Nokia 770 Internet Tablet Reviewed

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has reviewed the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet which is powered by a variant of Debian Linux. Eric Bangeman praises the device for its "wow" factor and has high hopes for its potential, but nagging issues with the implementation, relatively weak specs, and small software library lower the device's chances of becoming a hot item. From the review: 'The 770 could also use some beefier hardware. One of the attractive things about the 770 for me is the price--US$359. In order to hit that price point, I imagine Nokia had to make some hardware trade offs. Unfortunately, those make themselves glaringly apparent at times. 128MB of shared memory isn't enough; neither is a 250MHz ARM processor.'"

Comments

Dasher developer agrees

[lawpoop]

I'm very keen on a true tablet PC system ( I hate Palms and other similiar devices -- they don't really seem designed to fully utilize a stylus input), but I don't have $1800-$2500 to spend. I have a 770 on backorder.

I was emailing Chris Ball, one of the developers of dasher, which is a very novel and efficient method for character and word input. Unfortenately, I was dismayed to learn that:

We finished the port. Problems:

• It runs too slowly. We did some basic optimisation, but it's still too slow to feel good.
• The hildon-input-method dynamic library is closed-source, so we can't get it working as an input method. This pretty much removes any further motivation we had for spending our time on it; if you care, I suggest complaining to Nokia.

So I don't think we're planning a release.

What a shame. I thought that with the maemo platform being open-source, this would be a killer device.

Re:Dasher developer agrees

[lawpoop]

From what I got from the conversation, it wasn't the graphics that was the problem. It was the extensive word and phrase prediction that drive dasher:

> [Me] Do you think the slowness problem comes from the smooth animation
> of the letters scrolling?

[Chris] No, I think it comes directly for the probability calculations needed to determine the size for each Dasher node. The CPU on the 770 really isn't that high-spec.

Here's a paper that Chris directed me to.

Re:Dasher developer agrees

[mjg59]

It runs too slowly.

If you grab Dasher CVS right now and build it for a Maemo target (./configure --with-maemo), you'll get something that runs at a just-about usable speed. The floating point has all been removed from Dasher itself, which helps things a great deal (I got about an 8-times speedup from removing a small amount of floating point code - integer maths is pretty much good enough in this case)

The hildon-input-method dynamic library is closed-source

More of a problem. There's currently no API documentation for producing an input application in Maemo, which makes it difficult - ideally, Dasher would be integrated in the same way as the keyboard or handwriting recognition. The other issue is that Dasher makes much better use of vertical screen real-estate than horizontal. On a device like the 770, Dasher would work much better at the side of the screen than at the bottom - and that's something that the libraries just don't support at the moment.

On the plus side, porting Dasher and making it look and feel like a native Maemo application took about 3 hours, including setting up the Scratchbox build environment. Compared to developing for the Zaurus, the 770 is an absolute dream. I'd actually put it ahead of developing for PocketPC, too, despite the lack of a specialised IDE. It's a really nice device for developers, and (despite the occasional obvious lack of performance) it's a much better integrated device than any other small, portable ARM based machine that I've ever used.

So, there's certainly hope for Dasher on the 770 - it's just something that I don't have time to work on at the moment (I'm doing a PhD in genetics right now, so don't have anywhere near as much time to hack on stuff as I'd like to), and Chris has left for the US and h0t chixx0rs (well, possibly only the one). The current performance issues are primarily down to the amount of time taken to draw all the anti-aliased letters, and the simple optimisation of disabling anti-aliasing for them or using Xft directly rather than going through Pango would probably help greatly. Then somebody just has to spend enough time working with Nokia to deal with the input API, convince them to add support for vertical input widgets, rebuild it and things would work beautifully.

If anyone's interested in hacking on it, then check out http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/Develop. html and get on the mailing list (Yahoogroups, I'm afraid. Yes, I'm sorry). Someone with enough time could probably get it into a useful state in well under a week.

Another Review..

[Dynamoo]

Also reviewed here but the review unit didn't want to talk WiFi. Looks like Nokia's customer service is dreadful and probably best avoided.

Backordered

[YodaToo]

Unless you got your order in before Nov. 16th, grabbed one of the few at CompUSA, or want to pay a premium on eBay, don't plan on getting one any time soon. Nokia has been awful about meeting their ship dates. I think the date on their web site for new orders is now sometime in January.

A review from a Nokia 770 Owner

[skynetos]

I was a day 1 zaurus owner and this is exactly what the Zaurus should have been but was not. Out of the box, you pop in the included 64meg memory card, turn it on, and boom right in front of my face is my web browser, my RSS reader and e-mail. Best of all since its Linux they support all the secure e-mail connections (tls, ssl, imaps everything) so I don't have to compromise my security while using it. It has a huge library for something that has only been out for a short while. It's package management is 100x better than the zauruses! I jump on WIFI or Bluetooth to my phone to the internet, browse to the maemo.org site, click a package and it asks to open it in the package manager! It uses Opera 8 with Flash support. Plays full screen videos just fine, and let me tell you the screen is incredibly bright and detailed!

Its a 800x480 display, just beautiful! Not to mention the browser is a full one! No PDA versions of web pages, no side scrolling. You can zoom in, browse history and book marks it works!

I installed very easily mind you, GAIM for IM, Doom a bunch of other little games, an xterm, they have SSH for it, and the library is growing!

Drawbacks:
Occasionally, when using it not as intended, say using the not-ready or polished GAIM, or lets say loading up 20 web browsers, with your rss feeder in the background its going to run out of memory. This is an internet tablet, it has RSS feeder, web and e-mail and its all fully featured and ready to go out of the box. If you use it as intended it works and thats that!

Contrary to any reviews I have NEVER encountered any wifi flakyness or bluetooth crazyness. I have used it every day for about a week now, and it is just SOLID. Its design is slick as snot! check out the screen shots below, and check out nokias own site for the 770, its silver metal case and its included pouch is just awsome.

and of course, it runs linux! all my Ipaq and palm friends are very jealous!

check out http://maemo.org/ for more info.
For screenshots: http://maemo.org/screenshots.html
Third party applications you can install at the click of a button: http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog
Another Nokia 770 site: http://www.internettablettalk.com/

KHTML / Konqueror soon...

[billybob2]

Ars Technica is reporting that Nokia 770 Internet uses Opera, but I would think it's quite possible that Nokia will offer updates containing a KHTML-based browser (some version of Konqueror) soon.

Nokia has been collaborating with KDE developers to build a browser for some of their other embeded systems, such as the Series 60 Smartphone. Nokia engineers have stated that KHTML is more resourceful than Gecko, has a cleaner architecture, and starts up faster. Also, KHTML is free (LGPL), while Opera is proprietary and therefore probably requires them to pay licensing fees and royalties.

Re:KHTML / Konqueror soon...

[MrLizardo]

Someone has already contribted a beta build of gpe-mini-browser which is based on GTK-webcore, which IIRC is related to KHTML in some way. mini-browser has some issues right now, such as lack off HTTPS support, but renders well and is impressively fast on low power hardware. It runs great on my Zaurus C1000 (with an Xscale @ 416MHz). It would not suprise me to see a port of konqueror show up at some point. Firefox is also likely to be an easy port since it will compile and run on a Zaurus (both have ARM-archictecture CPUs), though IMHO Firefox is too heavy for a system like the 770.

How does it compare to Dell?

[Eccles]

The x51V model (I think) has similar specs, and a faster Mhz processor (only 640x480 screen tho'); how do the two compare?

Re:Agree on wanting something beefier

[Saanvik]

The three hour battery life is only if you are using WiFi constantly. Most users report 10+ hours of usage before needing to recharge.