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

Re:Some early reviewers scoffed

[`Sean]

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

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: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...

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: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.