Bravo Nokia! Nearly a year before I started writing about ultra mobile devices, Nokia had launched the 770 Internet tablet. It was the 2nd device I ever mentioned over 2 years ago on what was then the Carrypad journal.
Nokia 770.
I got very excited about this device to start with. The screen and connectivity options looked perfect. Until you find out that its got a rather weak ARm-compatible Ti-Omap that doesnt look like it will get about 500kbps of divx, let alone the 1mbps needed for a reasonable 320×240 25fps experience. No keyboard and no pim software too. The 350 Euro price tells us something about where its marketed and that could be that its a test-device. Nokia have already announced that they might release new hardware with a keyboard. If they address the processor issues, they could be spot on. I’ve recently read about Naviflash – a commercial Navigation product built on Linux over Xscale so there’s potential even for decent nav software.
Fingers crossed for this one. For me its Nokia against Apple at the moment. [Feb 2006]
The TabletBlog.com has always been one of the best places to get the latest info on the Nokia Internet Tablets and Dan, AKA Thoughtfix, who runs the blog, has just published a really great read about what is effectively, a MID before MIDs were launched.
Nokia Internet Tablets Turn 3: Happy Anniversary! – TabletBlog
News links about the 770 going back to May 2006 can be found here. Datasheet here (product id #4!)
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Of all the devices I own, I probably enjoy using my n800 the most.
I bought the device on a whim, just had some money burning a hole in my pocket. Now, I just can’t put the thing down.
When I first started reading about these things, I thought the whole concept was point less. Now, I don’t know what I’d do without it.
May 25th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Nate,
Do you find that the N800 is too slow for web browsing? The browser test Chippy just ran showed that the N800 took 55 secs to render a javascript-heavy page while the already-slow AMD LX900 based Everun took only 13 seconds.
I like the idea of a very low power tablet running Linux and am waiting for the next IT with a faster CPU!
May 26th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
@Will
Always depends…
It`s too slow for youtube and anything alike, and if a page has heavy flash animations (e.g. many ads), then scrolling is just no fun.
I got my N800 a year ago, and at first I really loved it. Small, good browser (for a pda), nice software packages…
But since I got my wibrain, the n800 seems less and less attractive for me.
The browser is very good for a pda, but compared to opera or firefox on the wibrain, its just behaves as a lame, drunken turtle.
There are many media players available, so that playing divx isn`t a problem – unless you expect decent frame rates. I just don`t want to have to reencode every video I want to watch on the go. Again, with the wibrain it`s no problem (apart from hd-material, obviously).
Yes, there is quite a bunch of free software available for the maemo platform – but it`s not even close to the variety of programs you can get for windows or a decent linux distribution on a x86.
So, all in all, I still like the N800, but I only take it with me if I don`t want to carry the extra weight of the wibrain and don`t really know whether I`ll even use a mobile device.
So I`m basically just waiting for some Atom-powered MID with the form factor of the N800.
May 28th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I’m a web developer, and I was an early adopter of the Nokia N770. It was amazing, and by far the best gadget ever for portable internet. Wifi for home browsing, and bluetooth for off-the-phone on-the-go browsing. High resolution screen.
Since there was no alternative for the price, I put up with the quirky updates, beta systems, repositories, etc, but it would always spontaneously reset at some random time, or the browser would just quit.
The hardware was fine, only the software wasn’t quite up to it, and that was a real shame. I skipped the N800/N810, and got myself an iPod Touch, which feels like it’s 20 years ahead of the N770. Very, very rare browser crashes. quick response, just works. (Except for flash, but I’m not missing that as much as I thought I would).