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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 2,432
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Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
Product Category: UMPC / Internet Tablet
Manufacturer: Nokia
Where to Buy: Pricegrabber Low Price Search
Price: $134.99 to $199 USD
System Requirements: None, it is it's own system!
Specifications: Linux Operating System with built in WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. 4.3-inch 800x480 pixel screen, 128MB Flash memory, expandable RS-MMC memory slot, USB 2.0, 3.5mm headphone adapter and built in microphone for VoIP
Pros:
- Light-weight, all-in-one, portable computer
- Plays music and video
- Desktop-like Internet browsing experience (2 years before the iPhone!)
Cons:
- Can be unstable at times
- Cannot upgrade to newest operating system
- Doesn't run Windows Mobile
Summary:
The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet is a non-phone device designed for those who would like to check emails, surf the web and perhaps listen to some music or watch a movie without the need for a laptop. Does it fill a needed void or does it miss its intended mark? Read on to find out.
First Thoughts
Pete: When I think of Nokia I usually think of mobile phones and lots of them. They're pretty much famous for their line up of flip phones, candy bar style phones, and PDA phones. Over the last few years however Nokia has branched out a bit by releasing a really cool device that isn't a phone at all. The Nokia 770 is Nokia's Internet tablet. What's the purpose of this device you ask? Well the main purpose is to surf the Internet over a WiFi connection but this device can also play your MP3's, play videos, allows you to chat, and even has telephony voice over Internet capabilities. Is it perfect? No, not by any means but it is cool and I find at times it can be more convenient than my laptop and at less than $140.00USD, it's cheaper too.
Rocco: Less expensive and more convenient are always good things but I think one of the main important things that left me in awe with the Nokia 770 was just how practical it was over slugging around my 15in widescreen laptop everywhere I went. My back and shoulder blades are still thanking me over this purchase! Now I know some of you are pretty confused as to why a Microsoft Smartphone enthusiast site happens to be reviewing a non Smartphone device made by one of leading competitors, and the simple answer is this: Nokia has managed to get everything right where Microsoft has continued to drop the ball – at a very reasonable price point as well. Surprisingly though,they have also managed to completely drop the ball in the areas where Microsoft has excelled for years, such as email and contacts. Is this device good enough to convince you to give up your Smartphone? Not at all, and we'll cover all of that in the article, but this device is the perfect companion to go with your Windows Mobile handset.
Pete: So let's dig right in. We'll start with some pictures of the unboxing process.
Initial Setup Process
Rocco: This device could not be easier to setup. With a few clicks of stylist you can have your tablet setup in no time. While I was able to pair my Internet tablet up with my Samsung Blackjack, unfortunately the device stated very nicely that they would not play together.
One of the things I enjoy most about my Windows Mobile Standard phone was that I could just turn it on and go. While the setup process is painless and was finished quickly, I must rather prefer to just start up my device and go and then set up those other options as I need them.
Internet Browsing
Rocco: The first thing I did once I finally had the device setup, was to hop on the built in Opera Internet browser and take a few pictures of the new Smartphone Thoughts design. I must say, I was impressed with how great the pages looked. On the top of the device there are dedicated zoom in/out buttons which make reading the small text a breeze! I was also incredibly surprised to find out this device had Flash built into it as well! Now, don't get to excited. While I wasn't able to bring up or watch and Flash based video, I was able to view rudimentary Flash applications here and there.
I did have a little bit of trouble viewing some sites as this is an older version of Opera built in, but doing a little bit of searching around I discovered that you could install Mozilla's Minimo Internet browser as well, which made viewing some of those troublesome sites a lot easier! While Minimo is available for the Windows Mobile Standard handsets, I have never had an easy time getting it up and running. As much as I love my Smartphone, you just can't beat browsing the web on a 800x480 screen.
Pete: Internet browsing on the 770 is a cross between my T-Mobile Dash and a laptop. My laptop does a great job viewing web pages of course but can be cumbersome in an airplane, airport or even in bed. My Dash on the other hand is very portable and is minus the cumbersome experience, but the Dash is best used for web pages formatted for its screen size so many web pages optimized for PDA viewing. This is what makes the 770 so nice to browse with. Most pages are full web pages with a toggle button option to go to full screen mode. Pages load fairly quickly and look great. Surfing gives you a laptop experience in the palm of your hand.
Audio/Video/Pictures
Pete: The Nokia 770 Internet tablet is able to play video in the following formats: 3GP, AVI, H.263, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, RV (Real Video). While certainly not DVD quality, the 770 was able to play Star Wars and Night at the Museum fairly well. It definitely is good enough to keep you entertained on a long flight or long wait at the airport.
Rocco: All is not lost for those of you that dread using codecs such as Real Video, like myself. One of the beauties of the Nokia 770 is that underneath the hood this little bugger is running Linux and there are a ton of applications that the vast community of enthusiast have decided to port over. One of my favorites being MPlayer, which adds a slew of new video codec options to your tablet so you can enjoy your media without being restricted to the limited number of codecs that come installed by default!
Pete: It also supports the following audio file types: AAC, AMR, MP2, MP3, RA (Real Audio), WAV, WMA. I currently have 253 MP3's in addition to the movies mentioned above. It supports playlists and does a good job playing music though I feel the volume could be a bit louder when using headphones. To hold all this multimedia, I purchased a 2GB MMCmobile flash card.
Rocco: Unfortunately, I misread somewhere that this device supported microSD cards so I didn't bother to purchase one from Mobile Planet when I purchased the Nokia 770, figuring I could just use the one from my Samsung Blackjack. At first this was incredibly disappointing. Not being able to load a ton of my own music and videos onto the device, I quickly found out that not all was lost as this tablet is a fantastic streaming audio player as well. Using the built in audio application, I was able to stream over an hour and fifteen minutes of my favorite Internet radio stations without any skips of buffering while fiddling around with other programs on the device and browsing the web like a mad man! To me, this was awesome as I have not been able to stream this content on any of my Windows Mobile devices! This is one area where Microsoft could learn a thing or two!
After I got tired of streaming Internet radio, I decided to see how well the device held up streaming a few podcasts and quickly tuned into the TWiT Netcast Network to listen to a few of my favorite shows. Needless to say, I was able to listen to net@nite, this WEEK in TECH and Windows Weekly without any performance loss or stuttering on the device. Once again, this is something I wish I could do with my Windows Mobile handset but it has just never been a reality while using the carriers data network. This is why I wish more Windows Mobile handsets included WiFi, then this wouldn't be a problem. It should also be noted that the Windows Media Player interface on my Samsung Blackjack a lot easier on the eyes in the looks department.
Pete: There is no camera on the 770 but it does allow you to view stored pictures. Because it has a bright, clear 800x480 pixel display, pictures look very nice. It supports BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and SVG-tiny so chances are your digital pictures will work just fine. Zooming in and out is quite simple, and the d-pad can be pressed left or right to move to the previous or next photo. The full screen zoom hardware button lets you quickly get the big view of the photo, too.
RSS
Pete: The Nokia 770 has its own built in RSS feeder. You can add your favorite RSS sites and even have them updated automatically at time intervals you create. You can update feeds manually and individually or all feeds at once. It's a great way to get caught up on the news in a short amount of time.
Google Talk/Chat
Pete: The Nokia 770 also allows you to place and receive voice over Internet calls as well as instant messaging via Google Talk. Setting up contacts for Google Talk is very simple and is created when you set up your email contacts. Once set up, you can click on the people icon (the icon on the home screen that has people on it) and you are given the choice to send email, chat, or place a voice over Internet call. Once you choose to call or chat, you are given a list of contacts that qualify for chatting or calling and whether or not they are currently available. Settings include blocking contacts, alert settings, and privacy settings.
Rocco: I must say, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the microphone was located on the bottom of the Nokia 770 and not on the provided headset that they give you. This little feature makes using VoIP a breeze and has made it incredibly easy to chat with friends that I know are sitting in front of the computer all day and never pick up their phones. Unfortunately the microphone is not of the highest quality and seemed a bit low, sound wise, on the receiving end. Due to this simple reason alone the VoIP solutions become more of a novelty and after a while, I stopped using the feature all together.
Email
Pete: The email application works well on the 770. You can define multiple accounts, which can either use IMAP or POP3 for mail sending and retrieval. You can tell the email application to leave email on the server and you can specify the maximum downloaded message size and whether it should download headers only. Each account can be configured for immediate sending, send on next connect, or only on request. I currently have two POP3 accounts on mine but the 770 also supports web based email accounts.
Rocco: I'm not a huge fan of the built in email application, or the others that can be downloaded, for the most part I found them slow and sluggish and this is an obvious area where I would much rather whip out the ol' Smartphone and type out a message than to wait for the email application to download the hundreds of emails in my inbox. Even though I set the program to only download the headers, this seemed to still take a little over a minute to do each time I started the application.
Installing Applications
Rocco: One of the greatest features of this device is the ability to never stop evolving. Just like Windows Mobile, you can find and use a vast number of applications. Unlike Windows Mobile though, you don't have to worry about ridiculously high prices, or any cost really, for 99% of the applications I ran across.
A quick search via Google and I stumbled upon Maemo (http://maemo.org/) which is a pretty nifty repository of applications for the Nokia 770. Some of my favorite applications, that have managed to consume a large majority of my waking hours include:
* Pidgin: My favorite Instant Messaging application for the Desktop
* Battlegweled: A very addicting Bejeweled clone
* Bash: A POSIX compliant but souped-up Bourne shell
* MPlayer: An insanely popular open source media player
* UKMP: A very impressive looking media player
* Canola: The ultimate media player for the Nokia Internet tablets
There are a ton of other applications that you can download, I just don't have the room to mention them all! Now it should be noted, that not all of these applications are what some would call “stable”. Several times now I have had to completely wipe my device to a clean state so it was stop rebooting itself due some poorly written application. To be honest, it is sometimes downright annoying to be in the middle of a Battlegwelled game and then have the device restart on you because the previous application you installed has decided to rape your device of the little stability it did have in its original state.
Conclusion
Rocco: As incredible as this device is, I'm surprised Nokia let it ship out the door with the slew of stability errors that seem to plague it. I'm also surprised that a lot of them still have not been fixed seeing as how this device has been on the market for a little over two years already. I am not sure if my device just happens to fall into that small pool of devices that are doomed to have issues the moment they leave the factory or if the problems that I have suffered happen to be effect all Nokia 770's but more often then not I find myself annoyed because the device will just restart on me if I try to visit a web page which uses javascript that the built in Opera Internet browsers do not like or every once in a while the tablet will just refuse to connect to my WiFi network or log into Google Talk until I restart the device. Are these problems enough to make me not recommend the Nokia 770? Not at all. As far as I'm concerned, I have purchased a ton of electronics under $150USD that have had far worse problems than these!
All in all, I dig this little tablet. For what it was built for, it does it surprisingly well and then some. If you have an extra bit of cash burning a hole in your wallet, make sure to head over to Mobile Planet and pick one of these up. Now if only I could get my hands on the upgraded version, the Nokia 800, for a review...
Pete: So who is this device for? Well, if you’re a gadget lover like myself, it’s definitely a fun toy that can also be useful when you need it. I can also see it being useful for business people. I have a friend who just recently bought a flip phone and renewed his two year contract. After seeing my Nokia 770 he’d like to have one as a companion to his phone. He’d be able to watch movies and listen to music on plane trips. He could also send and receive emails and surf the web at airports and hotels without the need of a data plan. I like the Nokia 770. I wish it had a bit more speed under the hood and I wouldn’t have paid the $349.00 MSRP but for under $140, I think its money well spent for all that it does.
Rocco Augusto owns and operates the small online cellular accessory store, RoccStar Accessories as well working as a full-time web developer here in the Portland, Oregon area. In his spare time Rocco enjoys spending time with his lovely fiance and beautiful daughter... as well as trying to teach their new kittens to stop climbing into and sleeping in the Christmas tree.
Pete Paxton is a health/PE teacher in Oregon. He enjoys all types of technology especially mobile technology. His favorite electronic device of any kind is his T-mobile Dash. Pete also enjoys his position as an editor for Smartphone Thoughts. Finally, He has been blessed with a beautiful wife and a fantastic nine year old son.
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