My latest distraction - the Nokia 770:
Lately I’ve found myself interested to the point of distraction with the idea of getting the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The idea of having the web with me wherever I go is intriguing. I realize that I will only be connected while I have a WiFi connection, but that should be sufficient to change how I do things…
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet should be available for sale in Hong Kong around the end of this year. I hope it will not be priced too high in Hong Kong so that I can convince myself to buy one.
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ExodusMachine points to Maemo as one of the reasons to get excited about Nokia 770 and also speaks of competition out there:
And don’t even talk to me about the pepper pad. That device looks neat, but I just can’t get past 802.11b and USB1.1 only on an over $700 device. I can get past that with something around the Nokia 770’s price (~$350).
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How many times have you been sitting on the patio or the couch, enjoying some quiet intarweb surfing, but there’s an itch, a splinter in your mind to quote Morpheus: My laptop is too big. I should not need something this big to surf the web. And now Nokia has felt your pain. Will supposedly cost around $350 whenever they get around to releasing it. Based on Debian, so all kinds of nifty software can be compiled for it.
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Internet Tablet Talk lists current reviews of Nokia 770 (many of them coming from people who’ve never held on in their hands, but nevertheless express their thoughts about the platform in general).
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I had the possibility to use an actual 770 device for around 45 minutes or so yesterday. Nokia’s David Weinehall was at Debconf with two 770s and he allowed me to test one. Thanks David. Here are some random thoughts.
The display is awesome. It is bright and extremely sharp. If you get the chance, try booting the device and look at the Nokia logo during startup. There are literally no jaggies between the letters and background.
The speaker has good audio quality. (note that I am not much of an audiophile)
The weight distribution is great. The mass is homogeneously distributed and the center of mass is very close to the center of the device. David also said that the internals of the device are quite packed. So not only is the 770 a nice SW platform, it is also a cool piece of electrical engineering.
The down side is that taking the machine apart and putting it back together will most likely be tricky. HW modders should exercise caution.
No part of the device felt cheap or plasticky. The flat stylus is a bit unconventional, but I had no problems with it.
Earlier reports about slow start up times and such are outdated. The programs started up quite fast. David told me that they are in bug fixing/optimization mode, and that the devices get faster every week.
The PDF reader is an XPDF derivative. (based on a quick rendering test)
If the 770 had one or two buttons on the right side, it would make a killer gaming device.
The device did not get hot, in fact it hardly even got warm.
I managed to crash the software maybe 4 times. But the bugs seemed to be known.
The X mouse pointer can be seen on the screen just like with the Maemo dev kit + xvnc. It may be a bit distracting.
My guess is that Nokia’s marketing people are at the very moment trying to pitch this as a product placement thing in Hollywood. (think The Matrix and Cellular)
The biggest question is, of course, when the device will ship. This has not been fully decided yet, because there are still various open questions. But then again Q3 ends in September, which is not that far off…
The conclusion: I like it. A lot. Can’t wait to get my own machine.
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SilentPenguin praises Nokia for good device at affordable price. You can definitely tell whether you’re reading a European or American blog when the issue of Wi-Fi penetration is raised. With 17.6 mln hotspots shipped in the US, in the high-density residential and business areas you’d have more problem finding Wi-Fi-free space, than you would finding Wi-Fi. Things are, apparently, a bit different across the pond.
However, the site praises the decision and offers some new usage scenarios.
Now Nokia, this is the right direction. But please, please make one the size of - oh - A4 that I can hang on the wall in the kitchen and use as the family messaging board and calendar. Please.
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Karoliina Salminen, who works for Nokia, described her lifestyle experience with Nokia 770. Granted, she works for the company, but it’s still quite interesting to see real people actually using the prototype N770.
Yes, indeed, it is a quite cool device and I have to admit that it is wonderful thing to have it in the handbag everywhere.
I have the privilege to use a prototype and I am beginning to wonder how anyone could live without
. Actually I don’t need to use laptop for browsing some web page at home, just tap the 770 screen and the web page is there and when on outside the home, the device seamlessly connects through my GPRS phone (we of course have wlan at home - we have used it for years, even when it was not so cheap, but now anyone can buy a wlan base station since they have now became cheap mass market devices and the wlan is no longer fun of the early adopter persons anymore alone).
And because of the pretty impressive screen resolution (especially with considering the physical dimensions of the device), it is pretty well readable too and is not a reduced web-experience the devices with lower screen resolution tend to offer but fully usable for web browsing, etc. But this is just my humble opinion and I have nothing to do with any product marketing stuff etc.
I don’t have a dedicated mp3 player so far, so I like to use the N770 prototype as a mp3-player.
The playback time when the screen is off seems to be a lot longer than the browsing time before the battery runs out.
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Peter Rojas from Engadget runs a photo report from Digital Experience, and talks about the disappointment of the evening - none of the showcases Nokia 770 devices were working. The picture of non-working N770 follows.
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Mike Cane visited the Nokia booth at LinuxWorld Expo in New York City and wrote about his impressions of Nokia 770 Internet tablet. If you have to read just one review of N770, make it this one - with plenty of photos and analysis, Cane does an excellent job of evaluating both technological and business sides of Nokia 770. Among the interesting things that Cane notices:
- Loudspeaker is very loud.
- No hole for hardware reset.
- Putting the cover on places the unit into Suspend mode.
- The screen is bright and Mike calls it “stunning”.
- No portrait display.
- There’s a significant delay in loading programs, but otherwise it doesn’t seem too slow.
- The pre-production demo units froze occasionally.
- Video is too choppy.
Read Can’e review in full, as it does present some valuable technical points that anyone in Nokia should be considering before releasing the device, otherwise they will face a torrent of similar-sounding criticisms and consumer behavior impacted just by constantly reiterated criticisms (like the PSP and its dead pixels). Overall, however, Cane is quite upbeat:
Industry critics have cited other “Internet Appliance” failures as reasons why the 770 will also fail. I think this indicates a lack of foresight. The Newton and the first Jeff Hawkins PDA, the Casio Zoomer, didn’t create a market as they were expected to. Yet Jeff Hawkins’s second device, the Pilot, did. It offered the right size, the right price, and the right features. All of the others didn’t. So it is with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet versus past “Internet Appliance” efforts. With the 770, Nokia has done it right.
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