When I mentioned the Nokia 810 Internet Tablet previously, I assumed that it had superseded the Nokia 800. I was wrong. Apparently due to some differences in design and a huge price difference, both devices are currently being marketed to different segments of the mobile computing market, and the Nokia 800 will be supported along with the 810.

Briefly, the Nokia 810 Internet tablet added a keyboard which was more of thumbboard, and a built-in GPS receiver. The memory card slot was also changed to a high capacity miniSD card slot.

So what does the Nokia 800 have to offer other than costing less? Firstly, it has two high capacity SD Card slots, which means that the memory can easily be bumped up to 16GB or higher. The Linux operating system can also be upgraded to the same version as the Nokia 810, which increases the CPU speed from 320MHz to 400Mhz. It has an FM radio which the 810 doesn’t. Other specs include a 4.1-inch, 800×480 touch screen, rotating VGA web camera, 802.11b/g wireless and Bluetooth 2.0. The bluetooth allows you to add a keyboard if you would prefer not to use the on-screen keyboard. There is also handwriting recognition which is not as sophisticated as that of Palm devices.

The one area where both the Nokia 800 and 810 lack is PIM software. However, there is a beta Virtual Machine available that will allow Palm Garnet OS applications to run on any of the Nokia Internet tablets. Also, third party developers are working on various applications for the open Operating System.

Posted on January 28th, 2008 by mervyn