Nokia's N810 Internet Tablet, MOSH to debut soon?

We'll admit, the absolute last place we expected to find out about the N800 Internet Tablet's successor was an Island Def Jam press release, but hey, we'll take it. Turns out, a notice surrounding an upcoming bash just happened to reveal a tad too much about what would be featured there, as it clearly states that Nokia's N810 Internet Tablet will be showcased along with the outfit's mobile sharing service MOSH. Additionally, the "MOSH social sharing site technology will provide party guests with exclusive barcode mobile invites that will be scanned from their mobile phone," which sounds like all sorts of fun. Regardless, we're still categorizing all of this as a succulent rumor for the time being, but considering that the shindig is scheduled for October 23rd, we'd bet the official word is coming soon. Oh, and just in case the read link mysteriously goes down, a screen grab of the release is posted after the jump.

[Via InternetTabletTalk]

[Ian @ Oct 15th 2007 9:49AM]

810 sounds like an incremental upgrade. Like access to larger flash memory cards and a slot for EVDO or WiMax cards?

[zorg @ Oct 15th 2007 9:58AM]

Oh, yeah, they totally picked a name to showcase what a puny upgrade it is. Oh, yes.

OTOH, the party is when FCC confidentially wears off on the alleged N800 with sliding keyboard, so I'm hoping for more than an SDHC bump.

[Jason @ Oct 15th 2007 10:15AM]

The N800 currently has DUAL internal SDHC card slots.

I want slide out thumboard and integrated GPS.

[zorg @ Oct 15th 2007 10:03AM]

By the way, further googling suggests that N810 will retail for 100USD more than N800 did when debuted. To me that screams more hardware. I wish it would even faintly cry out more quality.

[Jason @ Oct 15th 2007 10:11AM]

Here's hoping for a new N8XX with:

- Better video playback
- Integrated GPS
- slide out thumboard

the N800 already has dual internal SDHC card slots for up to 16GB of memory.

[Ian @ Oct 15th 2007 10:30AM]

I thought that memory capability was limited to 2 GB cards currently?
The current N800 has dropped to $230.00 in a lot of places so I don't see that a new N800 could retail for say the original MSRP $375 + 100 = $475.00... The older 770 held at $375 until the N800 was formally announced.
I think that it's much more likely to retail under $400.00 point, or it wll clash with low end laptops with more capabilities. The N800 succesor needs improved capability and a hold on the price, or devices like the Asus 701 (think I got the number right) might well take the market away. i.e. it needs a GPS capability, continued WiFi + add on cards for WiMax etc. All IMHO of course.

[Jason @ Oct 15th 2007 10:34AM]

Nokia.com says both internal SD slots are SDHC compatible, up to 8GB each.

[Tacticus @ Oct 15th 2007 10:46AM]

Ian the difference between SD and SDHC is a simple software patch (in the right conditions(please note right conditions may vary :P))

all it is is a change to fat32 and a new addressing method both done in software.

[Ryan @ Oct 15th 2007 7:47PM]

The N800 currently supports 16GB SDHC cards just fine (for a total of 32GB).

[laurie @ Oct 15th 2007 10:29AM]

Screw Nokia.

My 770 was bought brand new less than a year ago, it was obsoleted a month later, now 10 months later Nokia are ready to obsolete my model's replacement! So these things, which cost several hundred dollars are meant to last you less than a year before obsolescence??!?!?

[Pdexter @ Oct 15th 2007 10:37AM]

That dosent make sense.

[Iscariote @ Oct 15th 2007 10:38AM]

Welcome to the world of technology, a new model coming out doesn't mean your model is useless.

Buy devices when you want the features they offer at the price they're sold for.

[Tacticus @ Oct 15th 2007 10:46AM]

Umm you don't have to replace it i mean patches are still being released for your 770 software is still being developed and you could always port or make your own apps

[Chicksta @ Oct 15th 2007 10:48AM]

What sort of dictionary are you using to define 'obsolete'? Did your phone magically stop working when the new model was released? Did some of the features that were there when you bought it go away? Is there a countdown on it that says it will self-destruct when the newer model is released?
I believe the term you are looking for is 'discontinued', and your opinions about the phone stem from 'envy' and 'greed'. That is your own personal issue, not Nokia's. Nokia is a business that produces products, even new ones. Your inability to not feel jealous about another model or not being able to be happy with what you have is not their responsibility. And if you weren't smart enough to research a phone before buying to see that it was EOL and that a new model was on the horizon, then you can't blame anyone but yourself.

[Alexander @ Oct 15th 2007 11:08AM]

I will take your N700 off your hands for $100 shipped.

[Flub @ Oct 15th 2007 1:45PM]

It seems that Nokia aren't making the same mistake this time. N800 support will continue for the next two major firmware upgrades at least (Chinook and Diablo)

[Smiley @ Oct 15th 2007 12:30PM]

Laurie's comment may seem overly negative but she (?) does have a point: one of Nokia's Internet Tablets main selling point is that it is a Linux *platform* and is expected to have a number of apps appearing (and being supported) over time.

However when Nokia released the N800 within a year of the N770's, it brought massive changes both in hardware and software (Twice the RAM, new CPU, new OS). Most of the dev teams moved to the N800, and despite back-porting the new OS to the N770, what you have now is slow and/or beta ports for something that did cost you $400 a year earlier.

To give you an idea, imagine buying a Powerbook just the day before Apple announces their new x86 Macbook, and then being told that, for software dev & support, "Well, we'll see...". And then imagine them doing it again ten months later.
So yes, 'obsolete' might be stretching it, but 'dumped-pretty-quickly' pretty much describes it in my book.

Being an owner of a N800, I would advice against buying anything Nokia being marketed/sold as a computer. Their hardware is pretty minimalist and gets old very quick, and they have a very poor history of supporting their OS in the long run (hint: look at their Symbian S60 backward compatibility. Oops. now look at WinMob 6 which I love to hate: it can run apps from 2002). But maybe this was to be expected from a company used to mainly selling commoditized hardware.

[laurie @ Oct 16th 2007 6:35AM]

Chicksta you are talking out of your bottom. You have NO idea of the justification behind my complaint and you obviously haven't spent $400 on one of these devices and then been taken from behind by Nokia... Oh and it's NOT A PHONE, in future try to find out a little about the device being discussed before throwing your 2 bits in and making yourself look silly...

FYI there was NO INFORMATION at all available about the 800 at the point that I bought my 770, the FCC hadn't even released anything...

Furthermore, I would be QUITE HAPPY for Nokia to bring out new devices as long as they continued to support existing users. Basically when the 800 came out Nokia said SCREW ALL YOU 770 OWNERS. And it was only extreme pressure from us that led them to continue any kind of support for the 770.

What I expect, (and I'm very very dissapointed that Nokia were too stupid to see this) is technical, bugfixes and improvements to the built in Opera browser. As this is an INTERNET TABLET with VIRTUALLY NO PIM functionality, the WHOLE FUNCTIONALITY of the machine relies on the BROWSER. Nokia did not allow for ANY upgrades to the Opera browser for 770 users.

That sucks and was a stupid decision, and means I will never buy another 'computer' from Nokia. A Phone maybe but I don't expect to upgrade a phone, I DO EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO UPGRADE A WEB BROWSER ON A LINUX SYSTEM. Is that unreasonable? for 400 fscking dollars, I expect to get goddamn bugfixes to the browser.....

[LikesGadgetsWillTravel @ Oct 16th 2007 10:54AM]

If you think that your device is useless because a newer device is out, Steve's got an iPod to sell to you.

I had a 770 for almost two years when the 800 came out. I wanted the 800 for the higher speed and larger memory. I sold my 770 to a friend and it's still going strong. I don't think I'll jump on the 810 bandwagon as my 800 does everything I expect it to. I just wish I had the aluminum sleeve from the 770...

[mike beaver @ Oct 18th 2007 2:11PM]

I would like to respond to Laurie comments and the remainder of you folks who would roll over and play dead when Nokia (or any other manufacturer) reaches in your pocket and extracts hundreds of dollars and does not promise a level of support for the product commensurate with the price. I have endured through the Sharp SL-5600 and now the Nokia 770. Luckily, I have been a Linux developer for about 10 years so I have a really thick skin ... but these latest release of the Nokia 810 at Web 2.0 is about all I can take. I went to San Francisco this morning and found a Nokia representative and gave him a piece of my mind. The response was favorable...but it takes a caring and proactive user base to make their stupid decisions painful. The language in face to face conversations with Nokia reps needs to be direct and to the point.

Alternatively, we could just take over the product like the SONY PSP Homebrew folks have done for the that device and build our own functionality. This was attempted for a while in the early life of the 770 but the device was quite slow with an app base which was fairly unstable. The latest versions of the 770 OS is much better but the app base is quite small.

Keep truckin and Keep pushing on on Nokia. I know that I am.

[notpeter @ Oct 15th 2007 11:21AM]

I figured this was coming soon when I saw that buy.com had the n800 for $240.
http://www.buy.com/prod/nokia-n800-internet-tablet/q/loc/101/204055141.html

I like everyone else is praying for thumbboard but I think there's a decent chance it'll have WiMax though. I also think there's a decent chance it'll have a few gigs of internal storage.

[nxtwothou @ Oct 15th 2007 10:47AM]

Argh! Late last month I decided the price had dropped low enough on the N770 to pick one up, but then after getting outbid by crazy amounts, I decided to go for the N800, which I then got outbid again several times until the price drop got noticed last week. The last of my auctions I was bidding on expired today and as soon as I was about to make my order on buy.com, I noticed this post. Ugh. Maybe I should just see how the N810 and the Eee compare before dishing out my cash.

[bachviet @ Oct 15th 2007 11:04AM]

With the latest firmware/software update, the N800 supports SDHC up to 8GB as of now. I'm hoping that 32GB card works with it whenever it's available for sale.

[nVidiot @ Oct 15th 2007 11:05AM]

The N800 is PAINFULLY slow IMO.

I bought one, and yes it supports up to 16gb via it's dual SDHC slots...

But it can't really play back video at full speed which includes flash based video sites and locally stored video in various formats.. and a lot of the apps for it are buggy as hell. Browsing the web is painfully slow on the device.

I'm in the process of returning mine to Amazon.com because of how dissapointed I was in the performance.

[Alexander @ Oct 15th 2007 11:12AM]

What people have to realize is that these things are not powerhouses of computing speed.

They are internet tablets. That is what they do. No they are not a computer, and no you won't be able to view every website out there because of heavy flash usage.

Stop making this device do things it's not designed to do.

[nVidiot @ Oct 15th 2007 11:21AM]

"No they are not a computer"

That's a rather strange statement considering the device runs a variant of linux that includes the ability to install all kinds of "computing" applications.

"Stop making this device do things it's not designed to do."

The device comes with built in video playback software; yet can't really play back video. I believe that's what it was "designed to do."

And considering the device is too small to really do any heavy reading on.. and the "typing" support is such a pain that actually "posting" anything on a site is a real chore, I'd hope that it at least had some multimedia capabilities.. like the ability to play back flash based video at full speed.. or locally stored video. That's not really "heavy flash"... in fact the product specs tout it's support for flash.

[L @ Oct 15th 2007 11:57AM]

It is not designed for video playback - just as it is not designed for music playback. That it does both things is a nice plus, not the focus.

The focus is surfing the web - and here it just excels. The high-res screen alone is reason enough that it is simply without any competiton, and the surfing experience is nowhere near as bad as you make it sound imho...

[Mii @ Oct 15th 2007 12:54PM]

If it had the capability of playing full screen video, this would make a great media player since it's thin enough to be pocketable. I have a 770 now, but held off on the 800 because the video playback was slower than the 770, so even 64gb of sdhc capability wouldn't have made it worth using. Surprising that the Rdesktop is unstable on the 800, it works great on the 770. Even with the cards, a gig on the unit would be nice, so all the apps fit onboard the device, and swapping out both cards doesn't break its functionality. I think it was intended that you'd use the internal SD to hold your media, and the external SD to plug in cards from your camera/etc.

[Ryan @ Oct 15th 2007 8:01PM]

Video playback is perfectly smooth if you encode to MPEG4 @ 1000-1500Kbpes and 400x240 (24-30fps). The device simply doesn't have the horsepower to handle most of the desktop-formated video files out there, but if you put a little time into formating your videos for the device you'll end up getting a lot more out of it.

I use the device as an ebook reader all the time, and the size and resolution of it make it about the best ebook reader on the market today.

Mii's comments seem to be coming from far out in left field. I own both a 770 and an N800 and can attest to the fact that video playback on the N800 is far and away faster than on the 770.

[Ryan @ Oct 15th 2007 8:10PM]

Also, nVidot, you do realize that the device has a fullscreen keyboard available? It's a lot easier to use than the stylus-board.

[nVidiot @ Oct 15th 2007 12:25PM]

"It is not designed for video playback - just as it is not designed for music playback. "

That's interesting, because right on the main advertisement for the device on Nokia.com it says "Enjoy video and music". It doesn't say "Enjoy video and music - if you don't mind video running at half speed"

"The focus is surfing the web - and here it just excels."

Well it's my opinion that it doesn't really Excel "enough" at surfing the web to justify the price considering how slow the device is, and how it really is too slow to do anything but surf the web or maybe play some mah-jong.

We all have opinions and different needs I guess. In my opinion it boots slow.. it's responsiveness when launching applications is slow... the actual browsing is slow.. and using a stylus to type is too tedious to make it very useful for e-mail or IM'ing in my opinion.

Not to mention it's battery life is not very good...

So either way, my point of posting wasn't to bash.. just to say that I hope the n810 or whatever performs better and does have some sort of slide-out keyboard option.

I agree, the screen and it's resolution KICK ASS. I DEFINITELY would have kept the device if the remote desktop app I donwloaded for it didn't crash every few minutes and I had some way of typing in rdesktop outside of windows onscreen keyboard. Remoting into a fully powered XP or Vista machine at 800x400 is really cool but like I said.. buggy.. and kindof worthless keyboard wise.

[shawn @ Oct 15th 2007 12:56PM]

The N810's biggest hurdle is the iPhone. The iPhone/Touch has a 620MHz processor in it capable of playing smooth video. When answering the question of which to buy, the anemic processor in the 770 and 800 has kept me from giving Nokia my cash. An internet tablet that can only handle text and pictures is not adequate in today's rich, multi-media environment.

If the 810 is not "designed" to handle the Internet of 2007 but other devices similarly priced are, why would I buy it?

If Nokia upgrades the processor and supports 30+fps 16:9 video playback (transcoded down to size), I'm their next customer.

[Cagrino @ Oct 15th 2007 1:29PM]

I went through that same decision last month. I have the 770 and really liked it, but the memory card type is that silly RS-MMC which is difficult to find, it can be slow to launch apps, forget any media on it and it has no flash support.

But, I really liked it. It's portable and handy. So, I considered the N800 to address those problems, but I also knew that the iPod Touch was coming out.

I got the Touch and I'm very happy with it. Although it does not support flash, the Safari browser is by far the best mobile browser I've ever used. Not to mention the size of the device is so slight, I keep it in my front pocket.

We'll have to see if the N810 will best the iPod Touch.

[Cagrino @ Oct 15th 2007 1:34PM]

I went through that same decision last month. I have the 770 and really liked it, but the memory card type is that silly RS-MMC which is difficult to find, it can be slow to launch apps, forget any media on it and it has no flash support.

But, I really liked it. It's portable and handy. So, I considered the N800 to address those problems, but I also knew that the iPod Touch was coming out.

I got the Touch and I'm very happy with it. Although it does not support flash, the Safari browser is by far the best mobile browser I've ever used. Not to mention the size of the device is so slight, I keep it in my front pocket.

We'll have to see if the N810 will best the iPod Touch.

[Curtis @ Oct 15th 2007 1:41PM]

I watch plenty of video at 30fps+ on the N800. Not to say it couldn't use a better processor but it can and does play video very nicely.

[shawn @ Oct 15th 2007 1:54PM]

Alas, the iPod Touch is not an option for me as I use Linux and Apple is unfriendly towards that OS. Otherwise, I'd likely have an iPhone.

@Curtis: All the reviews show the N800 failing to play full-screen video at greater than 25fps. If you transcode it down to a fraction of the size of the screen and at a low frame rate, it does play. Otherwise, it appears to drop frames and look choppy, according to reviewers.

I don't have an N800 and I hate disagreeing based on second-hand reviews, but I know myself and any lag in a full-screen movie will annoy me to no end. I do have access to an iPhone and I've seen movies play on that and it's perfect.

[xbit @ Oct 15th 2007 2:21PM]

The N800 was never a perfect device but I really wish the iPod touch had its Bluetooth modem support. Browsing the net over my phone's HSDPA connection was so simple to set up and worked flawlessly.

If the iPod touch had this functionality, I'd buy it in an instant.

[Ryan @ Oct 15th 2007 8:13PM]

Second hand reviewers don't know what they're doing. As I posted above, 1000-1500Kbps MPEG4 400x240 @ 24-30fps plays back fine without framedrops.

Considering the largest-dimension resolution of the iPod Touch is equal to the smallest-dimension resolution of the N800 (800x480 versus 480x320), I'm not sure how you can expect the N800 to playback screen-resolution videos of 800x480 when the iPod/iPhone wont even do that (with a max resolution of 640x480).

[nVidiot @ Oct 15th 2007 2:33PM]

"I watch plenty of video at 30fps+ on the N800. Not to say it couldn't use a better processor but it can and does play video very nicely."

Well unless I received a bad unit (not likely) you are either full of it or are playing some very low resolution videos.

Most of the video I tried played at about 1 frame for every 5 seconds.. lol

[Flub @ Oct 15th 2007 3:53PM]

Video on the N800 is an odd one. It certainly won't play video at full screen resolution (800x480) at any decent speed nor will it play any video at all well with the video player it ships with.

However if you transcode your vids down to half the size and play them with Mplayer it plays them flawlessly (And with more codecs supported than the built in app). That's still a higher rez than the iTouch too.

Nokia really need to sort out the hardware issues that cripple the video bandwidth though. Hopefully they'll have dealt with that and the slow flash 9 support in the new tablet

[tom2 @ Oct 16th 2007 4:57AM]

I've successfully used MPlayer on my N800 to watch the following films (Axxo-Rips downloaded via Bittorrent) in Fullscreen:
- The Simpsons
- 300
- The Bourne Ultimatum

The video quality is excellent - or at least it didn't hinder me to enjoy these films very much. The frame rate sometimes is a bit slow or skips in heavy action/movement scenes (such as the intro to Spiderman 3 that I started to watch). So it isn't perfect - but very good.

[roc ingersol @ Oct 15th 2007 3:48PM]

I love my n800. I don't really care about 3g, a slide-out keyboard or wimax atm. My hardware wish list looks more like: 802.11n, h.264, GPS, 4+MP still camera and internal HDD (instead of one of the memory cards).

mostly it just needs a more responsive OS and a little more horsepower. It wouldn't hurt to have a game-pad friendly button layout and better d-pad either.

I'm not sure what the video complaints refer to. I've got my tivo dropping files onto the network, where they get converted over to a mobile-friendly profile and the results play just fine on the n800. You probably can't just drop a DVD-rip on the thing and get decent performance, but even with 2 4gb cards in mine I don't really have space for that crap anyway. Oh, and Orb streams it unconverted video from the network without a problem too.

It's a nice device that could be really great with a few changes.

[LarsG @ Oct 17th 2007 8:04PM]

Ian,

the difference between SD and SDHC is really just two things:

FAT32 support. In any device where the main firmware is upgradeable that should pose no problem.

Block instead of byte addressing mode. This normally requires a change in the firmware of the SD controller. On some devices (for example many USB SD card readers used in PCs) this firmware can't be upgraded because it is burned in ROM. But on many devices, such as the N800 and many cell phones and cameras it can be upgraded. For those, all that is required is that someone takes the time to write a fw update.

[DaveB @ Oct 16th 2007 4:03AM]

Since I'm currently looking at buying an N800 I've decided to hold out and see what happens - either a) the new model will offer something worth having over the N800 or b) the price of the N800 will likely drop a bit (I know its already pretty cheap in the US but here in the UK the cheapest I've seen it is £240 ($480 ish to our American cousins) so either way I win :)

From a haardware point of view there's not much I'd actually like to see changed:

1) GPS - absolutely don't care - could be a fun toy but as a Tomtom user my satnav needs are covered, I never use the GPS in my phone, either. From a cost point of view I'd rather it wasn't there, but I also think this is the most likely of the mooted upgrades.

2) Slideout keyboard - On balence I'd actually rather the upgrade *didn't* include a hardware keyboard. They always have a penalty in terms of the bulk of the device (for example look at the difference in size between the HTC smartphones that come with a keyboard to those that don't) For on the move use the onscreen keyboard is fine, and a seperate folding BT keyboard does the job admirably if I need to do 'serious' data entry.

3, WiMax - again, don't care, but on balence would rather not (as its going to add cost for no benefit to me) I'm happy with the connectivity options as they stand.

4, Improved hardware - Spec bump always good as far as I'm concerned :) More horsepower/RAM would be nice, ditto moving to a 32-bit LCD. The capability of playing vids at native res would be nice but I've seen stuff running at quarter-res and its more than good enough on a screen that small so for me I'm happy how things stand.

5, Misc - I hope they keep the dual card design, I really like that way of doing things. I absolutely don't want a still camera in it and if anything would rather they got rid of the silly little webcam since I have no use for it.

Short version is I would be happy with an incremental refinement of the existing design rather than a big change, but still, looking forward to seeing what comes...

[Larux @ Oct 17th 2007 8:06AM]

There are official pics available: http://www.nokia.com/A4136017?category=n810

.. It's only information available at the moment

[Noah Kravitz @ Oct 17th 2007 11:25PM]

N810 hands-on: http://www.phonedog.com/cell-phone-research/blog/noah-s-video-review-of-the-nokia-n810-internet-tablet.aspx

[Indiana Bob @ Oct 19th 2007 9:52AM]

So exactly what surprised you about hearing this from Def Jam? Is it that hard to imagine Hip-hop artists and producers demonstrating technical savvy?

[Turbo1 @ Nov 26th 2007 3:40PM]

The N810 does seem like a marvel but I prefer the n800 for now. In the end the n800 will eventually get the new os of the n810. Seems like many people are complaining about the keyboard and its small size, like any device you get use to it and it becomes second nature so i see no problem there. Oh and ebay has the n800 going for less than 200 you should check it out