Nokia 770 A Web Browser Appliance?

I'm a little late to the party, Russell Beattie who always seems to be first to the punch has already written about his. But better late than never, so after a ridiculously long delay from Nokia I finally got my hands on probably the ultimate linux handheld device since the Zaurus. Here it is pictured side by side two other note worthy gadgets that I own(the Sony PSP and the Nokia 7710):

I've written earlier about my "quest for the pefectly connected web gadget". This is a continuation of that quest. Ars Technica already has a pretty comprehensive review of the Nokia 770, so I won't regurgitate their content here. I however have the experience of lugging around the Nokia 7710 for several months and have that a basis of comparison.

The first thing I noticed about the 770 was that without the protective case it is 3/4ths the thickness of the 7710. Although it is wider,taller and even heavier it thiness gives it a less bulky feel. The input mechanism is superior to the Nokia 7710 simply because you have more real estate. You don't have to switch between numeric and alphabetic keyboards.

When you first start-up the 770 it asks for connectivity information for a phone. Clearly this device was designed to be used in conjunction with a blue tooth phone. This makes perfect sense to me now, I've sometimes felt uncomfortable carying around the 7710. It's just not as small as a regular phone . My leaning now is to couple the 770 with a phone like the Sony Ericsson k750i. A phone of small size with a serious camera (note: the 770 doesn't have a camera).

Now let's get to the crux of the matter, that is the browsing experience. Reviewers have remarked about the lack of basic applications like a calendar app. However, let's get real, if I wanted a calendar app, I would want it on a server somewhere and not on my phone.

The real test however is that can it access the capabilities of the new AJAX like applications like Google Mail? My 7710 was never able to do this and if this were to be a browser appliance then this would definitely be the minimum bar of entry. Fortunately, I can declare that the 770 can access and send mail using Gmail, unfortunately I don't experience any of the nice auto-completion features of Gmail. That's a major disappointment, that cognitive overhead of knowing an email address is just too big an obstacle. Furthermore, the browser does not appear to be doing any field completions, that's a real pain!

Okay, how about another test, how about Google Maps? Unfortunately, it looks like the Nokia 770 is running low on memory making the application simply unusable. The Nokia 7710 with the Google maps J2ME application is clearly superior here.

Actually, I've got to admit, because I still have 20/20 vision, the resolution of the screen is simply incredible! I feel as comfortable browsing on it compared to a laptop with a 1024x768 screen. The device does very well for non-AJAX based apps. The bad thing however is that AJAX based apps are mostly convenience apps (note: browser crashed in tada lists). These kinds of apps that are most likely to more applicable for this kind of a gadget.

I think the key to this device is how well it supports the browser experience. I for one had trouble figuring out how to bookmark a page I was looking at. Fortunately, the device is based on Linux and possibly sometime in the near future a better browser will be ported. Till then, considering its current price it looks like the Nokia 770 is confined to bloggers who can justify it with their advertising revenues.