Nokia's just made their new WiMAX-enabled N810 internet tablet official today. Their press event was held in the hot Las Vegas sun so that, after the announcement, they could hoist press members up into the heavens to reiterate everything they just said at a higher altitude.
Showmanship aside, this announcement was a bit of a dud; the WiMAX N810 was already pretty much common knowledge. Regardless, we did learn a few interesting details. The N810 will feature over-the-air activation and automatically detect WiMAX networks. It will walk through you all the steps necessary to sign up for and access WiMAX. It should also seamlessly switch between WiMAX and wi-fi when the latter is available. Of course, the downside of WiMAX is that, as a brand new technology, connection to the network will be limited to a few areas; outside of these hotspots, you're stuck with wi-fi. The tablet will also use Hava to stream video. The N810 should be available through Nokia's site, at a price that's "comparable" to the old N810, and has the possibility of being subsidized. It should be avialable the second half of the year.
Since we're excellent journalists, we took the opportunity to ask why WiMAX was chosen, at the exclusion of a more wide-spread technology like HSDPA or LTE. The answer was slightly unclear, but they didn't rule out these technologies as future possibilties. It was also asked whether or not the Sprint/WiMAX thing was a monopoly, but apparently there are dozens of smaller WiMAX networks out there offering competition.
