Some pictures from Engadget where they show a possible successor of the N800. Now if it’s true, then this successor will have an integrated keyboard, which some of you will like. In some cases this will be indeed practical, in others not. Sitting in the train, having your mobile paired for internet and using that integrated keyboard sounds more practical then having a Bluetooth keyboard.

On the other hand I can’t tell if this is going to be a phone. Because if it’s going to be one then Nokia decided to depart the Internet Tablet platform and use it like a phone “with- internet-functions”.

You can see a camera on the leftside and a (white) space on the left side as well. Perhaps you can insert a CF card, but that sounds odd as Nokia uses SD most of the time. So maybe the Nokia logo has to be on that part, like a shiny Nokia logo to make it more exclusive. But then, they added a logo on the downpart of the bezel. So maybe this is the speaker which u use while calling?? So that would indeed make it a phone. It looks like a HTC or Mio phone.

Also on the upper-left part you can see a white modelnumber. With the unsharpness of this pic the best i can make of it is that it’s a N99. If so, it wouldn’t be a successor of a N800.

Hey well, perhaps it’s just a success for the N9300 series. Who knows? Maybe they decided to make that business phone a bit larger, with brighter screen, adding both the good things of a N800 and a N9300. For sure now we have a bit of speculation about a successor for the N800. I do hope this is a prototype, which i believe it is, but shite, it really needs to go back to the designers.

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I was almost fed up with speculating when Skype would arrive, but I just got up and guess what? It’s here! And apart of that there’s the new firmware update too!

So i just had a quick look at some forums and for now i can tell you this.

Firmware: 4.2007.26-8
==================

• Skype client support
• Adobe Flash 9 browser plug-in
• Up to 8 gb memory card support
• Increased battery life, specially when online
• Touchscreen sensitiveness improved
• Some other application improvements, like in Media Player
• Nokia Internet Call Invitation (BETA) removed completely
• Some pre-installed content:
  • Tableteer info applet
  • Updated Internet radio channels
  • Real Rhapsody player easy installer (available for US. residents only)
  • Piquant new web sites

The whole Nokia Internet call invitation (NICI) has been removed. Which is not a loss actually. It frees up some memory. This program was a whole disaster. With many people it never worked, like with me, so it was completely useless. For the people who are not going to upgrade to the new firmware: you can use this fantastic internet calling program untill 31.8.2007.

My guess is, now that Skype is out, that Skype will have video support (soon). There were some libraries found in the dependancies, like Farsight which implicates a possible support for video (soon). But for the moment video is not working.

Finally one of the most awaited features for the new firmware-upgrade is there: Flash 9 support. Now it’s possible to catch up with the most recent websites which use this version of Flash. So it replaces the Flash 7 which is currently used on the N800. I’ve read about some instabillity issues occuring with showing websites properly. With YouTube movies at first have to download and after that it works much better than before. Watching the movies on-the-fly, still is a bit stuttering. Orb seems to work perfect now!
Input boxes for login/password not appearing in some cases. Or crashes at Flash 9 websites….. Looks it’s not been tested thoroughly.

As for memory card support, there was already SDHC supported. Now it’s officially and it supports up to 8GB per slot –> 16gb in total! That’s really enough in most cases! You can put a lot of video’s, music or programs on that amount of space.

Word says that touchscreen sensitiveness indeed has been improved; people like it.

Battery life increasement hasn’t been documented yet by anyone so i cannot comment on this.

Last but not least: as for Skype, i can’t tell you much yet. It appears the UI (how it looks) is better than on Linux. But that doesn’t tell me enough It’s not integrated in the OS, which is good. If we dont like it, we can kick it.

No support for Bluetooth A2DP or Bluetooth DUN.

I have to flash my N800, install Skype and see all for myself. I will post everything here!

You can grab your firmware update heeeeeereeeeee!

My guess Skype will be released today. Several people with good sources claim this!

Im sitting in the car now. Leeching someone’s internet. Blogged from n800. Going to sleep now. Hope to wake up with Skype.

On Friday my plan is to put two programs in the spotlight: WordPy and Video Converter. I will review ‘m with some pics and critics. Now i’m heading to Holland for two days. So be sure to tune in on Friday… or before Friday

I hope Skype nor the new Chinook – firmware-upgrade will be released when i’m gone having no internet, ’cause that will make me sick! I must be there when it’s released

If it’s released, just leave a comment, thanks.

This seems a video from CommunicAsia 2007 in Singapore. You can see the woman hold a N800 and show some features of it to an interested guy. After showing the webcam and Gtalk she says: “And now let’s try Skype, so you can chat or call”.

You can see the “Skype” shortcut in the menu on 1m32 of the movie. First time i see a video of Skype, so that’s why i wanted to share it with ya’ll.

The movie was made by guys from OCWorkbench.com. You can see some pics and their info about the N800. They noticed it has Opera 8 and Flash 7. So my guess is that either the new firmware updates wasn’t present on that N800 or the new firmware has no update regarding Opera and Flash. Let’s wait a bit more…

Update: Movie works again. It was removed by OCWorkbench. Luckily i made a copy of it and it’s stored in my N800 YouTube list.

More speculations on the long awaited firmware update for the N800. It seems that on the 16th of May there were some files and directories added on the certified catalogue of Nokia. After Bora there’s Chinook, that’s officially stated (and after Chinook we find Diablo and then Elephanta). Well, there are some (empty) files and dir’s in that Chinook catalogue at the moment.

Some forum users claim that the release will come very soon, so i guess it’s just a matter of hitting F5 on your keyboard the whole time!

The official Nokia catalogue can be found here

Copied from Slideshare

That is fast! I notified Paolo (not Pablo:P) about that YouTube issue and he fixed that today!

Paolo:

“Thanks for your help and for article about my app on your blog.
Fixed , the problem was in my utility LoadURL.exe (in the zip file) that, if the size of FLV is Unknown, don’t download the Header… “

So whats new:

* Fixed a download bug in ‘LoadURL.exe’ of some FLV files from YouTube
* Now the FLV File is downloaded in the destination DIR.
* Try to FIX some A/V Sync Problems when converting FLV files.

Small update:

As for now the YouTube problem doesn’t seem to be solved after i tested it. The majority of the YouTube movies work though, so it’s just a percentage that doesn’t download at the moment.

Bigger update:

It seems to work now! The YouTube movies which seem to have an unknown file size are downloaded as FLV. Store this on your SD card and play it with MPlayer. Tadaa!

Somewhere in Europe, in Italy, there’s a guy called Pablo developing a very nice application called N800 Video Convertor (VC). I’ve been using this software from the start when it had some encoding issues but after some updates it worked very well.

The main goal of it is to encode movies (DivX, XviD, Quicktime Movies, YouTube etc.) to fit on the screen of a Nokia N800. There are other programs out there doing the job, but first you have to know which settings to use and this takes some time and second the output file can be large. This is what happened to me most of the times. Smaller resolution, but big filesize! Logical indeed…

The last version supports YouTube encoding. What it does: it downloads the movie you insterted through a YouTube url to your pc and then encodes it to the given settings. I tested it and it works okay. Well, one time it couldn’t initialize the filesize of the movie and this resulted in a disappeared movie! The succes ratio with me is 50% now Pablo is updated about this “bug”.

He also added direct SRT support, a feature i asked for. Very nice indeed.

You can get a copy here

Well finally someone spotted Skype on a N800! News is that it will be released somewhere in July which makes summer hotter than hot Downside is that “camera” support isn’t included in this release. So a good alternative for the lame buggy Gtalk app isn’t around the corner, yet.

For now I cant tell that this Skype isn’t buggy as well, but I hope it isn’t. There seems to be a SkypeOut part included in this version, which makes it possible to CALL people over (international) landlines or mobile. Of course you pay the Skype credit, but it’s a bargain in comparison with normal phonecosts. So if you are connected to any WiFi spot, theoretically you can call anyone across the globe through Skype. This brings the N800 in another perspective. While it was released as a non-phone device, now it offers similar features as a phone, and more. Of course Gizmo project offers phone capabilities as well, but my experiences weren’t so overwhelming positive. Big lag and the promised MSN-talk function doesn’t work in most cases. Skype uses it’s own protocol and has proved excellent quality i can say.

I do pray that they will bring us webcam support in a new release. Besides that i hope they will update this N800 version as often as they do with Windows and other OS versions. But first let the initial release come as soon as possible please!

Skype in action on a N800! (from JKontherun)

Does it work??

Update: Well, it worked. A message written from the N800 with Maemo-Wordpy. A tool which sends your messages directly to your blog! Very cool indeed. I will add some pictures about this program and some explanation tomorrow.

It’s been awhile. I was very busy going to my country Holland and spend there some days and when i returned i had to work in Belgium. Besides that i have exams. So anyway, i’ll update some information now.

About the June 11th story: it was a hoax. Some lame guy on the forum had a fight which he had to win by making some stupid story up. He had everyone’s attention, like mine, but after all he’s just a big loser making big expectations which seem to be air.

About my Navkit: Nokia is NOT able to accept a payment made with a creditcard from the Netherlands and send the box to Belgium. After 3 mails they understood why the payment couldn’t be made. Everywhere on the net you can buy items with creditcards and let ‘m send to another delivery address… But Nokia not. That’s why i was so fed up that i left it for what it was. Tomorrow i’ll try again. This time my delivery address will be my house in Holland. If i’m in Holland i’ll pick it up from the postoffice. For now i’ll study some law.

Today I encountered my first serious problem with the N800. It couldn’t recognise my SD card anymore! It happened after I deleted 3 files using the N800, not when it was connected through my PC (USB).

In the filebrowser it only showed the name of the card, but no files on it anymore! When I connected the N800 to my PC, it said something like: “Can’t access SDcard, it’s being used”. But by what then?

I took my SDcard out of the N800 and put it in my digital camera. Here i could browse all the files! So the card itself wasn’t corrupted. Just for safety purposes I made a backup on my pc and formatted it with fat32. After that I put it back in the N800, but it showed the old name of the SDcard. I rebooted 3 times, but it stayed like this. I couldn’t access the card.

Then I deciced to stick the USB cable in the N800, boot it and noticed that a small USB icon appeared, while it was booting. My pc recognised the N800 and showed “Found New hardware” (Nokia N800 – update mode). Well, i wasn’t going to update it, so after that the N800 booted to the Home-screen. Guess what… now the old Sdcard name was gone! I put my SDcard back in my N800 and now it works fine again!

Nokia Navicore Navigation kit, 770 version (couldn’t find a N800 pic).

A question on the internettablettalk forum gave me a successful answer where to buy the Navicore Kit for Nokia N800.

The Navicore Kit is a navigation software kit with the Nokia car holder and some other useful supplies, like a car charger, a Bluetooth GPS SiRF III module and whole Europe map on a single 1gb mini SD-card.

The last couple of weeks I’ve seen more and more reviews floating around the net about the Navicore kit. Overall people are happy with how the software works and the good N800 holder. The holder is specifically built for a N800; not a Nokia 770 internet tablet. But man can buy a kit for the 770 as well.

Now i know where to get a kit I’ll order one asap. Of course an unboxing movie will follow and a review. I’m actually looking forward to receive it, since I have a new car I was doubting to buy a PDA holder for my Ipaq 2210, but now I will buy this N800-kit. The PDA holder is 92 euro. Then I need a bluetooth SiRF III GPS receiver, which costs about 89 euro. That’s 181 euro. The Nokia kit is 199 euro; I receive the maps and a car charger as well. The choice is made: i’m waiting for my Navicore kit!

Get your Nokia Navigation Kit here

There’s a topic going on @ internettablettalk where some guy claims he has some “Nokia” inside information about the next release of the OS2007. In other words, he’s claiming that the long-awaited operating system with Skype and the new Opera browser is going to be released on the 11th of June.

Also there should be some (major) improvements in video playback, especially with Flash. Let’s hope they have a N800 version of Flash 9 implemented in the new browser so we can watch the video’s on YouTube smoothly without using Orb. Besides that I’d personally like to see video playback from Divx/Xvid sources run smoother than it does now.

Well… let’s wait 9 days and see what happens!