Nokia N810 Silver Review - Usability & Performance

I think it’s worth it to look at usability and performance on the N810 from those two different perspectives I mentioned earlier - gadget hound early adopter and mainstream consumer.  The hardware side of things is actually the same for both groups: the tablet overall is slick and nice, but the QWERTY board and touchscreen could still benefit from a little work.  The touchscreen’s big enough that I wanted to work it with a fingertip, but it plays much nicer with the included stylus.  Though the Internet Tablet 2008 OS is being marketed as “finger friendly,” I think that’s a bit of a stretch.  I found success tapping large icons with my finger, but quickly grew frustrated trying to scroll through Web pages or type on the virtual keyboard with my digits - fingertips worked with for sweeping click-and-drag style movements, but that’s about it.  A switch to the stylus helped matters considerably.

But even with the stylus I found the device to be a bit less responsive overall than I’d expected.  Web page scrolling wasn’t always smooth, and I encountered a lot of what I call the “Fake TiVO” effect:  The Comcast DVR I have at home tends to get overtaxed and then won’t respond when I press buttons on the remote.  I’ll then grow impatient and click a few more times even though I know I shouldn’t.  The DVR eventually catches up to me and registers/executes all of my clicks at once, usually resulting in an unwanted fast forward through my TV show, or jump to a menu I didn’t mean to jump to.  The N810 did a similar thing a little too often, not responding to my multiple stylus taps for a few moments only to then register them all at once, often landing me on a Web page - or part thereof - I really didn’t mean to go to.

Early Adopter’s Perspective:
N810’s operating system is clean, functional, and easy to navigate if you’re used to fiddling with computers and gadgets.  The dedicated application menu button makes it quick to cycle between open apps, and I liked the ability to close background-running programs from this menu without having to call them to the fore.  Nokia’s suite of pre-installed software works quite well, the Web browser in particular.  Between full Flash 9 and AJAX support and the 800 pixel-wide display, the N810 can do more on the Web than basically any device this side of an ultraportable laptop computer.  The slide-out QWERTY board makes it that much easier to interact with Web 2.0 sites like Google Docs, and no special URLs or workarounds are needed to watch YouTube videos or play online Flash games.

Beyond the pre-installed stuff, though, the real appeal of the N810 is the support Nokia is giving its developers’ community.  At the risk of repeating it once too often, Nokia views the N810 as an early step on the road towards a consumer Web tablet.  So they’re making the platform as open as possible and nurturing a community to extend the OS and write applications for it.  They’ve made no bones about juxtaposing this “Open is Good” strategy squarely against Apple’s “We Control Your Experience” stance.  The result is good for geeks as it encourages interaction with the device, with the folks at Nokia, and with a community of like-minded programmers and tinkerers. 

I tried out a few third party N810 apps, including a media player designed around large, finger-friendly icons.  Generally speaking I was impressed with the progress already being made by devs looking to play to the tablet’s strengths and find ways around its limitations — like building a media player with giant buttons to compensate for a touchscreen that isn’t as good with fingertips as it could be.  I’m not a developer myself, but if I was I’d be very interested to apply some Linux chops to this emerging platform that Nokia clearly sees as the future of always with you connected computing.  There’s serious potential here for VoIP calling, location-aware services and lots more once the WiMax dream becomes reality here in the U.S.



Average Consumer’s Perspective:
N810 isn’t for the average consumer.  It’s just too complicated to set up and use for anything beyond basic Web browsing and media playing, and any number of dedicated portable media players are easier to use, have more onboard storage, and are less expensive than N810.  The device’s reliance on community development and open source software is great for its intended audience, but Nokia is banking on that community yielding a crop of slick, consumer-friendly apps before they go pushing this thing at Best Buy and Target. 

Compare N810 to iPod Touch.  N810 has the Apple device beat hands-down in terms of specs and functionality, save for Touch’s internal storage capacity and the multitouch abilities of its display, which is actually key to its overall consumer-grade superiority.  Apple spent years refining both the best touch screen in the business and a custom user interface to go with it, and it shows.  The device is built around the experience of picking it up and touching it and it works very well.  While N810’s touchscreen is bigger than Touch’s, the experience of navigating a Web page or picking a song on Touch’s display is better.  Touch responds instantly to finger flicks - N810 has a tendency to stutter in response to stylus pokes.  Yes, once you’ve got your content loaded up, N810 offers more pixels across a physically larger screen.  And it plays nicer with more kinds of Web pages and media files.  But I fear consumers would give up on N810 after a few moments with it on a store display, whereas the same time with iPod Touch would likely leave them considering an impulse purchase.

Nokia is all about open platforms and customizable, extendable devices run off of user interfaces that are clean and functional, if not full of elegance and eye candy.  This could well speak to why their mobile phones haven’t yet achieved the sort of success in the U.S. that they have in Europe and elsewhere.  Nokia N-Series smartphones run on Symbian Series 60, a platform adored by devotees for its power and expandability.  The S60-powered N75 was something of a flop when Cingular/AT&T picked it up in the States last year.  Despite being one of the most capable, feature-packed handsets in the carrier’s lineup, people found it confusing and unattractive.

Personally I’ve long been a Nokia fan and enjoy playing with their S60 phones.  Though it’s built around an entirely different operating system, the N810 tablet has the same N-Series blood in it as those S60 handsets.  N810 is open, extendable, and capable of a lot more than it comes pre-configured to do.  Its operating system and menus are clean and logical, but they also require more of a learning curve to master than your average consumer device.  That makes sense - S60 devices are smartphones, and not just for voice calling; similarly, N810 is a computer, and not just an mp3 player, GPS unit, or dedicated Web browser. 

 

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