Ok first of all, I need to explain what this device is, because it may look like the newest phone in the Nokia Communicator series, IT’S NOT A PHONE !! At least, not in the traditional sense of the word. It does not have a GSM functionality built in, so it doesn’t use a SIM card at all. The N800 is a ‘bring your own broadband’ device. There are 3 ways to connect to the internet with the tablet, WiFi to the nearest access point, Bluetooth to a phone which routes you through to the net, or when you’re using the mini USB cable to connect the device to your PC, it can get a connection from there. The device DOES have speakers and mic built in, and networking is done over WiFi or Bluetooth, so if you install some Voip software, it’s very capable of making internet voice calls.

So what’s so great about a portable device that doesn’t even have GSM built in ? Well for starters, it runs a real version of Linux on there (a variant of Debian), so a lot of open source software can very easily be recompiled to run on this device. In fact it’s so easy, you can do it yourself (there are step by step guides for doing this). So you’ve got a little hand held device that will basically run anything you throw at it. You can use it as a media player .. it runs divx dvdrips pretty well with Mplayer, which is still under development and is expected to improve on performance in future releases. It’s also a nice Mp3 player since you can stick a total of 8 gigabytes of flash memory in there for storing your movies, mp3s and other files. The built in media player is pretty decent and will play both your local files and streaming stuff like Shoutcast.com radio channels.

Because the screen is such a nice, high resolution, it’s also perfect for viewing pictures but of course this is all just bonus functionality on a device that’s just meant to be an internet browser. The built in browser is fantastic and runs everything I have tested it on so far. You can literally visit any webpage with it, stuff like Gmail works fine and even administering this very website (which is built on the Joomla CMS) can be done completely from this device.

Some small nice things I have noticed about the use of the device are the fact that it will detect whether you are using the stylus or your finger to touch the screen and will give you different button sizes to work with. So as soon as you open a menu with your fat finger, it will open up with large buttons. The same goes for input fields in any application. Hit them with your finger and a full screen keyboard will come up that will allow you to input text very quickly using for instance 2 thumbs on the full qwerty keyboard. I also like the way the home screen is designed. Obviously you can fully customize it to your liking, but by default it sports a google search field, a google news rss feed, a streaming radio player and shortcuts to some usefull starter websites for tablet users. Then on the left side of the screen you have your menu buttons that are divided in ‘browsing, chatting and programs’. Just below that a list of icons will appear representing the applications you have running. Applications stack when they have multiple windows open just like they do in Windows XP or whatever you’re used to.

So all in all, my verdict is that it’s a great device for it’s money. At the time of release in the Netherlands it is being sold for 400 euros. It’s useful to the geeks among us and definitely something to get if you want to impress your friends. Remember it’s not a phone, I think we’ll be seeing more of these kinds of devices from Nokia soon.