Nokia’s MWC event has come and gone, with no mention of Maemo much less a 4th generation Maemo tablet. I was just plain wrong.
It’s a crucial time for the Internet Tablet product line. Something special needs to appear to set the device apart from tiny computers (like the VIAO P) and superpowered phones (like the Nokia N97.) Something must burst forth to convince consumers to adopt the Maemo platform instead of buying into other established Linux, Windows, or Symbian platforms.
After thousands of blog comments and hundreds of conversations with mobile device enthusiasts, I have come up with the following: Purchase decisions are made on several common factors:
- Function: Does it do everything I want it to? Does it do it well? The features in Maemo 5 are built for social networking with a rich web browser, content creation, and content consumption. With that, it needs to grow to include the latest in new media like Netflix On Demand, Hulu, and BBC iPlayer. This will give it an extra leg up over Apple’s lame duck version of Safari on the iPhone.
- Form: Is it comfortable, usable, intuitive, and small? The Nokia N810 did a lot “right” but could do better. I remember (and agree with) a comment suggesting a capacitive touch screen and total removal of the stylus.
- Price: Am I getting what I am paying for? Will I wish I had spent less money on another device or more money on a different device?
- Trust: Does the company behind this device have the experience and follow-through to justify the money I am going to spend? Nokia is by far the dominant mobile handset maker in the world, but their high-end Nseries seems to be only a small part of that. North American consumers are especially wary since our carriers use several different frequency bands for calls and data. NAM versions of Nseries phones (like the Nokia N95-3) only get 3G from AT&T Wireless. Even so – some of us swich to AT&T to get the sweet N95 action only to later be left out to dry when the NAM firmware stagnates while the European firmware gets new updates and features.
In the best of times, Internet Tablets were a hard sell. With US $299 “netbook” class machines flooding the market, Maemo tablets need to break away and pull out ahead. Let’s hope for an 800×480 capacitive touchscreen, integrated/searchable application catalog, comfortable keyboard wth a D-pad that allows for light gaming, good cameras with video capture, and a fast enough CPU to handle the latest in new media. Let’s also hope that it doesn’t come out too far past US $299.
Yes – it is unrealistic to expect all of the above to fit into one product. Sacrifices will be made in design. The price will have to match the components and development costs. It’s nice to hope, though, isn’t it?
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25 Comments
yes, I too am disappointed. I can only guess that Nokia didn’t have a device ready to demo, the putative N900 must be quite a long way off production (I hope that Nokia don’t decide it’s too costly or demand is too long and drop some features to make it cheaper, postpone it or worse yet cancel it).
Many of the other manufacturers at MWC/3GSM showed off prototypes (even ones which were non-functioning prototypes and perhaps empty shells), but I’ve noticed Nokia never do that (avoiding the Osborne effect?) which to be honest I prefer otherwise I get my hopes up.
The way you talk about capacitive makes me think you really don’t understand the pros and cons of the technology. You do realize that switching to capacitive would instantly invalidate about half of the applications on our platform, right? No more liqbase, no more MyPaint. You definitely wouldn’t be able to use things like KDE, either.
The price you’re suggesting is also entirely unrealistic. Why does everybody seem to think the tablets should be competing with off-the-shelf generic x86 netbooks? We’re talking top-of-the-line mobile hardware here versus rebranded 4-year-old hardware. They’re simply not comparable.
Feels like you’re losing your touch, ThoughtFix. . . .
Ryan, I think you’re mistaken. The netbooks being released right now, a lot of them are using top of the line hardware as well. The Atom processor is top of the line, and is a good, low-power processor. I don’t think the price point is ENTIRELY unrealistic. I think it’s possible, just not with the same feature set the n810 has.
And since I don’t know the ins/outs of capacitive touch screens, can you explain why a different input method would “invalidate” an app? I didn’t see touch screens invalidate mouse-driven apps.
It is obvious that the N810 is discontinued, but I would have expected Nokia to release a new product prior to discontinuing the old product. The Nokia Maemo guys are still employed, right? Bad customer relationship management on Nokia’s part. All they would need to say is that there will be a new tablet that will be freakin sweet, and it’s coming soon. It would make us all happy. Right now, this feels like Nokia Tablets are dead.
@Gelatinous, no, the Atom is mostly just a newly manufactured Pentium I. It’s low-power, sure, but most of its power benefits come because it’s an old design manufactured with new processes. It really is just a cheap x86 CPU. The rest of the netbook hardware isn’t anything to write home about either. The two devices just don’t compare.
Capacitive doesn’t offer the same accuracy as resistive, so activities like drawing and sketching (MyPaint, liqbase), applications that require a high level of precision to hit very small widgets (basically any straight desktop recompile), or desktop-oriented DEs like KDE and LXDE all go out the window. This would alienate a large portion of tablet owners and generally greatly decrease the usability of the product.
Capacitive is great hype, but you really need to understand the benefits and disadvantages of both technologies before you decide that one is more appropriate than the other.
@heathinker, I recommend you do some reading up.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9093153240.html
http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Fremantle
@Ryan, I think no one really cares if the Atom is just a recycled piece of junk or not. If netbooks can achieve longer battery life (the EEE 1000H can push more than 4 hours playing video), higher performance (this is not even a contest) for a lower price than the Nokia tablets, it’s a no-brainer.
They really are not comparable, the tablets are in for a tough run. Hopefully they won’t go extinct, I like them as well
@VZsolt, well, they haven’t managed better battery life so far, and while all those things are great, are netbooks pocketable? I don’t think so.
@Ryan, they aren’t that far off in battery life, but hey, there has to be room for improvement. Still, if we’re not talking about playing music while on the go, is being pocketable that much of a plus? It’s amazing how small bags the 9″ netbooks can fit in.
And for everyone without eagle eyes (me included), the big screen is a definite advantage in web browsing, reading, etc.
Not to mention that here in Hungary, the tablets weren’t even sold even before being discontinued… Which is a shame, I would’ve bought an N810 for myself for sure. (I’ve borrowed one for half a year, so I’m not talking out of thin air).
sigh.
atom processors are not recycled pentium-M, they’re quite a lot more like core-i7 in fact. the reason why they’ve failed to deliver on the power saving is that they’ve been used with regular desktop chipsets, but now that “poulsbo” aka US15W chipset is more readily available, atom might reach its potential.
meanwhile, nvidia seem determined to take a slice of the pie, and via too with their nano.
the new arm cortex a9 will also liven things up, the new tablet was going to use omap34xx (cortex a8) maybe we should pray that nokia are going to revamp things to use A9??
@paul, er, for a chip that wont be seen in devices until 2011? . . .
I just recently got an iPod Touch, and now I look at my N810 differently. The iPod touch makes browsing websites easy, even though it has a smaller screen, it’s very responsive. The N810 on the other hand is slow even with Fennec. It’s also quite a bit chunky, which is probably because of the hardware keyboard. The touchscreen is the major benefit though. It’s limitations makes developers produce simplified UI designs with less options. In my opinion, less options is better, as it creates a smoother workflow. The only reason why I like the 810 now is for gps and that it has linux on it. However, I much prefer to use the iPod touch, as the applications are very easy to use (finger only) and they load up / animate quickly. On the 810, the builtin camera is only good for videoconferencing, and since you can’t use it with skype, msn, or flash, it’s practically useless. You can’t really take photos with it, since you can’t look at the screen while you take the photos. The gps is good, but wifi triangulation takes half a second, and for most cases, a general location is good enough to tell me what’s around, or blog with location based services. Maemo as compared to iPhone is a dead horse. It’s slow, un-standardized UI, paired with poorly designed hardware. They should have kept with the N800 design – keyboardless, rotating camera. Add in GPS and increase resolution of the camera, and processor speed. give it a finger touchscreen and I could really see this taking off. As it is now, it’s just a hobbyist machine for linux developers.
I fully agree with Derek. The iPod touch showed everyone the way the n800 should have evolved. I sold my n800 and bought an ipod touch in late 2008 because I think it is the better internet tablet.
Not only is browsing faster, better and more responsive, the touch does have some features the n800 somehow never acquired: easy, fast and reliable access to music, videos, emails, addresses, calendars and new software (and an extra cool feature for me: multiple Chinese input methods).
@ryan, honestly, who wants to use KDE on the n800? Being able to do it doesn’t necessarily imply that it is practical. Fast reading and scrolling should be the top priority for any internet tablet, and here the resistive touch screens are second best.
Personally, I’m really disappointed about the latest developments regarding the Nokia Tablets. Why not adding 3g/HSDPA connectivity (data only) much earlier? Why no desktop sync? Why no proper Skype? How come the ipod touchs browser and email app are so much better than Nokias, given their much longer experience with mobile devices?
I do think that Nokia made some very bad strategic decisions and will stop the tablet experiment sooner or later. A concept I was totally into when it started 4 years ago (See Ryan, actually I was confused which 4 year old hardware you were talking about).
@dozent
“I fully agree with Derek. The iPod touch showed everyone the way the n800 should have evolved.”
Oh really?) That overpriced piece of hardware with no bluetooth (how the hell it could be internet tablet without bluetooth), castrated lagging-all-the-way browser, no multitasking (IM+Browser/Book/Game anyone?) and with jerking all around with stupid iTunes, which is good only for Macs, it’s super shitty junk on Windows, and a spirit of yoda on Linux? You mean that device, that I can’t even take a quicknote with is a good evolution for n800?
Jeez, this is so pathetic…
@wazd
Calm down.
The ipod touch is cheaper than this and (very likly) the next generation of the internet tablets from Nokia.
Sure I would like to have multitasking and bluetooth. However, I found both to be minor issues. If I’m on the run and have no wifi available I use JoikuSpot. And coming to multitasking… I haven’t used IM on the n800 a lot and neither do so on the touch. For that purpose I happly stick to my e61i, which has a keyboard. When I surf the web or read in Stanza and decide to switch to watch a movie and afterwards return to my reading, I always end up at the place were I left (on that webpage or ebook).
Although iTunes is evil, it is a damn good way to organize music, videos and software (yes, I own a Mac). I use EyeTv and really like having my TV Shows recorded and automatically added to the touch without me being involved at any stage.
And what is all the talk about taking notes? There are no real options for that on the n800 and the touch does have many note taking apps. Besides, for taking notes I stick to my phone and send them via email to evernote. Or write them in evernote on the touch.
pathetic… puh
@wazd: It’s not pathetic. Let’s look at it a bit. Multitasking is good if you are doing multiple things at once. On my little tablet, what could I possibly multitask on? writing an email and reading a webpage? Sure, you have to close out the app you are using to open another app on the iphone, but you don’t have to ” file – save – close ” or anything of the sort. it just saves the app state and switches. I can go between web browser and email all day on the thing without any slowdowns at all. I can be in the middle of typing an email and switch to the web browser then switch back, and I’m at the same place in the email. If that isn’t multitasking, what is? You’re talking about doing background tasks like a webserver or something? this is an internet tablet not a webserver, get over it. 90% of people don’t need that kind of multitasking. Also, why the heck would you want to read a book, play a game, browse the web, and im all at the same time? ad/hd much? you can im / browse / read a book all you want. ipod touch doesn’t disable that.
Not taking notes? wtf is the “notes” application then? I can take notes on it just fine…
Lagging web browser? Castrated? Not at all, this web browser works on more sites better than the n810 ever could, and neither platform has java. Ok, so we don’t have flash yet (thank god) – it was mostly used for stupid website navigation which should have been done in html, and for some web videos. youtube is supported on the ipod touch, so who gives a rat about flash. It’s bloat anyway.
I do agree, they should have had bluetooth enabled – they did install a bluetooth capable chip, but crippled it for the ANT protocol used in the Nike accessory (stupid decision Apple!). Anyway, if it had bluetooth, I would leave my n810 at home, or in my car where it could act as a $99 gps device (which actually costs $300 or more and is harder to use for gps than the $99 one)
I was getting off point though, Nokia is not Apple, and it shouldn’t try to imitate them. However, Apple did many things right, and Nokia can learn from Apple’s re-imagining of the portable web / tablet / pda. Nokia should re-imagine “use cases”, not programming platforms. Let the developers work on the platform, but when you release the tablet, make it user friendly, and let it fit the “use cases” not just the bare minimum, but give it all you got and spend your time making it a quality experience. I think it’s time for new leadership in Nokia’s N-Series line.
That’s pretty regular apple’s user pov. “I don’t use it so why would I need it in the device?” It’s not like this. You don’t use it cause you don’t have it in the device.
@Derek: multitasking is when you get back to the browser – it doesn’t reload your previously opened window (safari does it sometimes even when you switch between tab within). Multitasking is when you chat in IM you can click on the link and watch the video there, and after that you can return to IM and type a response. Oh no, you should reconnect first. Oh no you can’t watch videos. Sorry bout that.) God bless Nokia that it’s not Apple.
P.S.: You maybe don’t know what webserver is
@dozent
iTunes is so epic crap that I don’t want to even discuss it. Crysis ran faster on my PC than iTunes. As about “minor issues” – I’m finding user interface a “minor issue”, I’m a command lin guru. I think any device with only command line support is super awesome. Yep? For purpose of user-interfacing I carry 21 inch laptop with me, cause I’m not an eagle-eye.
Bout notes: I usually take handwritten notes with (tadam) liqbase also known as fasterthanpaper
It’s really faster than typing with tiny keyboard.
“Not at all, this web browser works on more sites better than the n810 ever could”
Careful or you’ll tell me what sites actually works better on iTouch than on n8*0
About the touch screen: The point is, with such a small screen, having a pixel perfect pointer is less important than having ui elements large enough so you won’t make mistakes. Zoomable text is genius, and the multi tasking scenario that you specified is already possible within iPhone / iPod touch.
I won’t indulge the trolls in your post concerning my technical ability or specific examples. This was about directions for Nokia to go, and I think it went the wrong direction, and should be looking at what Apple, RIM, et al did right where Nokia absolutely failed.
Yes, I’d hate if Nokia copied iTunes, but the App Store is something I’d love to see them copy.
@Derek
Who are you to judge what’s “less important” or what’s “more important”?
Don’t know what’s possible with “current” iPod but while I’ve used iPod 2.0 it was always reloading the page when I was trying to return to the browser.
P.S.: “App Store” concept was made long before Apple. It’s called “repositories”.
P.P.S.: Seems like iPod’s “notes” doesn’t have landscape mode. Oh my oh my
there are many aspects of the ipod-touch and iphone I do like, but you have to remember it’s a consumer-level device, and so like all apple products has to “just work”, and so to stop people breaking the software means not allowing people to go “under the hood”. that said, you can jail-break it and do what you want. Even Nokia have “red pill mode” to limit the damage.
Hopefully we can use some of the best ideas from the iphone but avoid the obstacles.
Multi-tasking for me is a must – being able to have a web window open, copy some text, paste into an IM or email, or vice versa.
On the issue of resistive vs capacitive touch – the merits are also affected by the existence of a keyboard. The N800 and I think N810 have pressure-sensitive screens, you can see that for yourself in the maemopad+ application.
As a tablet the n800 was a more pure device, if the n810 had been same as 800 except with more ram (no need for additional flash as it has twin sd sockets) and GPS and better camera and faster wifi and a2dp, and maybe faster CPU, I would have upgraded, as it is I’ve stuck with n800.
so in conclusion the iphone/ipod-t are very different beasts to the tablets and whilst they have common features their users have different philosophies; we can learn from each other but shouldn’t slavishly love/hate/reject.
Geez. Typical Apple user… Thats a different story. Wish I could use a Mac at work, tought.
As said before, and also pointed out by Derek, most of us like using one but stable and responsive app at a time. Altough, I agree that having backround information services would be nice.
I also agree that iTunes on XP is a lame duck, but in the office I have to run it on a (stupid) vista system and have no speed issues.
But then again, whom do I talk to. You said UI is a minor issue. This seems nothing but absurd for me. Internet tablets should be all about fast, quick and easy to user UIs. However credits for being old school commandlin-ish.
For handwrittin notes I carry old fashioned tree-based options.
@Paul
“so in conclusion the iphone/ipod-t are very different beasts to the tablets and whilst they have common features their users have different philosophies; we can learn from each other but shouldn’t slavishly love/hate/reject.”
As much as I agree on last slavish part, I don’t really see the different user philosophies between the devices.
@dozent
when I started current job I had the option of laptop or desktop, windows or osx or linux. I opted for a macbookpro… after two months I installed linux on it as I found OSX to be too restrictive. Then the next guy who joined a month later got my mac, and I downgraded to a much cheaper Tosh tecra which runs linux just as well
@paul
I’m not working in IT. If I would, the Macbook Pro might not be my first option, too…
However, I work with documents, presentations and web-based communication in several languages and here Mac OS is just great. I tried Linux many times (because its open and everything) but I need my stuff just to work and be user friendly.
>"As said before, and also pointed out by Derek, most of us like using one but stable and responsive app at a time."
I like using multiple stable and responsive apps at a time. And I use them everywhere.
>"I have to run it on a (stupid) vista system and have no speed issues."
Well, let's forget bout that (f)lamewar bout stupid Vista, I'll just say that my home PC is with Vista (for 1.5 years) so it's not OS problem.
>"But then again, whom do I talk to. You said UI is a minor issue. This seems nothing but absurd for me."
You really don't know anything bout sarcasm?) Well anyway, I see absurd in thinking that lack of bluetooth is a minor issue in media/web surfing device.
>"For handwrittin notes I carry old fashioned tree-based options."
Oh, what else should you carry with an iPod to replace it's missing functionality?)
@wazd
Given your previous statements I wasn’t sure whether the “UI being minor issue” was rethoric or not
And, as said before, no bluetooth is certainly not a good option, but for me it is just not the most critical issue.
About the stability:
I sure would like to have many stable and responsive apps open at any given time. However, that was not my experience with the n800 (which I actually really liked, when it came out). At least I had speed issues when running 2-3 browser windows and Canola (great but so slow app) only. I don’t know how many times the Email app or the RSS reader crashed. Lets just say it was a lot.
Paper sometimes has its merits, too. Did you try out the handwriting input on the n800?