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

[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!

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.

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

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"

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.

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

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.

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 :).

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.

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.

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.