My WiMAX Experiment - Part 5: On the Road!

Part 5 of my WiMAX experiment deals with the in-car use of my N800 with the WiMAX modem. This is actually not a usage case for me. I only use the WiMAX modem at work. As you'll see, the setup is large, cumbersome, and totally impractical. However, I thought that it would give us all a taste of what is possible with the N810 WiMAX Edition.

Disclaimer: I do not recommend that anybody try this on their own. Driving, tabletting and filming do not mix!


Video #1: Maemo Mapper

The video didn't turn out as well as I would've liked.... mostly due to the ambient brightness and the fact that the N800's screen is not trans-reflective. I deleted all my downloaded maps, and then started driving around to show off the fact that Maemo Mapper was downloading them as needed while I drove. If you are familiar with Maemo Mapper, I used the 'auto download' option for the maps, and if you look closely, you can periodically see the download progress bar in the upper right part of the tablet's screen. My in-car setup is quickly shown in this video also. Unfortunately, my PDA mount is broken, so I rested the tablet on the cup holder.






Video #2: Application Download

Another neat thing I tried was downloading and installing the bomberman application while driving. It was a fairly quick thing to do, but I was caught starting off in 3rd gear!





When the modem enters the coverage of a new cell tower, the connection gets dropped. In my experience, I could not reacquire a signal until stopped. The Rogers Portable Internet is called 'Pre-WiMAX', and cannot handoff to another cell tower. I am not sure if they have started to upgrade to the flavour of WiMAX that will be used by the N810WE.

If they have upgraded, I would sure love to test out a pre-production N810WE as part of my experiment. Alas, that would require some generous folks at Nokia and Rogers to be reading my blog.... :)

Stay tuned for Part 6 of my WiMAX experiment, where I will summarize my thoughts on this technology and its use on Nokia's Internet Tablets.