NOKIA N810 as a Mobile writing platform - a review

December 18, 2007

So I’ve written before on this blog about how I originally bought the Nokia N800 mainly to write on at night while in bed. In fact, decent sized chunks of my novels SHADOW FALLS: BADLANDS and DIARY OF A MADMAN were both penned with it as I was kicking out that last creative burst before sleepy-time. I really dig the functionality of thumb-typing with the onscreen keyboard and even though I make my share of typos by inadvertently hitting the wrong keys, it gets the job done.

And even though I only use the built-in (and extremely simple) Notes program, it’s no problem when I e-mail each night’s session to myself and then paste it into Apple Pages and continue work in the morning.

So when Nokia told me they were sending me an N810 to test out, I was pretty excited because of the built-in, slide-out keyboard and the smaller form factor. There’s no way for me to type as quickly on-screen as I do with a regular keyboard so I figured the new hardware keyboard would improve the speed of my writing.

I was wrong.

The built-in keyboard is, in a word, horrible for writing. First off, the keys are way too small and crammed together too closely. Second, the bottom of the screen (when slid up to reveal the keyboard) is way too close to the top row of keys. When I hold the N810, my thumbs are pretty much at a 45 degree angle to the lower front corners. But because of these two issues I have with the keyboard, it makes it nearly impossible to cleanly type anything in the middle of the upper row without really concentrating on it or having to slide my hands closer together so that my thumbs are reaching straight up for those keys than reaching over diagonally. To make it worse, the keyboard isn’t even centered but sits more to the right to make room for the directional pad on the left.

And don’t get me started with the directional pad, which I think Nokia engineers should have placed on the screen bezel just below the camera since there’s room there. This way they could have made the keyboard keys wider and much more functional. Honestly, I think this is such a huge issue that I can say that I think the slide out keyboard is ridiculously flawed.

However, it sure seems like they’ve improved the on-screen thumb keyboard because I find myself typing much better with it than on the N800. I guess to me it feels more reactive to touch. That coupled with the smaller design of the N810, makes it much more enjoyable to write with on-screen in the way that I’ve been doing most of this past year.

One other improvement that affects me is with the “Notes” program. Now, Notes doesn’t have the power of a word processor (or even a spell check) but given what I’m doing is the digital equivilent of jotting stuff down in a journal, all I want is a place to input words that will (in most cases) become part of the book. When I save a Note and e-mail it to me, the text opens up in a way that easily allows me to cut and paste into my current book draft so I can begin working with it easily. This new version of Notes now has auto save for those nights I fall asleep while writing and/or the battery runs out.

So in conclusion, I’m enjoying writing on the N810. I’m still waiting for a few software kinks to be ironed out before I give it a full review of all the other functions. As of this morning Nokia updated the system software online but I just read at internettablettalk.com that some people are reporting a bug that renders the on-screen keyboard inoperable so I think I’ll be holding off for the time being. I really want to love this device and I’m hoping that over time, it’ll finally be able to do all the things I want it to.

GoDaddy Coupon Codes

Posted in Blog, Nokia