Nokia N810 Internet Tablet

One day, there won't be a meaningful barrier between real and virtual worlds. Like characters from a William Gibson novel, or Futurama if you've seen that episode, we'll travel around inside the internet, brushing pop-ups away like bothersome flies and injecting anti-virus software into our brainstems.

Until that glorious day arrives, to bridge the gap between unwieldy mobile phone internet access and full electronic immersion there's the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, the latest touchscreen internet device to tumble from Nokia's bustling R&D department. Successor to the bulky N800, it represents a step in the right direction, but a more of a pigeon step than a confident stride.

Weighing in at 226g, and carrying the slightly burly dimensions of 128x14x72mm, it's slicker than the N800, but not dramatically, and even with the qwerty keyboard retracted it's about the size of an iPhone and a half.

If you can look past this, though, the N810 does what it's supposed to do fairly well. The 104mm TFT touchscreen displays at a resolution of 800x480 pixels, with 16-bit colour and an intelligent backlight that detects the ambient conditions and adjusts its intensity accordingly. If these numbers mean little to you, suffice it to say that the display never looks anything other than crisp and colourful.

The interface, running through Nokia's Internet Tablet 2008 Linux-based operating system, is remarkably uncluttered. A clock, a link to Nokia's website, and a Google search bar hover to the right of the desktop, and to the left there are icons for the web browser, along with shortcuts to popular sites like Skype, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Wayfinder, as well as contacts, settings, and a comprehensive array of tools like a PDF reader, calculator, email, and GPS system.

Using the stylus you can drag objects like the Google search bar around the screen, which is a nice feature, although one whose value is questionable on a display the size of a large matchbox: most applications entirely fill the desktop, meaning you have to minimise or close them to get to what's behind anyway.

The N810 is equipped with 802.11b/g wi-fi, and connecting to the internet is very straightforward. The browser, provided by Mozilla, is a pleasure to use, and for the most part the internet performance is excellent. We watched several YouTube videos of Patapon and a clip or two from Flight of the Conchords without a hitch, and both sound and vision were clear.

As a media player, the N810 is very solid indeed. It supports a huge range of formats, including AAC, WMA, MP3, RealAudio, WAV, AMR, WMV, AVI, 3GP, MPEG-4, and although the player itself is stripped down, it's simple and effective. There's also support for Real's Rhapsody service, and access to its library of tracks.

There's no true mobile connectivity with the N810, so if you want to make a call you have to either install and use Skype or the other included programs, Jabber and Google Talk. You can also make a call through your operator by connecting to your handset via Bluetooth, but, honestly, why would you?

In fact, despite being an Internet Tablet the N810 is in some ways less internet-ready than the N81 or N95, both of which can connect to the internet both via WAP and wi-fi. Still, neither has the fancy touchscreen.

There are four games included, but we don't really feel that any of them exploits the full potential of either the N810's input mechanism or its technical capability.

Blocks is a version of Tetris in which, for some reason, you have to drag the pieces down the screen with your stylus. There are also versions of chess and mah-jong, and a puzzler called Marbles. All four of these games are competent and well-presented, but they signally fail to make good use of the stylus control, and Blocks actually comes close to ruining itself through its insistence on sticking the stylus where it doesn't belong.

Despite the disappointment of these bundled titles, however, the N810 clearly has potential as a gaming platform. The graphics are impressive and the control mechanism is proven every time the DS sells another million units.

If it weren't for the fiddly keyboard and the absence of a decent D-pad we'd have been more positive about the N810. If there had been a point-and-click adventure game on it, we'd have considered buying one.

As it is, though, despite its potential the N810 isn't really a PDA for gamers. Moreover, as well as it functions we're not really sure who it is for, aside from that peculiar group we like to call 'early adopters' when we're being polite, and 'gadget freaks' when we're not. While there are things about the N810 we like, we can't help discreetly gesturing the rest of you towards the N95 or the iPhone, both of which do most of what the N810 does, and more.