A review from an actual 770 owner on Slashdot:
I was a day 1 zaurus owner and this is exactly what the Zaurus should have been but was not. Out of the box, you pop in the included 64meg memory card, turn it on, and boom right in front of my face is my web browser, my RSS reader and e-mail. Best of all since its Linux they support all the secure e-mail connections (tls, ssl, imaps everything) so I don’t have to compromise my security while using it. It has a huge library for something that has only been out for a short while. It’s package management is 100x better than the zauruses! I jump on WIFI or Bluetooth to my phone to the internet, browse to the maemo.org site, click a package and it asks to open it in the package manager! It uses Opera 8 with Flash support. Plays full screen videos just fine, and let me tell you the screen is incredibly bright and detailed!Its a 800×480 display, just beautiful! Not to mention the browser is a full one! No PDA versions of web pages, no side scrolling. You can zoom in, browse history and book marks it works!
I installed very easily mind you, GAIM for IM, Doom a bunch of other little games, an xterm, they have SSH for it, and the library is growing!
Drawbacks:
Occasionally, when using it not as intended, say using the not-ready or polished GAIM, or lets say loading up 20 web browsers, with your rss feeder in the background its going to run out of memory. This is an internet tablet, it has RSS feeder, web and e-mail and its all fully featured and ready to go out of the box. If you use it as intended it works and thats that!Contrary to any reviews I have NEVER encountered any wifi flakyness or bluetooth crazyness. I have used it every day for about a week now, and it is just SOLID. Its design is slick as snot! check out the screen shots below, and check out nokias own site for the 770, its silver metal case and its included pouch is just awsome.
and of course, it runs linux! all my Ipaq and palm friends are very jealous!
I have to agree. I have had mine for a few days, and web browsing is great, RSS is great, email content is just like Outlook. If you try to browse with Bluetooth over your phone, at 144K (I have Cingular MediaWorks on my phone), sure, Web is not so great, but that is just bandwidth; everything else, including Shoutcast Radio is fine at 144K. Email and RSS are fine, and they look like they should - not just plain text, like it was on my Palm.
I have FastAccess DSL (1500K+) at home on an Airport wireless network and the 770 screams, page to page. Sure, you are going to get compared to 400MHz Windoze CE devices, that can browse the web for 2 hours if you are lucky. Before, I have browsed the web on my Palm Zire and my old Jornada, looking at 1/8th of the page at a time - that sucks. I only have one more wish and that is for a Today screen, that integrates the GPE PIM apps, and I will throw everything else away.
Really, I only ever use these kind of apps anyway:
PDA (contacts, todos, calendar)
Email
Time Tracking
Password Lookup
RSS News
Web
Office type stuff (Word, XL, PP)
I think the 770 is the closest thing to the Newtons I used to have, and 1000 times better. And if you “Teach” the 770, it will recognize your handwriting even better. Don’t forget to do that. I wish Apple would have gotten off of their respective butts and created something as great as the 770. I am sure that this will get even better.
Comment by Michael Jones 12.15.05 @ 2:54 amNokia 770, task switching is slow, compared to Palm OS devices. Handwriting recognition need a lot of work. It was very easy to connect to the Internet, but again it is slow. Screen in Nice, 800×600 is a good size.
Comment by shah 12.21.05 @ 12:21 am