A month behind schedule, Nokia starts shipping its Linux-powered 770 Internet Tablet in Europe, sporting a 4-inch 800×480 display, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 1.2, Opera 8.02 browser and more. UPDATE: Many thanks to Toni Leppänen for sending us a screenshot of Opera rendering OSNews.
Nokia 770 Linux Internet Tablet Hits Shelves
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Eugenia Loli
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This may be the first device that will really work in the way tabletPCs have been visionalized to work. I can easily imagine using this on the sofa. I wonder if they can get uPnp working in it as well.
Does anyone know if it’s fast enough to really use to read pdfs? There are tons of magazines these days that could benefit from the easy portability of 770 and the crisp screen.
Nokia designed this product with the mindset of primarily accompanying a cellphone. While PDA functionality now can be found on the new smartphones, still, the small screen of phones/PDAs are always a limiting factor. This is where the N770 comes to fill that void: Small-enough form factor, fast CPU, bigger screen & resolution, it comes to accompany the cellphone when on the go through GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA, and WiFi when on a hotspot/airport.
For Nokia this is a great product to have, because they actuall also provide the “other half of the product”, the cellphones.
However, I see this only as the first step. This will only be for the early adopters. Simply because, while it is a great technology, it has his downfalls.
For example, why is there no client for e.g. MSN/Yahoo/AOL so you can use instant messaging? Much like the Zipit device for example, but then with the fancy browser and music capabilities of course.
Furthermore, I do have my doubts about the 3 hour battery life. Sure, for simple reading this is more than enough, but this is one downfall that needs to be adressed. While you can do a lot of surfing in three hours I do feel that this is a bit short. I can remember very well that I have had days when I surfed the web for more than three hours. Let alone talking on an instant messaging client for example.
But overall, a wonderful technology that only needs to improve on price and battery power a bit more!
The VoIP and IM solution is coming next year. The N770 product is an “evolving” project. New ROMs will be released every few months, for a few years to come. The community will take care of this. It is not like other similar projects like PDAs or multimedia devices that only get ROM upgrades for about a year or so and then they are abandoned by their manufacturer.
As for the 3 hours of battery life, this is BROWSING time. Which means that WiFi or Bluetooth had to be enabled. And especially WiFi, is a serious power drainer. Most PDAs also have similar battery life when WiFi is enabled at all times. If you disable the WiFi/BT, it should help the battery life go up to 5-6 hours for PDF reading and such.
I hope it will support Jabber then.
Gaim does, so 770 does as well with gaim.
IM is already here. gaim has been ported to nokia 770:
http://dkothari.blogspot.com/2005/11/gaim-15-for-maemonokia-770.htm…
Shame about the battery though. It’s on the border of being good enough. Hard to say if it’s actually really good enough or not.
this baby is running linux with gnome libs and a custom gui. this means that we may well see a gaim port soon. that should cover your im request.
batterylife, well thats a diffrent story. still, how much worktime can one get from a laptop that does the same tasks?
allso, does it come with a nicely sized travel charger?
and i think that between uses you power the device off compleatly, so there is no drain between uses.
Two setbacks which renders this device close to useless:
– 3hrs battery life
– no keyboard; browsing is going to SUCK using only a stylus
If you want to browse the internet, email, and IM, a device needs a proper keyboard. I still like the thing though, purely for the geek factor. As an ordinary non-geek consumer (I’m not really into these sorts of devices, since they have one word written all over them: TRADEOFF), I’d never buy it.
>- 3hrs battery life
See above for my reply. You are somewhat right though, with a 1500 mAh battery, the device should have been able to do 4+ hours with WiFi. The new big-battery HP PDAs with WM5 can do that when WiFi is ON, and go up to 10-12 hours of normal usage when WiFi is OFF… I firmly believe that further optimizations can happen on the Linux kernel to be more conservative of power. Hopefully someone will optimize it in a future ROM release.
>- no keyboard; browsing is going to SUCK using only a stylus
A keyboard would make the device bigger… However a virtual keyboard is not bad at all. I use it all the time with email, IM and browsing on my PDA, and it ain’t that bad of an experience.
A keyboard would make the device bigger… However a virtual keyboard is not bad at all. I use it all the time with email, IM and browsing on my PDA, and it ain’t that bad of an experience.
Bigger? It’s these days quite easy to make the keyboard slide out from underneath or something.
Typing on a virtual keyboard sucks because you need the stylus– which means *slow* typing, and you need to hold it up with one hand (assuming you’re chillin’ on the couch– using this thing on a table is, well, you might as well use a normal PC then), and use the other hand for typing… Can you spell *cramp*!
>Bigger? It’s these days quite easy to make
>the keyboard slide out from underneath or something.
Yes, bigger. Bulkier. Adding the sliding mechanism and the keyboard can make the device about 1cm “fatter”.
If you really Really neet to use a keyboard, you can use a BT keyboard. There are some nice folding keyboards available. But at least I prefer this approach, as it will provide users with a good keyboard if they need to actually write something longer with 770, rather than put a dumb thumb keyboard that really isn’t that much faster than using the stylus. Also keeps the device nice and compact for those that aren’t in need of a kb.
Anyone know if this phone benefits from the same framework as other Nokia (symabian) phones? I.e. will it sync with OS X with the same ease my Series 60 does?
Also, anyone know if something like TomTom is on the way for this thing? That would shure put to good use this hi-res screen.
Any word on Divx Playback?
Shame about the Rs-MMC card. All new Nokia phones are now moving to mini-SD (see all new N series)
>Anyone know if this phone benefits from the same framework as other Nokia (symabian) phones?
> I.e. will it sync with OS X with the same ease my Series 60 does?
Not at this time.
>Also, anyone know if something like TomTom is on the way for this thing?
Not at this time.
>Any word on Divx Playback?
I think it supports it, not sure… GStreamer is being ported you see…
>Shame about the Rs-MMC card.
Yeah…
Apparently video supports divx up to 352×288 resolution. I think this is nice enough for the casual videos. If it would only support ivideos as well…
http://maemo.org/maemowiki/VideoEncoding?highlight=%28video~*~@…
Do you know if it can read videos from a SMB share at least?
There has been some work done to enable an external keyboard, check it out: http://770.fs-security.com/keyboards.html
Two reviews of the product. One based on a pre-production model, and one newer:
http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/06/jkontherun_gues.html
http://www.netppc.com/p.php3?p=test-nokia-770.html&c=hardware&T=Nok…
More luck anybody ?
http://direct.nokia.com/Countries.aspx?u=/Product.aspx?model=770
Skype. You linux people out there: Is it possible to get skype running on this device? In other words: is there a OS version of skype or do we have to wait for them to port it (should they decide to do so)?
They will have to port it of course. Skype does not use a standard protocol so it requires the skype company to take the decision to port it.
However, there is going to be a SIP VoIP client next year for the 770, so users will be able to use their FreeWorldDialup and the Gizmo accounts.
I guess you can use this device as well for gps nav stuff. Like a normal pda. Interesting thing,neverthless.
In theory yes. The most important thing however is the software.
I don’t know of any linux GPS navigation software. Does anybody know otherwise?
The only hope would be to see TomTom port their navigator series to the device.
I am still undecided on this potential purchase. It doesn’t do much at this point besides web surfing. I was hoping at least to see some basic PIM functionnality.
The video playback seems to be limited to low-res at the moment so no-go for SMB streaming of TV series for me.
GPS Drive is available for Linux and has also been ported to 770.
http://maemo.org/maemowiki/GpsDrive?highlight=%28gps%29
sorry – for what it offers it is too expensive, knock off 100 Euros and i will be interrested.
I have had this device for two weeks or so. Some comments:
– if you don’t use wifi continuously, the battery lasts a lot more than 3 hours
– no OGG support, but rumors say it is “coming”
– you can play videos, but there are limitations (screenshots http://users.tkk.fi/~jpakkane/lobby/ )
– the on screen keyboard is nice, support for BT keyboards exists
– it’s basically ARM Linux with X and a custom window manager (Matchbox)
– XTerm and SSH are not there by default, but are very easy to install
– almost all sw is open source/free software (exceptions include some driver stuff, the handwriting recognizer etc)
– there is no PIM stuff, but GPE is being ported as we speak
– the root password is, amusingly, ‘rootme’
– the Opera browser crashes every now and then
– most of the time the device is quite snappy, but unfortunately slowdowns happen every now and again.
Polish a bit and it would make a nice eBoard (Yay! I coined a new term!
for a doctor’s office.
are there a way to put kde on it (most used desktop manager under linux)?
It doesn’t have enough ram to run anything as complivated as complete desktop environment.
i could surely use qtopia
This goes to the people who already have one of these devices and use it somewhat regularly: would you recommend one to buy one of those?
4Gb HD would make it a real contender. I think it’s going to be a hit in the big asian metropolis with pervasive public wifi.
But in Europe with extortionary rates for 3g and gprs and dotted public wifi access (not cheap either), I doubt it’ll find much takers.
But I agree with the vision of a smart device that uses your mobile phone or wifi to access the net. Phone screens are too tiny and who wants to speak in a brick sized pda these days ?
the diagonal size of the screen seems to be 7″ instead of 4″. right?
No. It’s 4″.
> No. It’s 4″.
And it’s got amazing dpi ratio. I’ve seen it.
For the ones wondering, the US release should be in November 10! (just a week after the EU release! that’s good… Can we expect it in Brazil soon? well… probably not…)
And just commenting about the 770 in general… from what I’ve seen until now, it’s a really amazing piece of hardware and software! I’m just disappointed it doesn’t support USB charging (there’s no point for a such small device if you have to carry so many cables…).
I hope to be strong enough and not buying one until this feature got implemented (You actually don’t just need a USB port for both data and charging… take a look in Rio Carbon and other nice players. Just pair it with a AC adapter with USB connection and you’re good to go!)… but that’ll be a really hard task… ;]
Very clear demos for those of us who haven’t seen the device before:
http://nds2.nokia.com/tutorials/support/global/phones/770/english/i…
I’m with Thom on this one (and have been for a while). It’s a great geek toy and the development of it seems to have been done really well, but I just can’t see it being particularly useful for anything at all. Lying around the house (like I am now) I use my laptop…it’s still small enough to carry around (even with one hand) but having a 9″ screen and a decent keyboard beats the crap out of this thing. And out of the house, the LAST thing I need is another piece of electronic crap cluttering up my pockets whose only benefit over my phone is a larger screen. I can see people who are used to carrying a phone and PDA replacing the PDA with this thing, but that ain’t a huge market, and not many people want to go to the trouble.
OSNews, I love this site, but can we please have the option to mod-down or hide comments from Thom? His ongoing criticism of mobile convergence beyond tin-cans and string is getting boring. Especially so from an (objective?) editor on a site looking to the latest and greatest.
Edited 2005-11-04 19:00
Well the last thing I need is to pay for is a laptop. And I think it’ll work for me seeing how all I want is the ability check email/news and browse the web from my living room/kitchen/school in addition to replacing everything my PDA does.
However, I was hoping I could hook up a USB keyboard to type up notes or a paper once in a while. I’ve never met a laptop keyboard I actually liked, so I was hoping I could stick the 770 and a Happy Hacking keyboard in my bag when I felt like it. Looks like that will be a PITA since the unit can’t power attached USB devices. 770 + AC adaptor + keyboard + powered hub + another AC adaptor. And probably an adaptor to fit whatever kind of USB port they put on the thing. God forbid anyone use a normal USB port on anything. Oh well.
> God forbid anyone use a normal USB port on anything.
It does use the regular small USB client device port.
770 + AC adaptor + keyboard + powered hub + another AC adaptor. And probably an adaptor to fit whatever kind of USB port they put on the thing
There is an easier way: http://www.internettablettalk.com/content/view/120
nice idea but i think ill just grab one of those bluetooth fold up keyboards.
i think even nokia have one, maybe they can sell them as a package deal?
Edited 2005-11-05 19:29
ANy ideas whether the apple bluetooth keyboard would work on that device. Is it standard BT keyboard or not?
I reckon that I must be one of the dwindling band of people out there that *DON’T* want a smartphone (ie. phone that does all the things a PDA does).
Sure I want to be able to have my phone buz me when I have appointments, and it would be nice to access *some* info through my phone, but basically I want to use my phone to talk to people.
Call me mad, but I’d have gadgets that talked to each other seamlessly over a swiss-army-gadget ™ any day.
Those toilet-roll-holders-that-are-also-a-radio never took off in my house … but … we do have a Tovoli digital radio placed conveniently close to the throne along-side a nice chrome toilet-roll holder
The nokia 770 isn’t a phone. It is a tablet which uses bluetooth to connect with your phone and the phone dials into the web.