside down.

• Screen brightness at max is not bright enough. It needs to be 3x brighter.

• Volume too soft at maximum volume I was in a coffee shop. VOIP rang, I answer it with headphones, turn up volume to the max and can’t hear a damn thing. Way too soft. Completely useless.

• Lots of “modes” Sometimes I’m in one app and I get stuck in a mode and can’t switch apps. App switching should always work regardless of mode in one particular app. For example I wanted to check the GPS to see why it hasn’t found a signal, but that signal checking modal dialog prevented me from switching apps.

• Headphones self-destructed within a week It’s got these little rubber rings for comfort, but I didn’t realize this until one was missing. No free replacements in the box. The wire used for the headphones is coated in sticky rubber which guarantees it to get tanged and stuck in knots with ease. The headphones button to answer calls is horrible. It doesn’t feel like a button so it’s impossible to find when feeling for it in your bag or in your pocket. Click action on this button is weak.

• Location of the power and headphone jacks makes it difficult to hold and type It’s right where your right hand holds the device.

• Control key on keyboard is only on the right side Makes doing a “ctrl-o” for example difficult

• Saving a simple text document takes multiple seconds to complete We’re talking about a few pages of plain text. Horribly slow and annoying. It’s also modal so you’re stuck staring at the screen.

• You must manually set the time and date Haven’t these guys heard of time servers? Not even an option.

• Full screen mode for an app always resets when app quits I’m constantly turning full screen mode back on every time I launch an app. There’s no pref for this as you would expect.

• Arrow pad thing on keyboard is useless Too flat and impossible to feel your way to finding it and using it.

• Memory card is difficult to click into position When I first got a memory card. I slipped it in the slot and thought it was in. It worked for a while and finally I was getting errors when saving files to the card. I realized that it was not fully clicked in. To properly click the card in you need long fingernails or you have to use the stylus to push it in far enough to click in to place.

• Closing windows is horribly slow When you click the close box, you get this closing window wire animation, but there is a huge lag before the window goes off screen. So you click to close again thinking it failed.

• Dragging Desktop widgets is near impossible It works after many tries and you learn to not try it again.

• Scrolling in desktop RSS reader is horribly slow and draws ugly

• There’s no “Search in Google” right-click option in the browser I use this multiple times per day on my desktop.

• Mapping software is incredibly slow and hogs RAM If I have it running, it will prevent me from launching other apps in some cases. It’s incredibly slow (even for this device) to scroll around the maps.

• Camera is completely useless unless you’re in direct sunlight Images way too dark and pixelated. I actually did a side by side comparison with the iPhone. iPhone took a great picture, the Nokia took a pixelated blob.

• Doesn’t remember scrolled position in text documents using built-in Notes program.

• Most of the downloadable apps either fail to install, or are useless I found a few games that were OK, but nothing very exciting.

• Save as dialog doesn’t remember last place visited If you want to save to an external card, you have to constantly navigate to it when saving.

• “Swap” button frequently fails It will pop up a menu and quickly go away. I find that I frequently have to click it multiple times until it sticks.

• Keyboard backlighting always turns off when you need it most Also lighting is too dim and uneven. It’s hard to read all the keys.

• Navigating menus is painful If an item has a submenu it requires you to click the right arrow to disclose the submenu. That’s an unnecessary step.

• Built in RSS reader app constantly flickers and is hard to read Why do you erase in white, then pause, then refresh. Just refresh!! I don’t need to see it flicker in white first.

• Outside screen visibility is horrible It becomes this gray-hard-to-read-mess in direct sunlight.

• Viewing PDFs is super slow Each page takes seconds to render.

• Battery rattles in the case

• Frequently locks up requiring you to force shut down and restart.

• I frequently find myself staring at the screen with no idea what to do next It really does not feel right even after weeks of use.

Nokia N810 reminds me of my old Newton - another terrible device. Lots of promise, cool animations, but just too slow and cumbersome to be useful.

I’m returning mine as I write this. The current state is not even what I would consider “beta”. It’s surprising that an “industry leader” can release something so sloppy. I’ll never trust Nokia again. Apple, you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about. Nokia is not a viable competitor.

Don’t be fooled by the specs or cool screenshots. The N810 does look great on paper and the case design isn’t so bad, it just fails miserably because of badly written software, poor UI, and a slow processor.

Posted by sgehrman at January 8, 2008 5:48 PM