Nokia 770 Alive and Well

anon mouse-cow-aard writes to tell us the Register is reporting that the Nokia 770, originally scoffed at by many as useless, is doing quite well. There is even an open source platform development site, maemo, that offers quite a bit. It uses wlan for connectivity and has 'cpu transparency' so you can build apps for normal Debian (albeit with a custom set of libraries) and then run a sort of 'checkout' for the ARM processor, and it will run on the handheld. There is ssh and VOIP coming soon. Overall it is shaping up to be pretty cool.

Comments

Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad that this is doing reasonably well, partly because nokia is experimenting more with open source also because nokia is putting some distance between a potential flagship product and the telecom/cellphone carriers. Would voip really be an option if nokia had to woo Tmobile, Cingular, etc?

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[`Sean]

Insert obligatory Pepper Pad self-promotion here. ;) Seriously though, the future of a lot of these devices is how hackable they are and how easy they are to add third-party apps. The Pepper Pad has a rather small hacker following right now and we're in the process of putting together a full cross-compiler SDK in addition to giving users tools to compile natively.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[`Sean]

Whups...the cross-compiler SDK link in the above post should be http://www.pepper.com/linux.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

at $800 it's pricey in comparison with the nokia though

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a bit dissapointed that in order to view their website (spotlight section),
one would need a windows based operating system as the latest flash plugin for
my firefox running on Debian isn't really showing much more than a notice to
upgrade it, althought I do have the latest version available for linux.

That much for the open source..

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Doug Jensen]

The 770 and Pepper Pad are cool, but lack the killer feature: an EVDO modem or at least a PC card slot for one.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

That's bullshit, fucking karma whore.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

IT HAS BLUE TOOTH! you cant stick an EVDO chip in something and not have it cost another 100 dollars! not EVERYONE has evdo accountsd..so your alienating an entire userbase who wont want it cause its extra stuff sitting there. come on this isnt hard to figure out !

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

At $800, I could just buy a laptop. Why would I want this?

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

At $800, I could just buy a laptop. Why would I want this?

For $800, you could buy two of these - and each fits into a back pocket with all of its 800x480 goodness.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Doug Jensen]

Unfortunately folks like Verizon have a nasty habit of not allowing their EVDO phones to function as modems via Bluetooth. The EVDO modem could be an option for people who do have that service; I suppose it might be nice to offer EDGE as an alternative option. I'm glad to see Lenovo, HP, etc. offering laptops with built-in EVDO. You probably just made up the $100 figure; I wonder what it really costs.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

The price listed on Amazon.com is $800.

At $800, you get 20 Gigs of HD, 802.11-B, and an X-Scale processor (and I think 256M of RAM). In other words, a crippled machine by todays standards. On Ebay, I could probably pick up 3 laptops with these specs for that, all of which would have real keyboards and large screens.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

In case you think you'll find your 2 $400 Pepper Pads, I also did a Froogle Search.

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=pepper+pad&btn G=Search+Froogle&lmode=unknown

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

I would also note that at 6.6"x12.1"x0.8", you are not putting this in your pack pocket.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Ashinberry]

You must be new around here if you think karma means anything.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[jfftck]

This thing will do more than the current high-priced remotes for TVs, DVDs, etc... Also, it is priced well compared to PDAs and other devices of this level. Remember this thing is not designed to be a laptop, it is a hybrid of PDA and laptop and as such it is doing what PDAs can't do (because they are too small) and laptops can't do (because they are too big). I see this thing controlling simple tasks around the home, one thing that would be cool is a bluetooth fridge that would send a shopping list to the device instead of the current smart fridges that show it on a screen on the door.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Breakfast Pants]

From the mouth of a guy with 7 posts and no karma bonus yet obtained =P.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

The thing is marketted as, essentially, the hardware incarnation of a web browser. I think you're thinking more with your enthusiasm to hack the device than any packaged functionality.

For instance, your application would require a fridge equipped with an RFID reader, and all of the food to be tagged, or some other mechanism for determining its contents... perhaps a visual scan with a camera, and software for determining what the items are. After all of that's been done, a PDA could handle the rest nicely.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[MrNonchalant]

At $800, I could just buy a laptop. Why would I want this?

Because it sells direct from Nokia for $359.99. Link, you have to click continue to view the price. For some reason a direct link wouldn't work.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[MrNonchalant]

Err. Oops. That's this.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

The Pepper Pad... not the Nokia 770.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[jfftck]

No, I was pointing out that this is the first step towards that kind of functionality and that this device is designed to use bluetooth and as such if the current smart fridges would stop putting the display on the door and use bluetooth it would make that kind of technology more usable. You my friend read too deep in to what I was saying, I was pointing out uses for future applications if others would develop compatible devices. Most people are limiting the device to its current uses and can't think of other uses down the road.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[squiggleslash]

Putting in EVDO would increase the cost of the device while ensuring the only people who can make use of that feature are those who are also prepared to pay a dedicated service subscription on top of that, and who live in the handful of countries with IS95 ("CDMA") services.

Your point about Verizon and Bluetooth has an answer: as I understand it, Verizon will hook up any compatable phone to its service on request. If you want a phone that doesn't have the bluetooth capabilities crippled, buy it in that form, from a vendor that sells such phones unlocked, and switch your service over that way. Expect to pay more - Verizon doesn't subsidize phones it doesn't control.

As far as the GP's $100 figure goes, that strikes me as a lower rather than higher estimate. "Cheap" in the cellphone industry, meaning "massively cut down, stripped bare, using the simplest technology available, and mass produced up the wazoo" is around the $50-100 mark. While one can argue that an EVDO card doesn't have to support push-button interfaces, batteries, or LCD screens, equally the EVDO card requires more processing power than a "cheap" cellphone (which typically doesn't support EVDO...), and wouldn't be mass produced to the same level. $100 strikes me as a low estimate, not a high estimate. Of course, as you suggest, the functionality could be added as a plug in card. But then again, the functionality could be added in the form of an external bluetooth compatable cellphone. Which is probably better, and is what the 770 supports.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

Oh, well, certainly it could be useful for such things. I'd want the size to be knocked down to about half of what it is, but then you run into issues with the size of the display and such.

I tend to think that successful incarnations of such an item, in a ubiquitous computing environment, would almost by necessity be integrated into a wearable form-factor device.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me just say up front that the price hit me in the face very hard too.

BUT, that looks like a design you have to try to really judge it, because I personally haven't played with anything like it. The thing that stands out to me is the thumb keyboard layout. Depending on how wieldly/unwiedly that is, that could make or break it as far I personally am concerned.

While I hate buzzword, the ergonomics on the device look promising. You ever try to sit in a car ride for 6 hours with a laptop on your lap. My neck gets cramps from looking down and while you can just hold it up, if you have to do anything on the keyboard, it becomes a big pain in the butt. This device ***MAY*** overcome that.

That may not be an issue for some people, but I personally spend a good deal of time traveling. Love my thinkpad, but it is really time for the laptop to evolve into something more comfortable for extended periods of use. This device looks like it could be an evolution in the right direction.

I'd just really like to play with one for a week before I would judge it as not being worth the money. But then, I personally am not willing to pay 800 bucks to play with one for a week.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

Eh, I don't know. I use my laptop pretty much 24/7, except periods when I have a book in front of me or when I'm camping or being sociable. I only find it uncomfy on airplanes, which I accept as an excuse to catch up on leisure reading.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

At $800, I could just buy a laptop. Why would I want this?

At 1600 I could get a fast desktop system. And at 25.000 I could get a car. But with $360 I could get a Nokia Tablet 770 and troll from any wlan hotspot just like you.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

The Pepper Pad. We're talking about the Pepper Pad.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[cowbutt]

I've been looking into this part of the market recently, as I'd like web and SSH access from anywhere, using WiFi where possible, but falling back to GPRS/3G/GSM if necessary. At first I thought the Palm Treo 650 was likely to be the be-and-end-all, but it appears to be fairly seriously flawed in its current state. The Nokia 770 is interesting, but I think I'd be better served by getting a Palm T|X (which has a reasonable HVGA screen and built-in Bluetooth and 802.11b, and of course is PalmOS-based, so plenty of independent/free software) for about 200GBP and some kind of Bluetooth-capable phone for 70-80GBP.

Ideally, I'd like both the PDA/webpad to be in the same physical case as the phone, since I'm more likely to keep the PDA with me at all times, but that doesn't really seem to be a practical option right now... Suggestions welcome, though, if anyone's got any!

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[DrSkwid]

You must be new around here if you think karma means anything.

This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy a laptop for less than $800, but can you buy a 2.2 lb laptop with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for less than $800?

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Doug Jensen]

I asked the manager at my local Verizon Wireless store and he said using any EVDO phone as a modem on their network violates the terms of my service agreement. Looking on howardforum and phonescoop I find opinions and claims all over the map about whether or not this is allowed and if not, what the consequences could be. Anyway I'm glad my Thinkpad and XV6600 have built-in EVDO. To me, it's worth the costs of the feature and the service. I'd gladly pay for an optional EVDO capability in the 770 or Pepper Pad; until then, they are not for me.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[Eustace Tilley]

There is an advantage to having the PDA/webpad and the phone in separate physical cases: two batteries, and you only must lift one of them at a time.

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[nofx_3]

This reminds me of when my sharp zarus could only sync with windows (yet it ran linux).

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[cowbutt]

Yes, and, as someone else pointed out elsewhere in the comments for this story, if you need to upgrade the webpad or the communications, it can be done seperately, and quite possibly more cheaply. Also, if one knows that a PDA will be superfluous, taking a small BT-enabled phone is much less encumbering than taking a usable-but-clunky all-in-one device.

I'm warming to the idea of keeping these two devices seperate. :-)

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[NitsujTPU]

2.2lbs? I don't know. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth? Certainly. You have to remember, this thing has a cheap processor, hardly any ram, and practically no hard disk space.

If I got a notebook that is an equivalent performer, I could afford those things easily.

But why no cellular connection?

[99luftballon]

I've tried the 770 and it's crying out for a SIM card slot. Nokia are very proud of their creation (and with a better battery that pride would be justified) but adding cellular connectivity would really catapult it into the 'must have' category. There's still not enough pervasive Wi-Fi to make it a good communications tool, although for use in a corporate environment it does the job.

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what mobile phone networks would want to sell it if they do add a SIM card slot? They're not going to make any money out of VOIP via 802.11b/g.

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has blue tooth! you can just blue tooth it through any cell phone onto the internet. They didnt put a sim card slot as not every provider uses SIM cards.

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you have VoIP, would that be enough?
Actually, I am using VoIP very much when I have to call my
customers, because it's really cheaper than to use my handy.
The problem is that I'm limited by the place where I can use
internet in order to make my calls and as I need to get on
my own to my clients (and some of them are located really
far) I would enjoy such thing as the 770. It seems to be just
the thing I'm missing in my work. On the other hand if I'm
using it for my business, I could easilly use it for my private
calls that would be cheaper aswell.

Think about it..

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[mrchaotica]

Even here in the land of free phones (with exhorbitant contracts) there's nothing stopping people from buying the device and the service separately.

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[drasfr]

Well... if they would add like a laptop pcmcia card... with support for the exist edge/evdo cards it would solve the problem...

if only...

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[LordBodak]

They won't put a SIM card slot in it because the second you make it a mobile phone you open it up to all the requirements and regulations that go along with being a mobile phone.

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[Saanvik]

I've got one and I don't feel it needs a cell phone at all. If I need network connectivity and there isn't a WiFi hot spot where I'm at, I use my bluetooth cell phone.

Add a cell to the Nokia, you're making it more expensive and giving it a shorter battery life. In addition, they'd have to make changes to meet FCC requirements and user needs.

The only way I'd want a cell phone link is if the form-factor stays exactly the same, and the only way you use it for calls is via a bluetooth earpiece and the battery life isn't impacted at all.

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[EvanED]

By contrast, someone suggested this as an alternative to the Dell Axim x51v PDA. I posted another comment with questions for people who have this, including its suitability for this purpose.

Adding functionality to make this a mobile phone itself would, for me, very possibly disqualify it from what I'm looking at. I don't have a cell phone service, and if I did, I would already have a phone. (In fact, I do have a phone from over summer when I had a pay-as-you-go service.) Adding the additional baggage to support cellular service could very easily cause the cost to out of my price range (the 770 and x51v are right at the upper limit), or at the very least shift the greatest-value point to the x51v.

Combine that with the fact that this is MUCH bigger than a cell phone and can already connect via bluetooth, and I think there would be more people turned off than not.

(If you're only considering adding internet connection facilities, and not the ability to use it as a phone, I think that's even sillier, since at that point you'd be 98% of the way toward a phone anyway.)

Re:But why no cellular connection?

[jacksonj04]

If they're anything like cards here in the UK, any EDGE/EVDO/GPRS/GSM PCMCIA cards don't fit inside the form of the card, ie they have a 'lump'. This doesn't bode well for the form factor of the 770.

It would make far more sense to include a SIM slot and associated cell network goodies then get carriers to sell a 'VoIP where available, GMS when not' service.

UI looks amateur

[Anonymous Coward]

look at the PSP's interface, or even Windows Mobile 2005 and they look at lot more polished than this devices, it looks clunky and circa 199x not 200x

Re:UI looks amateur

[Eustace Tilley]

I think you are out of your mind.

PSP screen resolution: 320 x 240.

Nokia 770 screen resolution: 800 x 480.

Re:UI looks amateur

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually

PSP screen Resolution: 480x272

way off there

Re:UI looks amateur

[Cadallin]

He was way off, one point still stands, 800x480 beats the shit out of PSP for web or document viewing.

Re:UI looks amateur

[Anonymous Coward]

what has the devices resolution got to do with its UI design ? the parent didnt even mention it
in fact if its got such high resolution then the UI should look a lot better, if small screen devices can get it right (or better/simpler/polished) then why can't Nokia ?

Re:UI looks amateur

[RemovableBait]

Try 480x272 for the PSPs screen resolution.
The confusion comes from the firmware-limited video capabilities of the PSP. In 4:3 mode, it supports up to 320x240; and up to 368x208 in 16:9 mode.

Yes, the Nokia still beats it. And the PSPs browser has no Flash support either...

Re:UI looks amateur

[haunebu]

"And the PSPs browser has no Flash support either..."

You say that like it's a bad thing. I have a 770 and a Nokia 7710 (the Series 90 phone to which the 770 is distantly related). Both have Flash, and I have yet to fond a Flash implementation on the Web which is at all usable on either. The slow OMAP processors absolutely kill the performance, and disabling Flash makes everything better.

Re:UI looks amateur

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher screen resolution does not necessarily mean a more professional or user-friendly UI.

Most people would probably rather use a 1280 x 960 Mac than TWM at 1600 x 1200.

In Canada we are left out in the cold M$ world. :(

[Amendt]

Having started to use Linux as my Desktop as well as for my servers I was looking forward to getting this device. This is what www.Nokia.ca told me. "Thank you for e-mailing the Nokia Care Contact Centre. We understand you are inquiring on where to purchase the Nokia 770 Internet tablet. Amendt, at this time, we cannot advise you as to whether the Nokia 770 Internet tablet will be released in Canada. We cannot provide information on products that have not been released in Canada. Nokia is continuously introducing new models to the Canadian market. We are unable to disclose technical information on products that have not been released and cannot be more specific with regard to who the service providers will be for new models"

Outdated apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, Flash 6? How old are the rest of the apps? It may not be worth it. Just my .02 cents worth.

Applications (in 2005 software edition)

        * Web Browser (Opera 8)
        * Flash Player version 6
        * Email Client
        * Internet Radio
        * News Reader
        * Media players, Image viewer
        * PDF viewer
        * File Manager
        * Search
        * Calculator
        * World Clock
        * Notes
        * Sketch
        * Games

Re:Outdated apps

[Anonymous Coward]

your an idiot. just because it has flash 6 and everything else is fine for a mobile unit..its not worth it. I love you windows fan boys or mac fan boys.. your all just so worthless.

Re:Outdated apps

[freehunter]

I would say it uses older apps because the newer ones either cost too much in terms of performance or storage space or licensing, or a combination of those.

Re:Outdated apps

[nukem996]

FYI Win CE has the same version http://www.macromedia.com/mobile/ Macromedia has been kind of slow porting flash to platforms other then x86 Windows and PPC Mac. They just announced Linux support for flash 8.5 x86 and x86_64 so there may be a possiblity that flash for other devices is comming soon as well.

Re:Outdated apps

[sean@thingsihate.org]

Wow, excellent point, it's a shame they implemented Flash 6 in hardware and it can never be upgraded now!

Re:Outdated apps

[UnxMully]

Err, they didn't. It's part of the OS which is all upgradable - there have been three minor version releases since the original version, each bringing performance and stability improvements.

Re:Outdated apps

[sean@thingsihate.org]

I know. I was being sarcastic.

Re:Outdated apps

[UnxMully]

Which can be more than a little difficult to interpret correctly...

Re:Outdated apps

[Anonymous Coward]

The Pepper Pad runs Linux on ARM and has Flash 6 support, hopefully Flash 7 soon now that Macromedia's introduced the Flash 7 SDK.

Does it really lack phone capabilities?

[Jerry Coffin]

While I realize this isn't (and isn't intended to be) a cell phone that talks to the normal cell phone carriers, is there any particular reason it can't/couldn't be set up to talk to a VoIP carrier like Skype?

It seems like a Bluetooth headset and a WiFi connection should allow it to do that, no? If so, that'd be rather a slick setup -- it's a bit larger than most of the PocketPCs that support Skype right now, but it also has a considerably larger, nicer screen than they do, making it considerably more usable for other purposes.

Re:Does it really lack phone capabilities?

[spiritraveller]

is there any particular reason it can't/couldn't be set up to talk to a VoIP carrier like Skype?

Skype is closed-source. Until a binary is released that is compatible with the Nokia 770, it will not be possible to run skype on it.

Re:Does it really lack phone capabilities?

[cortana]

/usr/bin/skype: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.2.0, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

Re:Does it really lack phone capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always run the skype executable in valgrind... perhaps the tablet's cpu is powerful enough to emulate x86 fast enough.

Re:Does it really lack phone capabilities?

[nukem996]

Skype has a version for Linux, Mac, Win, and Win CE, im sure it wouldnt be to hard to port it to the Nokia 770. The only thing holding it back is user demand.

Re:Does it really lack phone capabilities?

[generic-man]

Or someone could release an open-source software platform that matches Skype in ease of use and low-cost calling to landline phones, with no need to set up a dedicated PBX or read through complicated half-finished documentation.

*crickets*

Re:Does it really lack phone capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing holding it back is that it's not free software so the only people that can port it is Skype corp itself. I don't see them porting it and definitely not any time soon.

Is it clear now why free software is valuable?

Re:Does it really lack phone capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, you do know that porting actually requires the source code, right?

I Want One

[Eustace Tilley]

I really want one of these things. Pervasive WiFi is nice, but a bluetooth phone is an adequate substitute. I am happy to sacrifice desktop speeds for mobility.

I love mine

[dcstimm]

I love mine, I got mine on November 25th, and I have to say the software is amazing, I had to make a 32mb swap to the card but other than that, it renders sites beautifully, and it does a great job with all my gtk apps, like gaim and xchat, and abiword. Also I find it to be very easy to transfer data to it with SCP. It would be nice to see a Minimo deb, a Windows CE mozilla browser, and maybe have them tweak the wifi alittle so it looks and operates like a mac. But other than that I love it.. And the screen is crystal clear

Re:I love mine

[ubiquitin]

Can you explain how you made it swap to the card? I've seen 1 gig MMC cards for $70, so that's promising too.

Re:I love mine

[dcstimm]

yeah its easy, dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/mmc1/swap bs=1024 count=16384 or what ever size you want.. then mkswap /media/mmc1/swap 16384 swapon /media/mmc1/swap must do this as root so flash it in R and D mode, and then sudo gainroot, and boom.. your done.

Re:I love mine

[EvanED]

I'm looking at PDAs now. I posted in another thread that I was looking at the Dell Axim X51V, and someone suggested the 770, so I've looked a little at it. I have a couple questions for you. I haven't done that much research into this yet, so I feel bad asking you these questions when most or all would probably be answered with a bit of Google, but the /. article is up now and if I wait I think people are less likely to respond, so if there's a review that answers some or all of these, feel free to link it. That said, here goes:

1. How well does it (or do you think it would) function as a PDA? Does it have calendaring apps and stuff? How well does it sync that sort of data with a PC? What sort of software will it sync with?

2. I'm still a bit sketchy about what I need to connect to Penn State's Wi-Fi network, but I know that at the very least I will need *some* VPN client. (PSU has downloads for OS X, Linux, and Windows for a Cisco VPN client; I don't know much about VPNs, if clients are interoperable or anything like that, but it seems that at least whatever client comes with the Axim series will connect.) Does the 770 come with such a client?

3. From the Maemo tutorials, it looks like it uses some mix of a special API (the Hildon stuff) and GTK. How difficult is this to learn (I've done GUI programming with the Win32 APIs and have a very rudimentary knowledge of Qt, but almost no GTK knowledge) and how much knowledge is transferrable to making desktop GTK apps? Is it possible to use something like Qt on it?

4. How's the handwriting analysis? To compare, Windows Mobile gives you a virtual keyboard you can tap on the keys, an entry area that you use like the older Palms and special glyphs, and full screen recognition that tries to do it from your natural writing. It seems from the site that it has something like the first and last modes; is this accurate?

5. It says it's Linux-based... do you have command line access, or just a GUI? If you do have a CLI, is it useful?

I really like the idea of a nice screen like both PDAs have (especially the 770), and the wireless connection is a substantial purpose of why I want it in the first place (about half and half that and I want a PDA, plus the occasional game).

Re:I love mine

[EvanED]

BTW, if the answer to the question "how good of a PDA would the 770 make" is "it sucks", you can skip the later questions. ;-)

Re:I love mine

[sean@thingsihate.org]

I have one also, and love it. I love being able to whip it out in the cafe in the train station each morning (I commute by train) and read my RSS feeds, check my email, get on GAIM and chat, or at home I hook it up to the stereo in my living room and stream internet radio stations.

Now I will attempt to take a crack at your questions.

1. How well does it (or do you think it would) function as a PDA? Does it have calendaring apps and stuff? How well does it sync that sort of data with a PC? What sort of software will it sync with?

Well, with the software that comes with it, it really doesn't. Nokia seems to by hyping this as "It's not a PDA and it's not a phone, it's for the internet!" But in reality, it's just a small hand-held computer running Linux, and the software that it comes with is bundled with the internet in mind.

But that doesn't mean that nobody will write Calendar and PIM software for in. (In fact, I know there is already one commercial one out there, which synchronizes with Outlook, and one open source one which I don't think does synchronization.) I would wager that decent Calendar and PIM software will show up for it, but there's no way to be sure.

2. I'm still a bit sketchy about what I need to connect to Penn State's Wi-Fi network, but I know that at the very least I will need *some* VPN client. (PSU has downloads for OS X, Linux, and Windows for a Cisco VPN client; I don't know much about VPNs, if clients are interoperable or anything like that, but it seems that at least whatever client comes with the Axim series will connect.) Does the 770 come with such a client?

OK, if the Linux VPN stuff from your university can be run from the command line as a normal user, then I would guess that it'd work. If it can run from the command line as root, it'll take some work (you need to do some trickery to put the 770 into "Development mode" before it'll let you switch to root), but I'd think then you could get that running. If it requires some kind of GUI login stuff, well, probably not.

3. From the Maemo tutorials, it looks like it uses some mix of a special API (the Hildon stuff) and GTK. How difficult is this to learn (I've done GUI programming with the Win32 APIs and have a very rudimentary knowledge of Qt, but almost no GTK knowledge) and how much knowledge is transferrable to making desktop GTK apps? Is it possible to use something like Qt on it?

I don't know how difficult it is to learn to develop for it, but it seems like GTK developers are having a lot of success getting their applications running on it without too much pain. GAIM, for instance, was ported to the 770 almost immediately after it was released. Using QT on it, I would seriously doubt that's possible.

4. How's the handwriting analysis? To compare, Windows Mobile gives you a virtual keyboard you can tap on the keys, an entry area that you use like the older Palms and special glyphs, and full screen recognition that tries to do it from your natural writing. It seems from the site that it has something like the first and last modes; is this accurate?

Same deal, you can get the little virtual keyboard you tap, or the handwriting analysis. You can train the handwriting analysis to recognize your handwriting. But I have one major complaint about this: When you go into the handwriting training screen, it'll show you the seven different ways it knows to write, for example, the letter A. And you are only allowed to add one new way to write "A" in your handwriting, and there's NO WAY TO DELETE the seven ways it already knows. This is quite frustrating if, for example, the way you write the number "1" is the same as what the device knows to be the letter "l". I seriously hope they change that in the future.

Also, when you are using handwriting recognition, it will try and auto-complete what you're writing. For example, if you want to write the word "example" and you've written the first two letters, it'll show you down at the bottom

Re:I love mine

[Klivian]

3. From the Maemo tutorials, it looks like it uses some mix of a special API (the Hildon stuff) and GTK. How difficult is this to learn (I've done GUI programming with the Win32 APIs and have a very rudimentary knowledge of Qt, but almost no GTK knowledge) and how much knowledge is transferrable to making desktop GTK apps? Is it possible to use something like Qt on it? From some recent blogs/mailinglists it looks like one of the main Qtopia/Opie developers have got one of those devices, so I'll say it's only a matter of time before you have Qt on it. Most likely the Qt embedded stuff, so you get the benefit of the whole application stack for Qtopia/Opie(Opie also gives positive reply to the rest of your questions:-).

Re:I love mine

[Jacco de Leeuw]

How do you get a Windows CE Mozilla browser to run on the Nokia 770?

Re:I love mine

[juhaz]

1. How well does it (or do you think it would) function as a PDA? Does it have calendaring apps and stuff? How well does it sync that sort of data with a PC? What sort of software will it sync with?

Out of the box, it sucks. GPE PIM applications have been ported. They don't currently do very strong on automagical syncing front, the folks working on them posted a progress report and updates yesterday and mentioned it's the next step being worked on.

3. From the Maemo tutorials, it looks like it uses some mix of a special API (the Hildon stuff) and GTK. How difficult is this to learn (I've done GUI programming with the Win32 APIs and have a very rudimentary knowledge of Qt, but almost no GTK knowledge) and how much knowledge is transferrable to making desktop GTK apps?

Knowledge is almost 100% transferrable to desktop GTK.

Is it possible to use something like Qt on it?

Qt as an addition isn't very likely, two heavyweight toolkits on device this small will drain way too much RAM. The only way I can see that happening is if you completely wipe out Maemo and use a hypothetical Qtopia/OPIE port instead.

How's the handwriting analysis? To compare, Windows Mobile gives you a virtual keyboard you can tap on the keys, an entry area that you use like the older Palms and special glyphs, and full screen recognition that tries to do it from your natural writing. It seems from the site that it has something like the first and last modes; is this accurate?

That's right. Haven't used Windows Mobile not a clue how good it is, but handwriting recognition is better than any open source implementation I've tried, although vastly inferior to Windows XP Tablet PC edition. Virtual keyboard is pretty good.

It says it's Linux-based... do you have command line access, or just a GUI? If you do have a CLI, is it useful?

Well, considering the text input methods CLI is pretty much a pain to use, might be useful with bluetooth keyboard or something.

Didn't reveal exact sales figures

[Anonymous Coward]

If Nokia only began a 5000 unit production, and then it had a 6000 unit response --- that's considered higher than expected demand.

It really means nothing until Nokia reveals how many units are sold.

Re:Didn't reveal exact sales figures

[Anonymous Coward]

But remeber, Nokia is the largest cell-phone manufacturer in the world, their phones are usually sold in millions not thousands. Even if this is a entry into a new market I doubt that initial number is that small..

Using mine to post this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really love it. The browser is great (Opera), handwriting recognition is great, battery life is insanely good... Only weakness is the built-in mail app. It has squirrely IMAP support. I'd put more but tapping this keyboard on the screen is time consuming.

Re:Using mine to post this...

[PCM2]

Handwriting recognition is great? You're kidding, right? The saddest thing about the 770 is that, for a first-time user, entering text with the handwriting recognition takes about the same amount of time as pecking it in on the microscopic onscreen keyboard. Once you get used to a few of the keyboard's undocumented shortcuts (like hitting a key and then stroking up to do uppercase) you will be able to enter text much more quickly with it that with the awful handwriting recognition.

Seriously folks, the handwriting recognition on the 770 is far more difficult to master than Grafitti on a first-generation PalmPilot.

Re:Using mine to post this...

[DrSkwid]

I could write in grafitti on my Palm, and on the rare occasion I wrote on paper sometimes did it there too.

It was still quicker to tap the kb.

I imagine for people with existing keyboard skills, that will always be the case.

Re:Using mine to post this...

[mad.frog]

Even if the handwriting recognition is *perfect*, I don't want it... I've taken a hardline approach to this after years of screwing around with Palms and the like. (My handwriting sucks with pen and paper.)

Nokia, add a thumbboard and call it the Nokia 771, and I'll pick one up in a snap.

Bluetooth at last

[fm6]

I suspect that Bluetooth is the main reason this device is doing better than a lot of people expected (including me). The last time we were discussing it, I criticized the 770 because running the WiFi for only 4 hours is enough to exhaust the battery. What use is an internet tablet that can only stay online for 4 hours? Someone responded to me saying that they had been online on their 770 all day -- Bluetooth drains the battery a lot less than WiFi.

I don't think speed is that big an issue. You don't use something like this for browsing graphics intensive sites. You use it for reading email and catching up on the news. The catch is you really need both good support for Bluetooth and cheap cell networking. Both are issues in the U.S., because many providers cripple Bluetooth and use connection-based data networking. The latter can be really expensive, because you end up paying by the connection/minute, so the money clock is ticking all the time you're online. Connectionless networks (GSM/GPRS) are less scary, because you only pay for the data your actually send and receive, regardless of how long you're online.

I'm glad to be proven wrong about this gizmo. Glad because somebody's finally demonstrated that there's a market for web tablets. And glad because there's finally serious Bluetooth gadget that isn't a headset!

Re:Bluetooth at last

[Eustace Tilley]

T-Mobile's unlimited GPRS internet is $19.95 per month when added to a voice plan. So get a Bluespoon to handle voice, a 7280 to handle cellular connectivity, and the 770 to handle http|ftp|ssh. Then, if possessions can make someone cool, you'll be cool.

Nokia 770 reponse from OWNER

[skynetos]

I have to say I am surprised by the reaction to the device.

1. It doesnt have SIM!!!
No.. because there is no need. That's and extra added expense that not everyone will be able to use. If you want cellulare internet use its bluetooth connection.. that's why its there!

2. Ugly UI.
Only a MAC user would say that. I don't know about you but I think the UI is perfect, its slick, polished and no fuss no muss. I think AQUA is ugly.

3. VoIP/Phone capability.
It wasnt meant to be a phone... look at it, its too big! It's a PDA, it's an Internet Tablet. It will have offical VOiP support from Nokia in the 2006 series firmware. That's great and all.

4. Third party apps/support
Right now this is the amazing part, there are tons and tons of applications for it for free obviously. It's so easy to get going with the official SDK. This device is simply amazing on the third party front.

5. Screen quality
The screen is 800x480, any website that was meant for 800x600 (allmost of them!) can be viewed without side scrolling on this beautiful screen. It's great having such a high res screen.

The best thing is... its not a PSP thats been HACKED 6 ways from sunday to have some sort of functionality. It natively runs Linux and has corporate support. Nokia is committed to this device, and it has sold like hot cakes everywhere. The 770 can only get better, and who knows what the "880" will hold!

Any doubts you may have, go to a CompUSA and try it out at the Nokia display, it really is the greatest thing since sliced bread :).

Re:Nokia 770 reponse from OWNER

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are these 3rd party applications? I've been drooling over this for a while but lack of 3rd party support kept me away.

A google search really doesn't turn much up.

Is there a single site that catalogs them?

Re:Nokia 770 reponse from OWNER

[dcstimm]

Maemo.com click on their wiki, TONS AND TONS..

Re:Nokia 770 reponse from OWNER

[LordBodak]

ahref=http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalo grel=url2html-11000http://maemo.org/maemowiki/Appl icationCatalog> catalogs applications that are "installer ready," meaning that .deb files suitable for the 770's application installer exist. There are other pages in the Wiki listing projects that aren't ready yet, but are working (in other words, they might require compilation or manual installation).

But there is plenty of software support.

Re:Nokia 770 reponse from OWNER

[Anonymous Coward]

your to retarted two link or prevue

http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog

duh

Re:Nokia 770 reponse from OWNER

[DrSkwid]

3. VoIP/Phone capability.

I would contend that VoIP on a device like this is essential.

But what's to stop you running Linphone ?

Re:Nokia 770 reponse from OWNER

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a MAC user would say that. I don't know about you but I think the UI is perfect, its slick, polished and no fuss no muss. I think AQUA is ugly.

Was that flame strictly necessary? Sadly it detracts from the rest of your argument.

Re:Nokia 770 reponse from OWNER

[LordBodak]

Yeah, that's what I get for using slashdot's wonderful URL tag instead of doing it myself. And am I supposed to be insulted by your message when the only words you got right were "link" and "or"?

Unexpected demand

[lawpoop]

I pre-ordered the Nokia 770 back in November. My ship date was supposed to be the 14th of December, but around the 18th, still no 770 nor any email.

I called Nokia USA and they told me that my credit card company was rejecting my charge. So I call my credit card company to ask why they are rejecting it. They asked who was running the charge, and I answered "Nokia". Well, nobody named Nokia was trying to charge my card -- but there was another copmany with a generic counding name that was trying to charge my card, for the same amount as my 770. I call Nokia back to ask if they are charging under that name and they tell me yes. But now my order is delayed until January 10th.

All in all, they have way more demand then they anticipated, and they really don't have their act together with production, shipping, even charging people's cards properly.

However, I am glad that there has been a literally overwhelming response -- I have always wanted a true tablet computer, but I didn't want to shell out $2500 for a table "notebook" that really wasn't using a pen-based GUI. I'm an obsessive note-taker, and if I can take down notes or draw sketches directly into digital, hooray! I hope Nokia pursues this line and develops a reasonably priced tablet computer with an OS that is truly driven by the stylus.

Re:Unexpected demand

[InsurgentGeek]

Head out to CompUSA & pick one up then cancel your order. I gave up waiting this Monday and had one in my hands in about two hours. * DO NOT * expect to have any kind of intelligent discussion about this with the CompUSA sales types. They tried (hard) to sell my a CF card for it - despite my telling them it would take a Dremel and a small hammer to get the card to fit.

Re:Unexpected demand

[lawpoop]

What CompUSA did you buy this from? The ones in Columbus, Ohio are out of stock, according to the website. Also, the website doesn't allow online orders.

Re:Unexpected demand

[InsurgentGeek]

I just searched around a bit and found mine in Salem, NH - there are four stores in this general area so perhaps I had a little more choice. Good luck.

Re:Unexpected demand

[LDoggg_]

I ordered mine on (nokiausa.com) december 3rd, and it still hasn't shipped.
The website originally said it would ship by december third.
Now it says:
"Important: If you placed your order on or before 12/16/2005, we expect to ship by January 6, 2006. You will receive a shipment confirmation email at that time. If you have questions about your order please call 1-888-256-2098."

Well, today is January 8th and the website hasn't been updated. On top of this, their customer service reps are completely clueless and somewhat unfriendly.

I really want to get started messing with this and writing/porting apps for it, but Nokia doesn't seem to want to sell it to me.

Re:Unexpected demand

[lawpoop]

I doubt that they don't want to sell it to you. I think what happened is that they thought this was going to be a total flop and they were preparing to have these things sit around in a warehouse for a month. They were going to pull the plug on this project.

Lo and behold, demand is through the roof and Quick! get together a call center so we can take orders and Quick! get those things over here from Singapore so we can start shipping them and Quick! start producing more so that we can meet demand.

Well, as you know, haste makes waste. They do have their shipping and distribution center up and running, but not well. People haven't been trained, and they probably don't even have a procedure put together to train the people on. It's just a giant clusterfuck because they weren't prepared for the demand.

Re:Unexpected demand

[LDoggg_]

The website originally said it would ship by december third.

Ooops. I meant it said it would ship on the thritieth when I ordered it. I wasn't expecting same day service :)

Still, The date has already been pushed back. I just don't want to be lied to for a third time.

Re:In Canada we are left out in the cold M$ world.

[digitalchinky]

Weird, the 770 is already selling in the Philippines. Not sure if that makes the country ahead or behind the rest of the world :-) 3G was switched on about a month ago. Stupidly expensive for data, though 3G phones have been on sale for a long while now.

Swapping to flash media

[beeblebrox]

Won't this reduce the life of the flash memory in the card?

Re:Swapping to flash media

[dcstimm]

it doesnt use it enought to kill your media, just make sure you get memory with a 1 year warranty.

Wrong!

[Wooky_linuxer]

The PSP screen res is 480x272, not 320x240.

So much to do!

[DemonWeeping]

I've been blogging my experience with this one like mad:
http://thoughtfix.blogspot.com/

Posts today:
- Using the device's USB host mode without soldering a special cable
- Using an iPod nano as external storage

Lots of other things too, like enabling sshd and other thoughts and wishes.

Re:So much to do!

[dcstimm]

neat!

Re:So much to do!

[DemonWeeping]

Thanks! I am flattered that I got moderated up for "informative" but I was hoping to get at least one "funny" too!

Re:So much to do!

[dcstimm]

I saw that the other day, Believe it or not I do check out http://www.internettablettalk.com/ I did think it was funny, oh and I am going to take a pic of me using the nokia 770... Maybe at work..

Re:In Canada we are left out in the cold M$ world.

[Jherek Carnelian]

3G was switched on about a month ago. Stupidly expensive for data.

No surprise, looks like Manila DSL and wifi access at 256-384kbps is priced at the same level as US 3-4Mbps service, and that's dollars for dollars (~2000p/month ~= $35/month). Considering how much more of other kinds of services the US dollar will buy there, that's effectively like a 10x pricing premium over the cost in the US which is already pretty sucky compared to the developed asian countries.

eBook

[Gondola]

I ordered a Nokia 770 last week because of the overwhelming feedback I've read concerning the device's beautiful display. I was a proud owner of a Sharp Zaurus 6000L, which is a 480x600 device very similar to the 770, also with a wonderful display.

After having the Zaurus for a year or so, I realized that most of what I used it for was ebook reading and occasional surfing while on the throne. The 770 has a smaller footprint, and a larger, higher resolution display.

The only drawback is, the 770 only has RS-MMC for expansion. No CF, no SD. Bummer. But, it does have built in Bluetooth and wifi, so connectivity to a filesystem shouldn't be an issue most of the time.

The only thing missing is a killer GPS application (some exist, but they're not "full solutions" with downloadable vector maps) like TomTom... but hopefully it will come. The 770's only been shipping for what, a little over a month?

Re:eBook

[Russ Nelson]

You'll not soon find an open source GPS receiver with routing like TomTom. The routing databases sell for substantial amounts of money and even if you could buy them as a stand-alone product, they're in a proprietary undocumented format.

I'm going to port pygps to the 770, but it uses pixmaps, not vector maps. Then again, I WANT pixmaps and not vector maps.
-russ

Re:eBook

[jsight]

You'll not soon find an open source GPS receiver with routing like TomTom. The routing databases sell for substantial amounts of money and even if you could buy them as a stand-alone product, they're in a proprietary undocumented format.

Maybe you mean something other than what I think you mean. :) But there are a few pieces of highway navigation software that are open source (for the US, that is):

Roadnav and RoadMap come to mind.

Re:eBook

[Gondola]

I'd pay for TomTom if it were reasonable; they already have a Linux version, it probably would be very little effort on their part to provide a 770 port.

My wife and I are planning a length Europe excursion (1-2 months) and we plan to tour the major touristy spots, which means London, France, and Rome at the very least. A GPS with complete maps of those cities that I could carry with me/in a rental car would be a godsend.

Nabbed the last one at Fry's

[spice3d]

I spotted this puppy at Fry's on Dec 31. Did some googling on my T3 and was intrigued. I was a bit worried it would be too much of a duplicate of my Palm T3, but boy was I wrong. I love roaming around the house with this in hand. Web surfing and email are obvious uses. Haven't used the email client and just use a webmail client. IM is great using 3rd party GAIM app and I really haven't found the "written input" any more difficult to use than the Palm graffiti. It's been fun reading CES coverage blogs while listening to podcasts. (It's interesting that I've found no CES coverage on the 770 @_@) Another nice thing to do is listen to mp3s streamed from slimserver. It's really not a replacement/duplication of my Palm T3. Basically, it's a VERY portable web browser and audio/video player. Battery life seems pretty good and DivX 4.12 avis seem to work best. It really reminds me of a portable palm-sized 3Com Audrey, if anyone remembers those (I still use one!) I have had no connectivity problems and it connects to my phone (Nokia 6230) and laptop via bluetooth with no problems.

GPS Navigation?

[tji]

I think a killer app for this thing would be GPS Navigation. It supports bluetooth, and already works with the various bluetooth gps receiver options.

It just needs a good software package, like the TomTom software available for several PDAs and their own Linux based device.

Navigation systems are becoming more popular. A device that combined good nav, with wifi / www functions would be very interesting.

Re:GPS Navigation?

[DemonWeeping]

RIGHT BEHIND YOU on that one. I made two posts on http://thoughtfix.blogspot.com/ (one of which with a link to TomTom's "contact us" page) on how I am BEGGING TomTom to release a bluetooth GPS, software, and map package for the 770. Between it's adequate CPU, a 800x480 screen, a speaker, Bluetooth, and memory card support, it has all it needs. Now we just wait for developers developers developers developers!

out of memory....a lot

[ditangquan]

I like it...but the dang thing keeps giving me 'out of memory' errors and crashes all the time. It'll freeze up every time I go to the control panel to check the memory and it will not reset holding the button down. Not acceptable. I can view slashdot.org but digg.com will crash this thing every single time. lots of problems with this device, should be better. I'm hoping for a firmware update. note: was very cool VNC'ing to my mac....almost like having a mac tablet! needs work. lots of work before its production ready. Fry's and Circuit City have a ton of them here in phoenix, but I'd wait for version 2.

Re:out of memory....a lot

[DemonWeeping]

Install the latest firmware to start. Following that, consider setting up a swap :)

My experience with upgrading:
http://thoughtfix.blogspot.com/2006/01/update-and- upgrade-plus-gps-wishes.html

A link to setting up a swap (not for noobs)
http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showpost. php?p=4013&postcount=13

Hope that helps.

Re:out of memory....a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll freeze up every time I go to the control panel to check the memory and it will not reset holding the button down.

This specific problem was confirmed to be fixed in a firmware update some time ago, so head to http://www.nokia.com/support/770 and grab the latest software update.

Re:out of memory....a lot

[LDoggg_]

Fry's and Circuit City have a ton of them here in phoenix,

Thanks for the info!
I've been waiting on mine from Nokia for over a month. And I live only about 15 minutes from Fry's at Arizona Mills.

Good reasons for no cell phone embedded

[DemonWeeping]

I can think of several good reasons to keep this APART from cell phones:

• I already have a cell phone
• I already have a cell carrier and contract
• It keeps the price of the unit down
• One internet tablet can work on all carriers
• I go through cell phones faster than I go through pants
• Carriers will want to lock down the device and "get in on the pie" with software releases
• Carriers are greedy and don't like open-source

Good enough?

Re:Good reasons for no cell phone embedded

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Who says you have to join it with carriers? Use something free after mail-in rebate as a phone, and an an unlocked SIM slot on the 770 for the Internet connection.

Here's some scoffing for you

[PCM2]

I have one. I paid for it with my own money, just so you know -- which means I didn't screw around with it for an afternoon and send it back to Nokia. I still have it, I still use it ... but not for all that much. I'm not as impressed with the software as some others in this topic. For a first-generation product it's ... interesting. But I wouldn't recommend it for most casual consumers, as I explain in my column, here.

Here's another thing, too. Nokia has gone out of its way to explain to everybody that this is a brand-new product category. But it isn't really. We've seen plenty of products like this one before. We call them PDAs. Nokia trounced every PDA to date by including a noticeably far superior screen, but it left out the PDA software. With that big omission, we're all left wondering what exactly we're supposed to use it for.

Me personally, I can't find much use for it so far other than some light Web browsing (because "serious" Web browsing will crash it) and FBReader, the open source ebook software that was ported to it by a third party. The included e-mail program is awful. The PDF reader is totally unusable unless you turn off images. The RSS reader is interesting, but not really my cup of tea. The Opera browser mostly works, but is crippled by lack of memory and lack of ad-blocking features.

After all that, I'm still fascinated by the device. It's just too bad that this first generation is still more concept than reality.

Re:Here's some scoffing for you

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a PDA. PDAs require a mothership to hotsync. The 770 has no such dependency. That in itself makes it a device in a class by itself.

Re:Here's some scoffing for you

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought one and I use it quite a bit. I use it much more than my laptop. I agree, the software is not really ready for general consumer use. The web browser and the streaming audio work well. The RSS reader and the email client do not work well.

Nokia is telling everyone this is a new product category because they designed this from the ground up to be an internet tablet. A PDA is designed to be a PDA foremost. The great screen resolution, the nice browser, and the way this compliments a cell phone make it very useful. I don't have to carry my laptop around to connect to the internet for 'light' browsing in a coffee shop, airport, or on the train. I can toss it in my backpack and it works out very well.

I don't have a problem with the web browser crashing as you describe. I do use it on some fairly large pages, but I don't really use any flash heavy sites. The web browser is very capable and supports both flash and real video. Yes, FBReader is nice. I use the email on my cell phone at the moment, but I do hope that nokia fixes the email client. They have stated they are working on it. The PDF reader is just fine for reading PDF documents. It is not lightning fast, but it does work. The one glaring error right now is that the PDF reader does not have a 'next page' button in full screen mode. I use a web based RSS reader. The included RSS viewer is the style of most RSS readers and I don't like that style. Also, it doesn't render images linked in the feeds. I've had good luck with the Opera browser and memory. I generally do not go above two open windows and I don't find that a serious limitation. I do wish someone would port over privoxy or some other ad blocker.

I think honestly the device may just not fit your lifestyle. I live in a large city and use public transportation to get places. My daily commute is a great time to catch up on things on the web, and the 770 is working well for me at that task. I've also had great luck in airports and in coffee shops.

The device software is still in beta in my opinion. Anyone buying it should keep that mind. I think in 6 months everything will work much better, and hopefully Nokia have been convinced that a followup device with greater capabilities is a good investment. When PDA devices first came out, I tried to use them for the exact tasks this device is designed to do. I don't need extensive daily planning software or really even a contact manager on a PDA. I use my cell phone for contacts, and my life is more ToDo list based. The 770 has been a pleasure to use and a nice tool to have. It lets me own a cell phone that focuses on being a good phone.

Re:Here's some scoffing for you

[viewtouch]

The difficulty you're experiencing is due to the fact that you don't understand what X is, what X apps on a WAN can imply and that you don't grasp the difference between the experience that a PDA user has and the experience that an X terminal user on a WAN has. Like most people trying to understand the significance of the software on this device you simply don't know what it is that you don't know about it. This will probably become clear to you with time.

Sweet VOIP and SSH

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always wanted to tunnel my voice calls over voip inside a ssh tunnel over gprs throught a proxy over the internet to a 5th party voip provider... Maybe we could toss in just a couple more tech buzz words/protocols on top of a simple phone call.

Re:Sweet VOIP and SSH

[Urusai]

Don't forget the Bluetooth. You need some XML and LAMPS stacks in there while you're at it.

Not for sale in New Zealand.....

[Anonymous Coward]

....but I got one sent down from the states by a friend. Great little device. A few bugs though. One I really hate is I can't select Auckland as my home city in the clock. Or any NZ cities actually. OK, I understand it not being on sale here but we do exist damn-it Nokia!

Almost but not quite

[jmorris42]

I really want to like this thing. Good idea, but I ain't buying yet.

Pros:

As close to an open hardware platform as currently possible. It appears to be at least as open as Linksys access points.

The screen is majorly hot. Just reading the specs on the screen makes me want one. Perfect would have been putting in the extra 52 pixels to allow DVD quality playback without scaling, but I'm not greedy. I suspect overscanning 26 pixels off each side would work pretty well anyway.

The fact that it ISN'T a cell phone. A cell phone in that form factor would suck as hard as Palm/Handspring's earlier attempts at unifying a handheld computer and a phone. Bluetooth is the way to go, if for no other reason than replacing the phone to get new services is far less annoying than replacing a computer. Plus if the phone were integrated the cell companies would lock the son of a bitch down.

Cons:

Seriously underpowered. To run a full web browser needs more CPU and memory than a handheld computer, they should have raised the specs a bit. 64MB ram is woefully small. More flash wouldn't hurt either.

Nobody reviewing the unit has found the handwriting recognition faster than the onscreen keyboard. Major problem.

I don't know about everyone else, but I already have a handheld (Handspring) so I'd be carrying it along with this gadget plus a cellphone. It needs PDA functionality even if some folks will be leaving it at home and not need it.

I know space was getting cramped so they went with the RS-MMC slot. But unless that format is going to get plentiful, cheap and high capacity really soon they should consider reworking things to get at least a full SD/MMC card in the next rev. Personally I like CF but realize that format is big and power hungry. It needs to be able to carry around enough to be able to cover the MP3 player role though. Again, just because people have finite gadget carrying capacity and otherwise it will be competing for pocket space with a music player. And bundle a good player program with features to compete with standalone players.

Good start though, when they rev the design I'll be watching carefully.

Re:Almost but not quite

[Westmeath]

I use a Treo 650. Palm seem to be going downhill. Something like this, running Linux, with a PDA & phone in it would be great.

i'm returning mine

[honold]

i preordered from nokia and ended up picking one up (for less money) at compusa before it shipped.

overall the hardware is great use-wise. nice build quality, good size screen. could use scroll buttons. i'd much rather have sd over rs-mmc. charger works well.

cold booting to a functional desktop takes a painful 45 seconds. since the battery life is great, most people leave it on permanent standby for 'instant on'.

the ui is a bit kludgy, and the software generally spartan. a lot of this doesn't matter to me, because i basically bought it to browse and read pdfs. people complain about the handwriting recognition (i just use the great onscreen keyboard), email client, etc. packages from the web install and uninstall great.

the pdf reader is unusably slow. we're talking over a minute to open the first page of a 500k text-heavy pdf, over a minute to zoom in, over a minute to change to the next page.

the opera broswer is great, but i had plenty of actual reboots before i hacked the system to use a swap file on my rs-mmc card. even with that, it still locks up regularly on complex pages. potentially poorly designed pages too, but they render fine in opera for pcs and even on the 770 - they just lock up when you try to click a link and that sort of thing, presumably because it's out of memory. to enable swap you need root, which is a bit of an ordeal (needs a linux box, linux flasher, enabling debug mode, etc). quite a hack too for limited write cycle media that's supposed to be used as simple storage.

overall i would love for the system to work, but it gags on my everyday web usage and pdfs are effectively unreadable. the developers say the speed problems are a software issue, but i'm not going to let my return period expire and hope that they're right.

Unexpected sales?

[AdamInParadise]

Nokia probably learnt from its mistakes with the N-Gage launch. I bet that they ran an initial batch of about 200 pieces and can now claim "unexpected" levels of sales. Just like Microsoft and Sony did for their respective consoles.

The Web can do it all!

[Anonymous Coward]

I received my Nokia 770 about a week ago and must say it does everything on the web perfectly. I've yet to encounter a website that did not work with the device (GMail works fine, GMaps is also workablle). With so many web apps coming about, this thing has loads of functionality just from being able to render even complex websites with acuracy.

770 german ?

[.de_domain]

know someone when i can buy the 770 in germany ?

best Regards
domain

Re:770 german ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy one directly from Nokia in Germany from this link. The price is 349 euro. Don't let the availability red warning scare you off, the 770 should be shipping in high volume by now in Europe.

I have one, here are my thoughts

[sean@thingsihate.org]

I really like it. Quick overview is that it's great if you basically just want to use the internet (hey that's what they made it for) and don't expect it to do everything a PC can do.

Here is what I like about it:

1. I commute by train, so if I have a few minutes to wait I get a coffee in the cafe at the station and jump on somebody's open wireless network (the hotel next door, maybe?) and check my RSS feeds, do my email, browse the web, open up GAIM and chat, etc. When you've got a wifi connection (and since I live in an urban area, there's open wifi networks all over the city) it's a great.

2. Hook it to my stereo in the living room at home and stream internet stations or podcasts. I love doing this. I get Soma FM's "Drone Zone" going when I can't sleep. And this month is old-timey country month on Radio David Byrne!

4. Stream podcasts using the little built-in speaker. The little built-in speaker isn't great, but if you're listening to a podcast where it's just voice and not music, it's great. If I'm cooking in the kitchen I'll set it on the table and fire up a podcast.

5. Use the internet from bed, or the recliner. I admit it. I have no shame.

6. When there's no network connectivity, for instance when I'm on the train or in the middle of nowhere, it makes a great e-book reader using FBReader. Or if you've downloaded some music or podcasts and have some headphones, you can listen to those.

OK, now here are the things that so far I have disliked about it:

1. Handwriting recognition isn't that great, so I use the little virtual keyboard instead. You can see a longer post I wrote about the handwriting recognition here.

2. While the Opera browser that comes with it is great, it does seem to have some problems with pages with a lot of DHTML on them. For instance, if you start loading Gmail or Bloglines, and then switch to another window while they're loading, and then come back, you'll see they didn't load properly. For some reason when loading those pages, I need to keep that window in the foreground for them to properly load.

3. The Opera browser doesn't have a way to change the font size. If I'm reading a page where the font just shows up too small, I can't increate the font size, all I can do is use the ZOOM IN feature, which creates a horizontal scroll bar in the browser. This is actually rarely an issue, though, since the display is so crisp and easy to read.

4. Running the Nokia-distributed version of the operating system, there's no way that I can see to remove the icons for the Mail and News readers from the left-hand-side menu. I don't use them, I just use Gmail and Bloglines in the browser, so I don't want those two icons taking up space in my menu. (Apparently it's possible to install the Maemo operating system directly, instead of using the Nokia'd-up version, but I haven't tried this.)

5. No network file browsing! So if I'm in the living room, I can't browse the music on my desktop computer over the network and play them. I have gotten around this by installing SlimServer on the desktop computer and connecting the Audio Player in the Nokia to that, but this is sort of clunky. I'd rather just have SMB support in the nokia.

6. Videos have to be sort of low-quality to play smoothly, I think. At least, I've downloaded a couple of videos to it, and they were choppy. This isn't an issue of the display, I think, it's an issue of the processing power.

Re:I have one, here are my thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

3. The Opera browser doesn't have a way to change the font size. If I'm reading a page where the font just shows up too small, I can't increate the font size, all I can do is use the ZOOM IN feature, which creates a horizontal scroll bar in the browser.

Select "optimized view" from opera's menu, and ZOOM IN will increase font/pictures, but will rearrange the page so it does not need a horizontal scroll bar. That's better than font size increase IMO.

Re:I have one, here are my thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, changing the font size is easy. Just open the opera.ini file (located under /home/user/.opera/opera.ini) and play around with the "Minimum Font Size" preference setting.

Re:I have one, here are my thoughts

[sean@thingsihate.org]

Excellent! Thank you!

Siemens SimPAD

[the grace of R'hllor]

So I recently found out about an older device, the Siemens SimPAD. It runs on WinCE, but can, apparently, be hacked to run Linux. It only has client-capable USB (so you can't attach, say, a USB flash drive), but it has a PCMCIA slot, so you can attach all sorts of wonderful goodies to it.

Might be worth checking out for those on a budget. I'm wanting one to play with, myself, assuming I can find it cheap somewhere.

Needs onscreen 'CTRL Key' for Bash/Vim

[Anonymous Coward]

This is my biggest complaint so far. I installed Bash/VIM and it just takes too long to edit files with VIM having to go up to the menu to where you can enter a control character. Also need the escape key onscreen too. That button is just too much effort.

Also needs onscreen keyboard support for VNC/RDesktop. If I wanted an external keyboard I'd have bought a laptop.

But it suits my web surfing needs. As a new father (less than a year), it lets me be productive on the couch with the family when I can't easily go downstairs to my PCs anymore.

And one more. It would be nice if there was an option (or is there one?) to not sleep when I slide the cover on, so I can listen to music with the gadget in my pocket while having the screen protected.

Re:In Canada we are left out in the cold M$ world.

[kyrre]

Same thing in Norway. All neighbouring countries may order the 770. But not in Norway. I tried to order through the swedish shop but my order was cancelled.

Quote:"
Dear Sir,

Thank you for contacting Nokia Online sales.

We are sorry but you order has been cancelled because we are not allowed
to send in Norway yet.

We are sorry for this inconvenience."

Why is this? Very strange, and not very good customer support. Just send me the friggin Internet Tablet. Since no shops sell the thing I cannot just go over the border to sweden and pick one up either.

Re:In Canada we are left out in the cold M$ world.

[claes]

Norway is not part of the EU - I think that is the reason. Exactly why that should matter in turn, I can not tell. But it seems they are limiting themselves to a small number of countries, and being outside of the EU could matter.

It's only 359?

[mrmeval]

Wow

http://www.nokiausa.com/add_nonactivated_phone_to_ cart/1,1890,p,00.html

nice but sluggish

[penguin-collective]

The 770 hardware is great. The fact that it's Linux-based is great. The connectivity is great. The fact that it uses X11 is great. The UI is pretty good.

What is not so good is that the device is sluggish: a 250MHz processor ought to feel zippy, yet the 770 does not. I suspect the culprit is the Gtk+ toolkit. Nokia needs to do more work on pruning it down, maybe throwing out some functionality and visual features.

Nokia/Maemo release improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

For everyone considering buying the 770: Nokia has released new versions already (not the 2006 version as described on their homepage with VOIP).

They release about every two months and the software improves notably.
See for more info: InternetTableTalk Forum: 51-13 now available

Latest version is: 3.2005.51-13 (December 30, 2005)

My Review (Yet another Review)

[markdavis]

Those who follow or are interested in the 770 are probably tired of reviews, but I wrote a six page review for my user's group. For now, you can get to it here:
http://www.markadavis.org/770review.pdf

Re:My Review (Yet another Review)

[silpol]

Mark, when you think about swap partition, try to read general material on NAND flashes, especially how long it will last, and how linux swap partition will affect a matter of dying ... ;)

Re:My Review (Yet another Review)

[markdavis]

Yep- there is a lot of chatter out there about whether or not it makes sense to swap to Flash. Some people feel that it is worth destroying a flash card once a year to get a more responsive system. I am still "on the fence". Since it is (as far as I can tell) impossible to add more RAM, people are trying to address the issue the only way possible.

It is really too bad Nokia didn't spend the extra $10 or so (speculation) to double the memory so it wouldn't become an issue.

that, and a powerful processor

[Anonymous Coward]

The ARM processor is not powerful enough to run the GIPS codecs used by Skype.

Re:In Canada we are left out in the cold M$ world.

[Reapman]

Maybe cuz they have to translate the whole thing into Frenc... er... Quebec?

(ducks)

If you like SonyEricsson phones...

[Nicolay77]

You could try the P990 when it comes out. It will have Wi_Fi and FM stereo.

I do have a P900 and is quite good. It has bluetooth and IR. I read books in pdb format (I've read more books in it in the last year and a half that I was used to before), it has nintendo emulators, the metro app to calculate routes, a HP48 emulator, pdf, word and excel applications, and (to me) it looks better than the Treo.

Ohh and it has Opera, so you can browse XHTML+CSS pages, see hotmail, and all that stuff.

The phone funcionality is superb, you can enter SMS text with T9, with the alphabetic keyboard in P910 P990, with the stylus (it recognizes your handwriting) or, when connected to the PC, with the computer keyboard and mouse.

Downsides: it's a little overpriced and only reads MemoryStick cards.

Re:In Canada we are left out in the cold M$ world.

[mibus]

I'm in Australia:

With regard to your enquiry, please be advised that the release of Nokia mobile phones are market, country and region dependent. As such, kindly be informed that the Nokia 770 is not scheduled for release within the Asia Pacific region.

stick an secondary e-ink screen on that thing

[procon]

I know that this thread isn't exactly about gadget lust, but I think that the 770 could be a killer device with its 2nd revision, if it includes... a second e-ink screen on the back. Sony just introduced an ebook, but its software is too closed, and its hardware too limited. A sturdy e-ink screen on the back of the 770 would make it the perfect device to read the articles you've found through browsing on the main screen. My 2cents.

Not New - Lacking on Comparison

[aerikssen]

So I bought one. Not surprising, I've been looking for the "right" PDA and except for a foray once with a Nexio XP30, been trying to stay Open Source.

Impression of the 770 - I like it. Not to reiterate all that's said, but don't find it too slow, battery life is fine when considered practically, *great* screen, nice UI.

But it is lacking. Compared to my Zaurus (orginal 5500 from 01 & the SL-760 from 04), it's not close in functionality. So let's quickly look, 770 vs Z 760 -

Screen 800 x 480 :: 640 x 480; 770 wins but no dif in sharpness or brightness.

UI - Simple Drop Downs :: Tabbed Panes w/Icons; Z much easier to navigate and find once the app set expands

Mem - 128MB Flash (64 for user) :: 128 Flash (64 user) + 64 SDRAM; Z & it does make a difference.

Processor - TI ARM 220 :: StronARM 450; Z & it's an obvious difference.

Bluetooth - Yes :: Optional via BT CF card. plus on 770

WiFi - Yes :: Optional via Wifi CF card; personal, but I like the CF option as I find it gives much better signal strength then built-in.

Expandibility - RS-MMC -> 1GB :: SD -> 1 GB + CF -> ?; Z. Have a 4GB drive that plugs into the CF on the Z no problem.

Input - Screen Keyboard, Handwritting Rec sucks, Optional BT keyboards with OS drivers (not Nokia) :: Screen Keyboard, Handwritting Sucks (3yr old tech, by today's tablet standards the 770 really sucks), integrated full keyboard, Optional keyboards (usb & bt)with OS drivers (not Sharp). Z by a landslide - can actually do 3 finger touch typing quick & easy.

Apps - as everyone's said, no PIMs :: all that the 770 has + PIMs. Z. OK, everyone said it but I can't let it slide. I understand the "market positioning" crap of the uniqueness of the 770 as an Internet Tablet & maybe Nokia didn't want to muddle that uniqueness by delivering pre-installed PIMs on the tablet. OK. So put them on a CD & let people pick what they want.

First thing everyone I've spoken to or read comments from does when they get a 770 is go to the app catalog at maemo and scavange useful apps. Yeah, it's not a PDA, I've heard that one, save the marketing BS - if it wasn't on Linux, and wasn't such a growing 3rd party hacker community & Nokia hadn't want it and encouraged OS developers to write for it - taken at face value with what the "770 Internet Tablet" has configured in - only gadget collectors would buy it, and we're a minor demographic ;) Sorry for the rant, but come on - even my phone has a basic calendar & todo list. An electronic device of this size(!) that doesn't have rudimentary PIM (with MS(ack) format support) isn't going to last long. & not just PIMS - no 770 clients or servers to connect to PC's. Even my Z which didn't come with a CF wifi card had the sw so I could map network drives and telnet to it. & this ridiculous lack of root priviledges - eeuuwww.

So why did I buy it & why am I keeping it?

$379 from Compusa is not too bad a toll to support OS development from a major brand like Nokia. I'm hoping the dev tools & environment is easy enough that the app set grows quickly & people that have a phone (todos) but want a good portable browsing experience will buy in. But it's got to have more than the 770 has today. I'll keep it to see if I can contribute.

I really hope Nokia is serious on this and supports and themselves extends the core app set with branded apps (fr Nokia or 3rd party I don't care). Not even IBM behind the Z could help Sharp keep it in the market. But the 770 is half the price as the Z was ($750 for my 760, $450 for 5500). If it's not a PDA it better become one quick, because as wonderful as the browsing environment is, it's head-to-head on price with some good PDA's & while people will pay more for a first-class web e