There are some things that would make my Nokia N810 better or easier to use (for my purposes).
- Line-out. Apple got this right, there’s line-out on the iPods (and even then you need to buy the right adapter). I plug the N810 into an FM modulator wired inline into my car’s antenna; in order to get the audio loud enough, I have to turn the volume on the N810 and on the car radio way up. There’s an audible background noise from all this, and I need to remember to turn it down before I switch back to headphones (N810) or an FM station (radio).
I could use a USB audio widget, plugged through a converter to get down to the N810’s mini connector. But the USB connector on the N810 is only accessible if the easel-legs are open, which isn’t exactly car-friendly. Plus I might have to fool around with kernel modules. I haven’t tried any of this yet.
- Working GPS. ‘nuf said.
- gphoto. When I’m on vacation I’d like to be able to pull pictures off my camera, and view them on the N810. I could also push them to my home server next time I found a network (WiFi or 3G, using my phone). To do this I need gphoto, or something like it. This is probably a simple matter of setting up the cross-dev environment and porting it, I haven’t gotten around to trying.
- fsck in the boot menu. I should ask fanoush, or hack it together myself.
- Automated podcast downloads. It would be nice if gpodder would do this for me, instead of having to be manually triggered. It’s on their roadmap.
- Polishing: I wish the keyboard were a little better, that it had a Tab key, that I didn’t need to use the Fn key to get to “/” (come on, if I’m typing it’s likely to be URLs or filenames!), that the directional-button-thing were on the front of the tablet and not buried on the keyboard. None of these are killers.
To reiterate, I’m happy and I use it alot. In fact the screen protector has gotten scarred up and I may need to replace it – I’ve never had to do that before. This is just the “room for improvement” category.