Hands on the Nokia 810

I finally got hold of the new Nokia 810 and while it’s a clever little device, ultimately I was a little disappointed, not by the 810 itself, but Nokia’s sneaky way of disguising the true costs. I have mentioned this with other manufacturers like Sony selling a camera with enough memory to hold 3 photos meaning you must buy more immediately, effectively hiding the price.

This Is not quite the same, but one of the man upgrades from the Nokia 800 is supposed to be the built-in GPS function. It is and it isn’t. Yes it’s a great feature, but if you want fully functioning software, you are going to have to pay a license fee on top of the already steep $450. The software should be available in December from WayFinder.

As far as the rest of the package, the 810 is a little smaller than the 800, most of the bundled software works just fine, but my usual other complaint with these is the size of the keyboard. This one does work with external Bluetooth devices and if you want to say any more than “ be home at 8,” I would suggest you will be reaching for that other keyboard.

I like it – it’s well built, looks good and once Nokia get their act together will have an impressive range of software, but I’m not sure it’s worth this much, especially with the GPS software upgrade, which I couldn’t quite work out how much will cost. Nokia and WayFinder are doing a good job of confusing the issue which tells me it’s going to be well over priced.

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