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Nokia's Linux Handheld

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the gadgets-i-want dept.

Nils Faerber writes "Today Nokia announced the introduction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet device along with the Open Source based Maemo Development Platform. With this new product Nokia enters several new worlds all at once. A new concept for the use of a handheld device, a new fully visible open source based development process and the explicit use of open source software in a commercial grade product. The typical use case for the Nokia 770 is to be the internet usability extension to your mobile phone or other wireless internet access equipment. It is extremely portable by its small formfactor, usable for almost all internet applications thorugh its exceptional resolution of 800x480 pixel and its multimedia capabilities by making use of a TI-OMAP CPU and a accompanying digital signal processor (DSP) core. The consequent use of open source software and technology basing on the Linux kernel 2.6, X11-server technology and the GTK+ toolkit the resulting new Hildon graphical user interface creates a fully new user interface experience for portable Linux devices."

9 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If this gets popular, and as presumably the interface will be similar to all other Nokia products, people will realise that Linux is not necessarily hard to use.

  2. Left-handed model? by oni · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I doubt there will be a left-handed model. Pretty much every PDA or device like this one has buttons on the left side, which I can't use because I'm holding the device with my right hand because I need to write on it with my left hand.

    Oh well, sucks to be me I guess.

  3. No ethernet by noisymime · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know it kind of goes against the whole portability idea, but no ethernet?

  4. Battery Life by AngryScot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    3 hour battery life seems to be a little short if you are going to be traveling and want to use it.

    I suppose you could charge it in your car...

    --

    All spelling mistakes are due to solar flares...honest

    1. Re:Battery Life by l810c · · Score: 3, Interesting
      3 hour battery life seems to be a little short if you are going to be traveling and want to use it.

      It's only 1500 mAh, your average NiMH AA is at 2300 mAh each. This battery must be puny.

      An external battery pack would be a cool option. 2 AA's in a small tube with wire could provide nearly 10 hours.

  5. PDA please! by johansalk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks exciting; can't wait for them to make a PDA out of it. I just wish they'd used regular SD instead of reduced size memory cards.

  6. No 3G/GSM? by ubera · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it's a pity that the rather beautiful design and obviously neat software doesn't include Nokia's core function: mobile phone connectivity (and not through BT).

    --
    But what is the SIGnificance?
  7. Some good signs though by hemul · · Score: 3, Interesting

    here

  8. Re:Ogg vorbis support? by rillian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I talked to Uraeus about this a bit. The machine has combined ARM9/TI DSP cores. The idea is that you want the codecs running on the DSP, and apparently the free Xiph codecs we're included in the launch because there's no DSP port of the reference implementations. (There's no GCC back end for the dsp, although some folks are working on a related series.) This includes Ogg Theora, Speex and FLAC as well as Ogg Vorbis.

    Whether the ARM is too slow (or battery consumptive) to run the decoders on its own, I'm not clear but with everything open source it will be easy to check.

    I'll be a Guadec, where they are apparently also doing a demo, so hopefully will know more next week.

    In the long term though we need help with the DSP gcc port and someone to do hand-optimized asm for the xiph codecs. If anyone's interested, please let us know.