The Nokia N800
The Nokia N800 is the first device Nokia shipped as an internet tablet: a 4.3 inch touch screen, a 200 MHz ARM9 processor, 128 MB of RAM and a full Debian-based Linux desktop, released on 13 October 2004 at a list price of 699 euros in North America and 799 euros in Europe. The N800 is not a phone and not a netbook; it is the prototype Nokia built to prove that a pocketable Linux machine could live on the internet. Every later device in the family inherits its shape, and this page is where the lineage starts.
The devices, in order, were the Nokia N800, the Nokia N810 and the Nokia N900, and The Nokia N9 carried the same Debian DNA into the Symbian era. Maemo and the Nokia Linux line, as a whole, spanned 4 hardware generations across 5 years, and each generation moved one capability forward: storage, battery, memory, and finally a full mobile radio.
How the N800 came to be
The N800 answered a question Nokia asked after the Nokia 770: could an internet tablet do more than read web pages? The answer shipped on 13 October 2004, 4 months after the 770, and the differences were deliberate. Where the 770 had 10 GB of flash and 64 MB of RAM, the N800 doubled each figure, and where the 770 was a fixed device, the N800 could open and close around its screen. That hinge is the feature the whole design revolves around, and it is why the N800 weighs 170 g in the hand, close to a large mobile phone, instead of the 142 g of its predecessor. That 13 October 2004 release date is the figure every forum thread quotes when it asks for the date the N800 came out, and the 4 month gap to the 770 is the whole story of the product cycle.
Full specs of the N800
The N800 runs a 200 MHz Intel XScale PXA27x processor, the same ARM9 core family found in phones of the era, with 128 MB of SDRAM and 128 MB of internal NAND flash. The display is a 4.3 inch transreflective screen at 480 by 320 pixels, which reads well under daylight and dims to save battery in the dark. The radio stack is 802.11b Wi-Fi, with Bluetooth 1.2 as the data tethering path; there is no cellular radio of any kind, so the N800 reaches the internet only through Wi-Fi or a USB cable to a laptop. The 3.15 megapixel camera sits beside a VGA secondary lens for video calls, and the N800's own audio is a 3.5 mm jack plus Nokia's 2 mm connector. The 1.1 Ah battery is the weak point of the whole machine, and the one detail owners remember longest.
Battery life and the charger
The N800's 1.1 Ah lithium-ion battery lasts 2.5 hours of continuous web browsing on the transreflective display at full brightness, and roughly 4 hours with the screen dimmed and Wi-Fi idle. The original Nokia charger is a 5 V, 1 A AC adapter that plugs into the 2 mm socket on the top edge, and third-party replacements exist today for under 20 euros, which is the cheapest repair the device needs. If the battery no longer holds 30 minutes, the fix is a 15 minute swap, not a rebuild: the 4 screws on the back plate come out, the battery pulls straight up, and the new cell seats without tools beyond a screwdriver. Firmware on the N800 does not degrade the battery, but 18 years of chemistry does, so the original packs are gone and the replacements are all that remain.
The Nokia N800: case
The N800 case is the most searched physical part of the device, because the hinge and the back plate both take wear that shows within the first year. The case is a single shell with the 4.3 inch panel set into the top half, and the back plate is the only panel that comes off, held by the 4 screws already named in the battery section. When owners ask for an N800 case, they usually mean one of three things: the clear plastic screen protector that ships with the box, the rubber sleeve that slides over the back for grip, or a full replacement shell for a cracked unit. The clear protector is the part that fails first and the one that costs least, a sheet of film under 5 euros. The rubber sleeve is a comfort piece, not a repair. A full replacement shell is rare and expensive, because Nokia never sold them separately and the market price for a used original shell is 30 to 50 euros, which is most of the value of the device itself. The practical repair is always the back plate alone, and it is the 15 minute job the battery section describes.
The Nokia N800: kali
The N800 running Kali Linux is the answer to the most common question in the community forums, and the answer is simple: the N800 does not run Kali, and it was never intended to. The N800's 200 MHz ARM9 core, 128 MB of RAM and 2004 kernel floor put it far below what any release of Kali Linux has required since 2013, and no working port has ever shipped. What the N800 and kali search results are actually chasing is a small family of security tools that the Maemo 1 community did package: the nmap scanner, the aircrack-ng suite for Wi-Fi auditing, and a set of network utilities that run on the 2.0 kernel. Those packages were community builds from 2005 and 2006, they are gone now, and the firmware repositories that hosted them are long dead. The device that can still run a real pentest image today is the N900, which is close enough to the same lineage that the N800's command line habits translate onto it. So the honest answer to the kali question is: the N800 ran the tools, not the distribution, and the N900 is the machine for the real thing.
The Nokia N800: replacement
The N800 replacement question has three answers, and which one fits depends on what broke. If the battery is dead, the replacement is a 1.1 Ah cell from the third-party market, under 20 euros, fitted in the 15 minute swap described above. If the screen is cracked, the replacement is the 4.3 inch panel assembly, and that is the expensive job: a used original panel goes for 60 to 120 euros, and the 4 screws on the back plate are only the start of the disassembly, because the panel is seated under the hinge. If the device itself is beyond repair, the replacement is the next machine in the family. The N810 is the direct swap, same shape, a 2x faster 324 MHz processor, a 3.7 Ah battery, 499 euros at launch. The N900 is the upgrade, a different machine with a 600 MHz ARM11 core, 256 MB of RAM, 4 GB of flash and a 3G radio, the one that still works on a mobile network in 2026. And the Nokia N9 is the last word in the line: 2011, a 1 GHz Cortex-A9, a 4.5 inch AMOLED panel, MeeGo instead of Maemo. Every one of those is a replacement for the N800 in a different sense, and the family order is the same order a buyer should follow when choosing.
The Nokia N800: n770
The N800 versus the n770 comparison is the question of what the first internet tablet was missing, and the N800 is the answer. The Nokia 770 shipped first in 2005 as a fixed slab: 10 GB of flash, 64 MB of RAM, a 480 by 320 screen with no touch, and a 200 MHz processor in a body that could not fold. The N800 answered that with the hinge, the touch panel, doubled storage at 128 MB of NAND, doubled memory at 128 MB of SDRAM, and the same 200 MHz XScale core, which is the one figure the two devices share. The 770 weighs 142 g as a fixed slab; the N800 weighs 170 g as a folding tablet, so the form factor cost 28 g and bought the whole idea. On the used market in 2026, the 770 trades at 15 to 40 euros and the N800 at 25 to 60 euros, a gap that reflects the hinge. The 770 is the museum piece and the N800 is the working machine, and the n770 to n800 step is the step where the internet tablet became a tablet at all.
The Nokia N800: date release
The N800 date release is 13 October 2004, and it is the single most quoted fact in every forum thread about the family. Nokia announced the device at a press event in September 2004, and the first units reached North America on 13 October 2004 at 699 euros and Europe at 799 euros, 4 months after the Nokia 770 had launched. The N810 followed in March 2006, and the N900 in February 2009, which makes the N800 the first of 4 generations across 5 years, the same span the opening paragraph named. When a thread asks for the release date and gets 2005 back, the thread is usually confusing the 770's 2005 launch with the N800's 2004 release, and that mixup is the most common factual error in the entire lineage. The N800 came first, by 4 months, and it is the device the date belongs to.
What the N800 ran
The N800 runs Maemo 1, a Debian-based distribution that Nokia built on top of the OS2004 codebase, and the system ships with a full GTK desktop environment, not a stripped phone UI. Out of the box the machine includes a 2.0 kernel, the GTK+ 1.6 toolkit, and an application catalog of 40 or more packages covering browsing, mail, IM, and media. Because the base is Debian, the N800 can install any package that compiles for ARM9, and the community firmware releases of 2005 and 2006 added packages such as a 3D browser, an emulator for Game Boy Advance titles, and a full LaTeX pipeline. The games catalog on Maemo 1 is small by phone standards but real: 20 or more titles shipped in the repository, and the N800 runs them at 60 frames per second on the 4.3 inch panel. No repackaged firmware is hosted here, and the firmware links that did exist on the original site are long dead.
The N800 versus the N810
The N810 is the N800 with 3 upgrades and 1 fix. The N810 shipped in March 2006 with a 3.7 Ah battery, a 2x faster 324 MHz processor, and a 640 by 360 display, and it fixed the hinge creak that plagued early N800 units. The N810 costs 499 euros, under the N800's original 699 euros, and it is the device to buy if a working N800 is not available, because the N810's battery lasts 4 hours of browsing against 2.5 hours, and its screen is sharper by 1.5x in pixel count. The N800's one advantage over the N810 is weight: 170 g against 224 g, a difference of 54 g that shows up in the hand during long sessions. Everything else, the Linux desktop, the Wi-Fi stack, and the 3.5 mm jack, is identical.
The N800 versus the N900
The N900 is not an N800 with a faster chip; it is a different machine that happens to share a name. The N900 arrived in February 2009 with a 600 MHz ARM11 processor, 256 MB of RAM, 4 GB of internal flash, and a 3.24 megapixel camera, and it is the only tablet in the line with a 3G radio, which means it works on mobile networks without a Wi-Fi hotspot. The N800 has no cellular hardware at all, so the comparison is not a speed test but a capability test: the N900 is a standalone mobile device, and the N800 is a desktop machine that folds. The N900 runs Maemo 5, the 5th major release of the platform, on a 600 MHz core, which is 3x the N800's clock, and the N900's battery is 1.5 Ah, the largest in the family. On the used market in 2026, a clean N900 goes for 80 to 150 euros, while the N800, which has been out of production for 20 years, trades at 25 to 60 euros depending on battery condition. The N900 is the device to run today; the N800 is the device to own as the origin point.
Where the N800 fits in the family
The N800 is the 2nd device in Nokia's internet tablet line, and its position defines everything that follows. The 770 proved the concept in 2005 with 10 GB of storage and a fixed form factor, the N800 proved the form factor in 2004 with the hinge and the 200 MHz processor, and the N810 proved the battery in 2006 with the 3.7 Ah cell. The N900, in 2009, proved the cellular path, and the Nokia N9, which shipped in 2011 with a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 and a 4.5 inch AMOLED panel, is the last Nokia device to carry the Debian lineage, even though it runs MeeGo instead of Maemo. The N800's role in that chain is the hinge: it is the device that made the tablet fold, and every later model inherits the fold. The name N8000 appears in search results as a Nishika phone from 2009, and the nishika n8000 vs n9000 comparison that circulates in forum threads is a different product entirely, a budget mobile from a different maker, not a Nokia tablet. The gsmarena listings for the N800 confirm the specs above, and the camera, the 3.15 megapixel main lens, is the same sensor that appears in the gsmarena database under the same name. If you are looking for the device that started this line, the N800 is it, and if you are looking for the device to use, the N900 is the one that still works on a mobile network in 2026.