Here we are again with another offering from Nokia the C3-01 Touch and Type, this is the slightly bigger brother to another recently released Nokia the X3-02 Touch and Type.
Here at tracyandmatt.co.uk we have had so many Nokia’s in for review and most of which we have liked but there have been the odd exception to the rule so is the C3-01 one of those that we don’t like? Or will it be in the liked category?
Read on for the full review.
Nokia, as we all know, are one of the biggest if not the biggest mobile phone manufacturer to date, so when they announced the new Nokia N8 handset I personally was super excited to realise that Matt had one in for review so I immediately snapped up my chance to review a handset of this stature.
What’s new about the N8 is the fact that it’s the very first Symbian device to have version 3 installed, this is huge news for all Symbian and Nokia fans alike because the operating system is more expansive and less boring than previous versions, so I asked the following question to myself…
‘Can Symbian version 3 compete with android, iOS, Blackberry OS etc?’
To find out more about this exciting device read on for the full review.
As you are probably aware, if you have been paying attention, Matt was invited by Nokia to attend a secret event last night in London. Led across London by two lovely ladies (and a decent bloke) from WOMworld he was taken to the Millennium bridge for possibly the largest unboxing video ever!
This was part of the #Nokiabox experience that Matt and just seven other bloggers have been part of worldwide. (Yes, he does feel quite honoured!)
Ever wondered what Matt looks like in front of the camera for a change? Have a look at the video below so see him and the Nokia C6 in action.
Not quite as detailed as our normal unboxing videos, Matt wasn’t expecting it, but just a bit of fun. We will do a ‘normal’ unboxing video to give you a little more in depth info on the device so keep your eyes peeled over the next few days.
Well, here is something interesting from Nokia. The N900 running a new operating system, Maemo 5. The Nokia N900 is more of an internet tablet with the phone function thrown in for good measure but is it any good and could this signal the end of Nokia putting Symbian on all devices?
What’s in the box:
That’s a hard one as we had the special box with a fox and a cake in it! If you did not see it, and its well worth watching, view Matt’s Nokia N900 unboxing video here.
The ten second review:
General:
The top of the N900 houses the up/down volume rocker, the power button and the camera button. There is also an infrared gate!
Nokia N900 Top
Only a stylus can be found on the bottom, and what a horrible one it is too.
Nokia N900 Bottom
On the left side is the MicroUSB port as well as a speaker grill.
Nokia N900 Left Side
Over on the right is the screen sleep button, the 3.5mm headset jack and another speaker grill.
Nokia N900 Right Side
Located on the rear of the device is just the camera lens and flash covered by a nice sliding door.
Nokia N900 Rear
And on the front its all screen apart from the ear speaker, sensors and front facing camera. No buttons at all.
Nokia N900 Front
Highlights:
Lowlights:
Review:
The first thing I thought when I first held the Nokia N900 was “oh my god, this thing is chunky!” I own a HTC Touch Pro2 so I am used to a big device and strangely enough there actually isn’t a great deal of difference between the two handsets in terms of size and weight but the Nokia feels a little more brick like.
Bricks aside, the N900 feels well made. The slide mechanism when opening the keyboard is smooth and the best way I can sum it up is tight.
The keyboard itself has pros and cons. My first impressions was that it was half decent and over time I have grown to like it more. Its not the best by a long way but its good. Side by side with the HTC Touch Pro2 there is a big difference in size and this did have an effect on how easily I could type on it.
Only having three rows is always a bit frustrating when having to use the number keys and why Nokia have placed the spacebar to the right hand side instead of the centre baffles me. Its a pain having it stuck there! When I type on a slide out QWERTY I like to use both my left and right thumb for the spacebar. Not on this device though!
The keys however feel nice to use in terms of the plastic they are made from. They almost have a slight rubbery feel to them. They are just let down by their size unfortunately.
The resistive screen on on the Nokia N900 is pretty impressive. At 3.5 inches its a perfect size in my opinion. Small enough to fit in a pocket but big enough to watch moves and surf the web comfortably. As you will see from my screen shots the colours are bright and vibrant. Nice work Nokia.
Onto the software. Now with any new operating system it takes a while to become accustomed to it so I may get a few things incorrect. I like to review a device without doing too much research or reading other reviews as this enables me to give an honest opinion on the unit.
I must say that the Maemo 5 OS has been dead easy to get accustomed with. I certainly found it easier than using Symbian! Sure it takes some getting used to but its not complicated and finding features on the phone doesn’t require delving into as many sub folders as on a Symbian phone.
There are four home screens on the Nokia N900 and these can be accessed by swiping the screen left or right. They flow well and are quick to change.
Each of these screens can be totally customised. You can add widgets, shortcuts, bookmarks and even contacts. Like Android it really allows you to set the device up the way you want it and I was rather impressed with this. Adding these widgets etc could not be much simpler. Just touch the top right of the screen and a settings logo appears. Give it a press and it then allows you to add, rearrange, or remove on screen icons.
As you will see from the above image you still get your basic phone information in the top of the screen. This shows you the time, your signal strength and battery level. Next to this info is an orange icon that looks like two small rectangles. A press of this shows you what applications are currently open. You now have the option to close any you no longer require like a task manager.
From here you will notice that the orange icon in the top left has changed again. Pressing this takes you into the devices main menu.
The menu is made up of 15 icons and it looks typically Nokia. At the bottom of the list is the “more” icon. This takes you into a second menu where you can scroll up and down and this list will show you all of your installed applications.
I think thats it for the the OS. Simple yet effective.
So lets have a look at the N900s main features and if they are any good?
Nokia seem to be rather good with their cameras and the Nokia N900 is on par with some of there previous camera phones. Once again they have used the Carl Zeiss lens on the N900 and at 5mp it takes a decent shot. I took it to Tesco!
Its not the best but its without doubt good enough for uploading photos to the web or even printing. I was pleased to see that Nokia had included a slide over lens cover to protect both the lens and the flash. Nice.
The camera interface is fairly sparse with not as many settings options as on some other phones like the recent Samsung ones but like most things on the Nokia N900 are simple to use. Video recording was okay but nothing special.
For media I would say that the Nokia N900 is super cool. Entering the media player from the main menu gives you the below options:
Music playback on the N900 is average. I was not blown away, but the sound was clear and I could hear all the individual instruments on the track I was listening to.
As you will see below the album art is shown and the onscreen keys are uncomplicated.
Video playback was excellent. The screen really does the device justice here and with internal storage of 32Gb you will be able to store a load of movies on the device. You can view my demo video here.
Messaging was a bit hit and miss on the N900. SMS was no problem. The messaging interface was easy to use and attractive to look at. Where I had a problem was email. I couldn’t set up an email account. I’m sure I must have been doing something wrong but I tried three different accounts and none worked. If it was me then that’s fair enough but what did annoy me was that on every other phone I have reviewed setting up email was a piece of cake. (I nearly said something else then!)
The N900 supports threaded messaging though and that always a bonus.
I liked the calendar on the Nokia N900.
As you can see above, both month and week views are available and i liked the fact that you can screen swipe forward and back to access forthcoming weeks. Setting up appointments was as easy as pie and I am loving the black and orange interface.
Web browsing has to be one of the most important features on the Nokia N900. You really get an almost PC like experience. As the handset is marketed as an internet tablet, rather than a phone, its nice to see flash included. This allows you to watch any onscreen videos without being directed to a third party player. I’m not sure if I prefer this or not. I quite like being sent to youtube.
Accessing and adding bookmarks is a breeze and its dead simple to use the browser.
Zooming is a brand new experience on the N900 as it has a rather unique way of doing it. You can use the normal double tap, like on most phones but you can also swirl! Imagine putting your finger on the screen and swirling it round in a circle. Clockwise to zoom in and anti clockwise to zoom out. Its a bit odd and takes some getting used to but its quite cool.
You can also use the Nokia N900 as a phone!
As far as I am aware this is the only feature where you can use the phone in portrait mode. Everything else is in landscape. When I did the screen capture it came out in landscape. I cant get it to do it again though!
Conclusion:
After speaking recently to a few other people who have used the N900 some said they had big problems with it such as it turning itself off. Not me though. I had no issues at all. I actually really like the Nokia N900. Not enough to get one but I think its a good bit of kit. Its still early days for the OS and I would imagine there will be some updates and improvements in the near future but in the meantime I have to say its my favourite Nokia device yet. Nice work Nokia. Now move that spacebar back to the centre!
Posted by: James
A few weeks ago Matt brought you the unboxing video of the Nokia N900 and what an unboxing it was, complete with a fox and a cake in the box!
Matt then sent the N900 to me to review but just before its published I thought I would give you a further demonstration with my new video camera!
If you have any further questions regarding the Nokia N900 please head over to the forum and get your questions in quick. I may have time to slot them into the review.
Here is a reminder of the Nokia N900 specifications:
Posted by: James
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This is NOT your average unboxing video!
I’ve been trying to get my hands on the Nokia N900 for a while now, many of you have emailed me asking for a review or asking questions about the N900 so we’ve been bugging Nokia for a review model almost daily!
About a week ago I had an email from Nokia asking if I would like to try out one of their new handsets, but the catch was that they were unable to tell me which one they were going to send me! Not a problem I said, we’ll take a look anyway.
So a few days ago this large, heavy black plastic cube turned up in the office. There were no instructions, no list of contents, just a USB to MiniUSB cable supplied. There was no obvious way to open the box – a little puzzle! 🙂
So first of all we connected the box up to a PC with the USB cable to see what would happen, when Windows reported that it was installing drivers for a USB to Serial bridge and added a serial device on COM4 I thought it would be a good idea to start a terminal connection to it and, well watch the video below to see what happened next.
Head over to the forum to discuss the Nokia N900 and feel free to ask questions in time for the review. Don’t forget to Follow us on Twitter to be notified when the review goes live too!
EDIT: Our full Nokia N900 review has now been posted on the site and you can also see James’ Nokia N900 Demonstration video too.
Nokia N900 specification:
Posted by: Matt
The chances are that if you are reading Matt & Tracy’s blog then you will need little introduction to the Nokia N810 internet tablet. I confess to being the owner of a Nokia N800 internet tablet so, when Matt invited me to review the N810 I jumped at the chance. I was curious to see how the latest member of the breed measured up.
Introduction
Internet tablets themselves are an odd breed that occupy a bit of a niche market. They are neither PDAs, mobile phones or laptop replacements, however, with a fully customisable Linux operating system they are real computers with great potential to act as converged devices. They are to my mind what the PDA always should have been
The N810 represents the latest evolution of a concept that began with the N770 in 2006 and progressed through the N800 in 2007. The 770 and the 800 have something of a cult following, but so far have failed to make a wider impact. Perhaps the 810 might change that?
What’s in the box?
1. N810.
2. Plug in wall charger.
3. USB cable.
4. Stereo headphones..
5. Slip case.
6. Spare stylus.
7. Dashboard mount (for use as a GPS).
General
The form factor is similar to its predecessor the N800, albeit smaller. The device looks clean and modern with its brushed metallic aluminium style fascia. It feels reassuringly solid and well made, sitting easily in one hand whilst leaving the other free to use the stylus. If you’re left-handed like me then you might find that the stylus stored in the upper right corner is a bit awkward to access.
The controls are similar to the N800 but arranged slightly differently:
· On the top from left to right there is a switch for full-screen mode where toolbars and the taskbar can be turned on/off, a volume/zoom up/down control, in the middle is the on/off/standby power switch and on the right is the screen lock switch.
· On the upper left corner is a multi-function led designed to give visual notifications of device status.
· On the front fascia to the left are the home screen select and browser back navigation buttons. Above these is the webcam and light sensor.
· To the right on the side, from top to bottom is a 3.5mm audio socket, power socket and, hidden under the stand, a USB2.0 micro socket.
· On the bottom the mini-SD slot is hidden behind a plastic cover. Next to that can be found together with the battery cover release switch.
· On the back a brushed-metallic fastened panel hides the removable battery that is found in many Nokia mobile phones.
· Very little to be seen on the left hand side of the device beyond the loudspeaker.
· The QWERTY keyboard is accessed by sliding it out from the bottom of the unit in a fashion similar to some HTC Windows Mobile devices. Doing that not only gives access to the keyboard, but also context sensitive menu key on the lower left and a five-way navigator D-pad used for moving around various screens and menus.
The N800’s two SD slots have been dropped in favour of one mini-SD slot. This seems like a backward step and reduces the potential for expansion, but Nokia provides an internal card with 2GB of file storage so, potentially there’s up to 10GB of space available and perhaps more with larger cards. A swap file can be configured on the internal storage to improve performance, but I can’t say I noticed any difference.
Highlights:
· Speedy performance.
· Excellent bright, evenly-lit and sharp screen.
· Quality construction.
· Powerful, highly customisable and reliable operating system.
· Connectivity.
· Open source community support.
Lowlights:
· Navigation is a backward step from the N800 at times requiring the keyboard to be opened up.
· Unfinished feel to some of the software.
· Only one memory expansion slot.
· Brushed metallic finish is susceptible to scratches and greasy finer marks.
Review
In use the N810 generally feels very responsive with applications launching quickly and menus popping up on command with little delay. The fact that it’s a Linux device should not put you off – it’s easy to use, configure and very intuitive.
As the name intimates, the N810’s primary function is web browsing and in this respect it’s pretty much on the money as far as mobile devices go. The Mozilla based browser is quite speedy with support for Flash, and the large 800 x 480 pixel screen allows web pages to be viewed in full without having to scroll around like you would on a PDA or phone. In this respect it is light years ahead.
As you would expect for an internet-enabled device, connectivity is excellent with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth v2.0 built in (no bluetooth stereo audio though). There is support for WEP and WPA-PSK encryption for secure wireless connections and setting up a connection to a hotspot or your home network is easy with the ability to have several configurations available. Equally simple is establishing a bluetooth connection to a 3G mobile phone for go-anywhere internet access. Rather surprisingly the N810 like the N800 seems to have an uncanny ability to hold onto a Wi-Fi signal for far longer and more reliably than any Windows pc I have ever used.
Out of the box there is no decent PIM application other than a rudimentary contacts manager, but to be fair Nokia makes no claims regarding PIM functionality.
As a media player the N810 is competent and possesses some excellent features such as an internet radio application and the ability to play media streamed from a server. The built-in media player is somewhat basic, but it does a reasonable job of things and there’s good support for a wide variety of audio and video formats including mp3, WAV, AAC, WMA, WMV, MPEG 1-2, mp4, avi etc.
Sound quality is good and on par with a decent mp3 player. Quality headphones enhance the experience further. Video playback is superb: smooth and sharp on the large screen making it much better than any mobile phone or PDA. Watching an entire movie is a reasonable proposition. Occasionally, playback can stumble on high resolution video files but transcoding to 400 x 288 pixels soon sorts that out and Nokia provides a free utility for optimising videos.
The email application is fairly basic, but allows multiple POP3 and IMAP4 mail accounts. I found that it does slow noticeably with large volumes of mail.
There is no sim slot and therefore the N810 can’t be used as a standalone mobile phone, nor can it access the online world without a hotspot or phone to hand. For some people this is a major omission. For me it isn’t an issue. With excellent Wi-Fi performance to rely upon free Skype-to-Skype calls were of decent audio quality with minimal lag.
Physically, the keyboard is what differentiates the N810 from the N800. It slides out smoothly from the bottom of the unit and locks into place. It adds a new dimension to the device that makes data entry less of a chore than it is on the N800. Writing mail, short notes and documents, and instant messaging becomes more realistic. However, you will struggle to touch type on it or write a lengthy document.
Inevitably, the addition of the keyboard has forced some compromises upon the o/s in terms of navigating the user interface and on occasions when I found myself using it, I was still forced to resort to the stylus. Conversely, when I wanted to just stick with the stylus I was forced to pop out the keyboard. This was slightly frustrating and could probably be overcome with familiarity, but in this respect I feel that the N810 is slightly behind the N800 in ease of use.
Battery life in use for media playback is borderline acceptable at about 3-4hrs depending upon settings and the quality of encoded files. In general use it fared much better. I was pleased to discover that the charger is a standard Nokia phone affair because the battery is also a standard Nokia item, obtaining replacements or spares ought to be cheap and easy.
Software
There’s nothing new here which hasn’t already been covered elsewhere in this or the N800’s review except the GPS functionality. The GPS and mapping software itself is a bit clunky. Getting a satellite lock was slow and the maps seemed to be quite low on detail compared to dedicated GPS units.
Conclusion
Has the 810 moved things on and would I recommend one? Not much and almost is the answer.
You really have to want an internet tablet to be able to reconcile cost against performance and convenience. If you are looking for a laptop replacement and for something that can be used for regular web access then you are probably better off looking at a sub-notebook such as the Asus Eee PC which is much more capable and cheaper.
If you are like me and don’t like to be carrying several devices, then it’s tantalisingly close to achieving that nirvana as an all-in-one replacement for a PDA, mp3 player and mobile phone. This in itself is worth paying good money for.
Review by: Nigel
[Post tag(s): smartphone news, Pocket PC news, Tracy & Matt, Nokia, N810, Internet Tablet]
About a year ago we reviewed the Nokia N800 internet tablet. John was quite impressed with the device but one of the things he felt it was lacking was a QWERTY keyboard.
Howerver, Nokia recently released a new internet tablet, the N810, which includes many enhancements, including a full sliding QWERTY keyboard.
Other enhancements include a faster CPU, newer OS and better software support. On top of that there’s built in GPS and Sat-Nav software which, on that hi res screen, promises to provide a quality navigation solution.
As always, were reviewing the Nokia N810 at the moment but for now here’s our unbox video:
Posted by: Matt
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Windows Mobile blog, Nokia N810, Internet Tablet, eXpansys,Tracy & Matt]
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