The Nokia 770
More details about the device itself are at engadget here, or on the flashtastic Nokia page. It's basically a slower high-end PocketPC, with a better screen. Cheaper than the Dell Axims and Co, too, but not intended to hit the shelves until Q3, either. Oh, and it runs a completely open software stack.
I'm really wondering what the intended use-case is; what the hell are you supposed to do with it? They sell it as a second PC replacement, intended for browsing and email, but the problem is that email just isn't very fun without a keyboard (forget about IM without totally integrated handwriting on a kickass digitizer), and brosing on a low-power device is painful: difficult to replicate the desktop browsing experience when you've got so little to play with.
The Nokia site shows 3 use cases actually, and it's not pretty: checking stock quotes and the TV guide (without a keyboard, and on the current TV stations' websites? Enjoy!), looking for recipes and the weather forecast before a picnic, which might work, and multimedia mail and internet radio in an airport lounge. Mail I've commented on above (you can't really reply, and there's no synchronizable mail/todo list to remind you to), IP radio might work, but it'll die in the plane.
I haven't looked at it in details, but it seems Nokia did a good job on a totally open OS+application stack: any compliant device can run the whole suite. Now, would someone please put it in a device that actually serves a purpose? More than one use would be perfect: hello dreamphone.
The last thing is desktop integration: the iPod is so popular because the desktop software's decent. If you intend on selling a multimedia device (the 770's got a DSP), you need good PC software to manage your digital library, and export to the gizmo (and not only tunes, email and bookmarks also come to mind). Nokia makes a notoriously bad PC suite for its current phones, which worries me.
In my opinion they lack a killer (web-) app. If they can provide google-style simplistic and uberpowerful web tools in addition to the usual client-side PocketPC apps like navigation (with a bluetooth GPS puck), this might work.
I'm really wondering what the intended use-case is; what the hell are you supposed to do with it? They sell it as a second PC replacement, intended for browsing and email, but the problem is that email just isn't very fun without a keyboard (forget about IM without totally integrated handwriting on a kickass digitizer), and brosing on a low-power device is painful: difficult to replicate the desktop browsing experience when you've got so little to play with.
The Nokia site shows 3 use cases actually, and it's not pretty: checking stock quotes and the TV guide (without a keyboard, and on the current TV stations' websites? Enjoy!), looking for recipes and the weather forecast before a picnic, which might work, and multimedia mail and internet radio in an airport lounge. Mail I've commented on above (you can't really reply, and there's no synchronizable mail/todo list to remind you to), IP radio might work, but it'll die in the plane.
I haven't looked at it in details, but it seems Nokia did a good job on a totally open OS+application stack: any compliant device can run the whole suite. Now, would someone please put it in a device that actually serves a purpose? More than one use would be perfect: hello dreamphone.
The last thing is desktop integration: the iPod is so popular because the desktop software's decent. If you intend on selling a multimedia device (the 770's got a DSP), you need good PC software to manage your digital library, and export to the gizmo (and not only tunes, email and bookmarks also come to mind). Nokia makes a notoriously bad PC suite for its current phones, which worries me.
In my opinion they lack a killer (web-) app. If they can provide google-style simplistic and uberpowerful web tools in addition to the usual client-side PocketPC apps like navigation (with a bluetooth GPS puck), this might work.
posted by Benoit Gariod at
11:01
2 Comments:
Have to agree with pretty much everything you've said.
The PIM suite will have to be utterly godlike with a handwriting recognition tool to match in order to appeal to business PDA users. What are the chances of that? They aren't Palm, they sure as hell aren't Apple (thank goodness) and this box of tricks doesn't have the power to run anything half usable like KOpi/KApi.
That leaves the users who're looking for a replacement for their Archos? Perhaps if they built a 3G data card into this thing it would be useful, or perhaps a GSM module...
By
jamesm, at 22:04
The use case is simple -- it's the device you're allowed to bring when your wife says "YOU'RE NOT TAKING THAT DAMNED LAPTOP WITH US, ARE YOU?" "No dear." If it had a keyboard, I couldn't get away with it.
By
Martin Geddes, at 00:03
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