An N800 with WiMAX would be ideal for making voice over IP (VoIP) phone calls, and could conceivably challenge the hegemony of cellular-based voice and data networks. And yet the prospect of such a device effecting Nokia's bread and butter business, cell phones and smartphones, doesn't appear to concern Nokia's director of open source, Dr. Ari Jaaksi, all that much.

Jaaksi said to LinuxDevices, "WiMAX could change the cellular landscape; however, it's a question of the maturity of the technology, and how it will be priced." He added that exploring new technologies, something Linux is ideal for, is too important to the mobile phone giant anyway.

WiMAX most likely won't be the only wireless technologies integrated into a future N800. As with the current version of the Internet Tablet, the WiMAX edition will probably feature Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as well. Nokia can do this because it solved interference problems between WiMAX and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, according to Jaaksi.

Sprint is investing $3 billion through 2008 to build its WiMAX network, which promises to allow Sprint to deliver wireless performance in between 2 megabits per second (Mbps) and 4 Mbps (with the range of a cellular network); four times faster than its current 3G EV-DO network.

When Sprint starts to roll the WiMAX network out, it should in Chicago with infrastructure partner Motorola, Washington D.C with Samsung, and Baltimore with Nokia. By the end of 2008, Sprint expects to make WiMax service available to a population of 100 million people.

Eventually, WiMAX service should be available in a wide variety of devices, in addtion to the N800, including smartphones, laptops, cameras, camcorders, personal media players, etc.

Rumor has it that Sprint will deliver WiMAX service for a flat fee of $55 dollars per month for multiple devices. This is far different than today's high-speed broadband models, which charge a separately per device (i.e. a smartphones, laptops).

More on N800
With the N800, Nokia brought its Internet Tablets under the umbrella of its NSeries, which, until now, only included smartphones.

As with the earlier 770, the N800 eschews any sort of cellular-wireless connectivity for Wi-Fi 802.11b/g. This thing is definitely more PDA than smartphone. It is a handheld, however, that's designed for messaging, Web access, and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling from a hot spot or Wi-Fi connection in the home or office. You can also leverage a wireless hookup to a Bluetooth-enabled phone to connect to the Internet.

Nokia adds a camera and full-screen finger QWERTY keyboard to the N800. In addition to Google's gTalk for VoIP calling, available with the previous model, Nokia has struck a deal to enable Skype service on the N800 as well.

Sleeker looking and thinner (0.5 inches) than the N770, the N800 has the same-size 4.1-inch, 800 x 480 pixel and 65,536 color resolution display.

Inside is a 320MHz processor, 256MB of Flash ROM, and 128MB of RAM. There are two SD card slots for memory expansion, stereo speakers, a slot for the bundled stereo headset, and support for the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) protocol to more easily connect to compatible TVs, audio systems and PCs.

The battery rates for only up to 3.5 hours browsing time and up to 12 days standby.

It also includes the Opera browser, Flash 7, a media player, an RSS reader, e-mail, instant messaging, handwriting recognition, Internet radio, a PDF viewer, file manager, notes, calculator, among other additional applications.