“Many a geek was excited when Nokia announced the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet in late 2005. Its form factor, functionality, and price indicated to me that my dream device had arrived. When I finally purchased one and reviewed it, my dreams were dashed. While attractive, the Nokia 770 was underpowered, leading to sluggish performance. The menu navigation was not thought out well, and some of the applications felt unfinished. With little advance notice, Nokia released the 770’s successor at the beginning of 2007, the Nokia N800. Is it powerful enough to rekindle the fires of gadget lust or will it be another heartbreaker?”
I bought a Nokia 770. It was a nice enough machine, but the lame processor and the non-standard, difficult to find memory cards (RS-MMC) killed it for me. I sold it on eBay a week later.
I see that the 880 has a better processor and supports standard SD cards. Since these were my only two complaints about the 770, maybe it’s time to give Nokia a chance again.
“non-standard”
by whos standard?
afaik RS-mmc is a flash memory standard, only its not often used in mobile phones (i think its much more popular with digital cameras).
and does not the N800 support both SD and MMC?
Edited 2007-02-13 19:55
Now with a 330mhz processor, it still can’t handle VGA 25fps Divx video. What does it take?
All the pocket PCs out there have +500Mhz XScales that handle Divx playback easily. Why go for a wimpy processor? Why not write some code to use the inboard DSP?
I would *LOVE* to give this device a chance. However is seems seriously hampered by a few bugs (as listed in Ars).
How many developpers does it take to have Bluetooth working reliably? Have a DSP optimized video player?
If Nokia had as little as 5 full time developpers on this thing we’d be seeing quality ports of succesful open-source apps to this platform.
I read everywhere that people are waiting for VLC port, a proper SIP client, some iTunes DAAP access, PIM applications, GNumeric, Abiword etc..
Some of these apps have been so far half heartidly ported but there’s nothing like somebody on the payroll to get things polished.
Come on Nokia, give us some software to power this tablet. Otherwise it’s just another expensive brick.
Agreed. VGA DivX/Mp4 video is not smooth. This is because the codecs used are not optimized for ARM, but pretty much straight recompiles from the x86 world.
I hope that someone could port TCPMP which had optimized libs.
If I’m not mistaken, slower chips use less electricity, less battery. Hence a longer battery life with the same battery capacity. So I’d guess Nokia was trying to find a sweet spot between CPU power and battery life.
I agree with the rest of your comment – based on the reviews, the device could use some more polish.
I have a 770. I have no idea what “The menu navigation was not thought out well, and some of the applications felt unfinished.” is supposed to mean, besides, the original 770’s shipped with OS 2005 (v1.0).
Nokia has since released several updated firmwares for the device, meaning that the latest version is OS 2006 (v2.1). (Although I still run 2.0)
The 2.x releases are much better in terms of performance and the included applications are also substantially improved.
Also, this is an “Internet Tablet”, not a portable media player! How about looking at it’s web browsing performance, rather than complaining that it can’t play high-resolution DivX very well?
The N800 is an improved device, sporting a faster processor, more RAM (I will admit that the 770 required swap in order to work well) a webcam, better memory card support (2 full sized SD/MMC slots) and OS 2007 (v3.0).
I have no idea what the qualms are with the “menu navigation”, but the N800 has virtually the same GUI as the 770 (albeit with a new colour scheme).
I bought a N800 as soon as I could, around the middle of January. I think it is a great little device, and I use it all the time.
Third-party software support is slowly growing, making it an even better tool. I absolutely love the WiFi capabilities of this unit! I only wish my Linux notebook worked as well.
All in all great device.