dailywireless.org » Nokia WiMAX Tablet Announced

Nokia WiMAX Tablet Announced

Nokia officially announced the WiMAX-capable N810 Tablet today. Nokia says it can deliver typical data download speeds of up to 2-4 Mbps per user with peak download speeds of up to 10 Mbps.

The WiMAXed N810 (Nokia podcast), features an integrated media player with Flash 9 on the browser, 2 GB of internal memory, expandable to a full 10 GB of memory with the addition of an optional microSD memory card.

The tablet can store and play back a large library of music and video content and has a client for the Rhapsody online music service. A built-in GPS enables a fully featured personal navigation device, complete with real-time on-screen maps. An active developer community has additional applications.

A number of VoIP and Instant Messaging (IM) clients are available, including Skype, Google Talk and Gizmo5, which can also take advantage of the N810 WiMAX Edition’s built-in web cam for video calls. The web browser is powered by Mozilla, takes advantage of the N810 WiMAX Edition’s 4.13 inch touch screen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

When not in range of a WiMAX network, the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition can also access the Internet over Wi-Fi or via conventional cellular data networks by pairing to a compatible mobile phone via Bluetooth technology. The WiMax N810 will be available from Nokia’s online store and its shops in New York and Chicago for $479, Nokia said.

Mobile WiMAX networks consist of a number of interconnected base stations, each with a radius of up to 2-3 miles, that allow for handoffs from one base station to another as users move about a region. It should work on both Clearwire and Sprint Mobile WiMAX networks.

Also being introduced with the Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition is the newest Internet Tablet operating system. This new upgraded OS2008 introduces useful new features to the platform, including an enhanced e-mail client, support for Chinese character rendering in the browser and RSS feeds. Current owners of Nokia N810 and N800 Internet Tablets with earlier operating systems will be able to upgrade their device to the revised operating system for free during the second quarter of 2008.

Everex has also unveiled their new Cloudbook Max featuring built-in support for Sprint’s Mobile WiMAX with a 8.9″ WVGA (1024 x 600) display, a 1.6GHz VIA C7-M ULV processor, up to 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, a 80GB hard disk drive, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, an integrated GPS receiver, dual built-in 2-megapixel webcams, an S-Video port, audio in/out and Microsoft Vista OS. No pricing yet, but it’s not expected to hit store shelves for many moons.

Meanwhile ASUS announced a software developer´s kit (SDK) for the Asus Eee PC. The new SDK enables third-party developers to easily enhance and extend the popular, mobile, open source platform. The Eee PC, which uses the Xandros Desktop OS, also comes with Microsoft Windows XP pre-installed.

In other news, The LiMo Foundation met its deadline by unveiling the first release of its Linux-based mobile device platform, the LiMo Platform Release 1. The industry consortium also announced that Texas Instruments (TI) was joining the group as a Core member.

In February of this year LiMo announced that 18 LiMo-based handsets were shipping or were on their way, from vendors that include Aplix, LG Electronics, Motorola, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Purple Labs, and Samsung. At that time, LiMO also announced nine new members, including Access, Orange, and AMD.

Founded in January 2007, the industry group now competes with Google and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) with their Linux-based Android. Both efforts are attempting to consolidate the fragmented mobile Linux market around common platforms in order to reduce costs and promote interoperability.

Openmoko hopes to create a family of completely open source mobile phones. The first sub-project is Openmoko Linux, an open source Linux based operating system designed for mobile phones, built using free software.

Maemo is the Debian-based development platform for handheld devices used to develop applications for the Nokia Webtablet. The free and open source components include well-known desktop Linux libraries. Development for Maemo utilizes Scratchbox, a cross-compilation toolkit.

The Nokia webtablet may not have the openness of an Android or Openmoko platform, but it’s a lot better than the closed environment of the past. Welcome to the world.

The Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium, available fall 2008, will also operate on Sprint’s Mobile WiMAX network. It features a 1.33GHz ULV Core Solo CPU with a 7-inch screen. The Nokia tablet, Samsung’s UMPC, and cheap, ultralight laptops might be just the ticket for Photoshop Express, the free online photo editor. An Internet connection and an up-to-date Flash Player 9 are all that’s required to use it.

Soundslides ($40) makes creating multi-media slide shows easy. Photos can be a breeze to upload or view using Nokia’s tablet, UMPCs or MIDs. Microsoft’s wonderful (and free) Photostory creates a WindowsMedia file, but Soundslides creates Flash files with nearly universal sound and picture playback. Here are hundreds of great examples.

Browser software like Microsoft’s Explorer Mobile, iPhone, Opera and Firefox Mobile aim to bring desktop browsing to mobile devices. Put that in your pipe, Mr. newspaper editor.

Internet Tablet Talk and Tablet Blog have the latest.