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Nokia's Linux Handheld

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed May 25, 2005 08:48 AM
from the gadgets-i-want dept.
Handhelds Software Wireless Networking Hardware Linux
Nils Faerber writes "Today Nokia announced the introduction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet device along with the Open Source based Maemo Development Platform. With this new product Nokia enters several new worlds all at once. A new concept for the use of a handheld device, a new fully visible open source based development process and the explicit use of open source software in a commercial grade product. The typical use case for the Nokia 770 is to be the internet usability extension to your mobile phone or other wireless internet access equipment. It is extremely portable by its small formfactor, usable for almost all internet applications thorugh its exceptional resolution of 800x480 pixel and its multimedia capabilities by making use of a TI-OMAP CPU and a accompanying digital signal processor (DSP) core. The consequent use of open source software and technology basing on the Linux kernel 2.6, X11-server technology and the GTK+ toolkit the resulting new Hildon graphical user interface creates a fully new user interface experience for portable Linux devices."
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  • The nokia Internet tablet (Score:5, Funny)

    by the_xaqster (877576) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:51AM (#12633618) Homepage Journal
    Take 2 and call me in the morning....

  • Good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:52AM (#12633619)
    If this gets popular, and as presumably the interface will be similar to all other Nokia products, people will realise that Linux is not necessarily hard to use.

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by garcia (6573) * on Wednesday May 25 2005, @09:11AM (#12633820) Homepage
      people will realise that Linux is not necessarily hard to use.

      If by "people" you mean the general non-computer-geek population, then I really don't think they care what OS the unit is running. Tivo is easy to use and runs on Linux. Archos media players are easy to use... The list continues.

      Linux *can* be difficult to use, especially as a home OS. UIs that lay over the kernel and OS don't have to be.
    • The FAQ [nokia.com] confirms that "the user interface has its roots in the smartphone Series 90 user interface."

  • Left-handed model? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oni (41625) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:53AM (#12633626) Homepage
    I doubt there will be a left-handed model. Pretty much every PDA or device like this one has buttons on the left side, which I can't use because I'm holding the device with my right hand because I need to write on it with my left hand.

    Oh well, sucks to be me I guess.

  • No ethernet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by noisymime (816237) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:53AM (#12633627) Homepage
    I know it kind of goes against the whole portability idea, but no ethernet?

  • GStreamer (Score:5, Informative)

    by JohnFluxx (413620) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:55AM (#12633650)
    Please note that it is also recently revealed that Nokia has been funding GStreamer ! Thank you Nokia!

  • Battery Life (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AngryScot (795131) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:56AM (#12633663)
    3 hour battery life seems to be a little short if you are going to be traveling and want to use it.

    I suppose you could charge it in your car...
    • My thoughts exactly. 3 hour battery puts this into the "toy" range. You can't even pretend it'll work through a business day--it's for having something to surf porn with while on the john.

      Exceedingly useless. Great idea, but the battery kills it.


    • Come on, nothing has a working battery life of much more than 3 hours. Look at the screen on this thing. If a 3 hour battery life is the best gripe you can come up with, this thing will sell like hotcakes.

      Me, I'm griping about the storage. What, no 20GB harddrive? Where will I keep my movies?

    • Re:Battery Life (Score:4, Interesting)

      by l810c (551591) * on Wednesday May 25 2005, @09:34AM (#12634040)
      3 hour battery life seems to be a little short if you are going to be traveling and want to use it.

      It's only 1500 mAh, your average NiMH AA is at 2300 mAh each. This battery must be puny.

      An external battery pack would be a cool option. 2 AA's in a small tube with wire could provide nearly 10 hours.

      • It's only 1500 mAh, your average NiMH AA is at 2300 mAh each. This battery must be puny.

        An external battery pack would be a cool option. 2 AA's in a small tube with wire could provide nearly 10 hours.

        10 hours IF AND ONLY IF the pad runs on 1.25VDC, and you parallel the 2 AAs to get 1.25VDC @ 4600mAh.

        If, as is more likely, the device runs on about 7VDC, you would need 12 2300mAh AAs running series/parallel (2 parallel strings of 6 batteries in series) to give you that time.

        Remember - amp-hours ARE N

  • Stylus (Score:3, Interesting)

    by teiresias (101481) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:57AM (#12633667)
    I've been using my Gateway tablet for about half a year now and while the stylus works and works well, it's not something I felt the same level of comfort using as I do when I use a pen or pencil. My guess would be that the stlus seems to slip more over the very slick screen.

    In regards to the Nokia 770, the stylus seems to be the primary form of input and command for this device. Unless Nokia has changed the feel of stylus, this might hurt adopters of what looks like a neat PDA/tablet hybrid. Indeed, implementing a small keyboard similiar to the Sharp Zaurus PDA's would be very nice.
    • Or maybe a bluetooth keyboard or IR keyboard. I seem to recall seeing some cute little folding bluetooth keyboards a while back. In fact ThinkGeek has one. [thinkgeek.com]

      Input methods and battery life have been the two major reasons I haven't purchased a PDA since the Palm V. You could go weeks between recharging your Palm, while you're lucky to get through a day with the latest crop. I got sick of grafitti after a while, too. Sony's Clie looked promising but the ones with the keyboards were inevitably more than I wante

  • Better picture (Score:3, Informative)

    by BenBenBen (249969) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:57AM (#12633669)
    Here [telecomskorea.com]

    I've seen $350 quoted as a price point - once more and more devices start offering control access over TCP/IP (think TiVoweb, Xbox Media Centre etc) I think we've got a good candidate for the much-trumpeted "terminal" device that everyone uses around the home. I had the PSP pegged as a good place to start, providing a vibrant homebrew community springs up around it. This Nokia device offers that sort of functionality and development possibilites right out the box.

  • PDA please! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by johansalk (818687) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:57AM (#12633672)
    Looks exciting; can't wait for them to make a PDA out of it. I just wish they'd used regular SD instead of reduced size memory cards.
  • Since it supports Linux and X11, will it run and support KDE/Qt development?
    • It only supports GTK user interfaces. I have direct contact with people on that project and that's something that will not change for now.
  • Hm these guys at Nokia forgot putting a mobile phone into this thing...
  • Not because of the price, but because it doesn't have any meaningful storage options. 128MB Flash is not going to do anything for movies, images or other downloads. Now if they'd put in a hard drive, or a expansion slot so you can get a few gigs of storage, you could download a movie to watch when you get out of range of broadband. And even in a few years, that's still going to be a lot of places. Ten years from now, wireless broadband will be truely everywhere, but even in places like Japan and Korea it's
    • BS. My pda has 128mb built in, and has an SD slot. I have no problems with storage. Besides, how much storage do you need for browsing, mail, etc.? This isn't a portable dvd-player.
    • Yes, we'll have wireless broadband everywhere, but only so you may legitimately download Approved Content(tm) from Vericingusprint, and they'll continue charging outrageous prices for even sending a kilobyte of data. Lord help you if you want unproxied HTTP or TCP with enough ports open to do any real work.

      That is, there might be broadband everywhere in a few years, just don't count on using it.

  • AP says it runs Opera (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2005, @09:12AM (#12633838)
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/05/25/AR2005052500555.html [washingtonpost.com]
    "In one similarity to Nokia's smart phones, the tablet employs the Opera browser from Opera Software ASA."

  • maemo - its all 'open' (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kerskine (46804) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @09:31AM (#12634022) Homepage Journal
    Just did a quick read of the licenses section of the FAQ. They've released the UI, Skins, and Graphics under the Creative Commons (CC) license. I guess they want to see maemo used on other platforms (assuming the license fee for the graphics is reasonable).

  • Screenshots! (Score:5, Informative)

    by spectrokid (660550) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @09:36AM (#12634067) Homepage
    http://www.maemo.org/screenshots.html [maemo.org]

  • No 3G/GSM? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ubera (107426) <oconnoatNO@SPAMtcd.ie> on Wednesday May 25 2005, @10:03AM (#12634520) Homepage
    I think it's a pity that the rather beautiful design and obviously neat software doesn't include Nokia's core function: mobile phone connectivity (and not through BT).

  • Bluetooth keyboard and this... maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by javaxman (705658) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @12:24PM (#12636310) Journal
    That would make it usable to me. Virtual Keyboards suck, pure and simple, and as much as I like to surf the web, I'm not laying down $350 for something to look at websites with a tiny screen.

    IF the CPU ( uh, I don't see that in the spec, that makes me worry, folks... ) is powerful enough, and you could pack on external batteries to keep it going for 3 hours *while* actually using your Bluetooth keyboard, it looks like it could *almost* work as a more-portable laptop replacement. Something to type up notes on while sitting in the park or coffee shop, that kind of thing.

    Not that I'm going to run out and get one. I still look at this and think "but... maybe I just want a laptop..". On the other hand, if you could use a BT keyboard with it, it might be sort of like a low-power, extremely small laptop with a keyboard you can ditch when you're not entering lots of data... that does have a certain appeal.

    • It's $350 (Score:5, Informative)

      by jolyonr (560227) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @08:58AM (#12633678) Homepage
      Not sure where you got the price from, but my sources [forbes.com] say it's going to be $350.

      Jolyon
    • What can you compare this to? The Palm devices? It seems to have a good screen 800 x 600, Wi-Fi... I can imagine teachers carrying something like this around to hold teacher edition texts, and accessing the school network. IMHO, this is very cool, and could open up a lot of opportuniity in web applications for verticle markets.

      I wish it had a sim card, and I hope that they offer a keyboard tray of some sort.

    • Re:Seen it already... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2005, @09:00AM (#12633705)
      cough PSP cant surf the web *cough*

      nor can it read emails, play streaming radio and at least 60 other things.

      the PSP is a neat portable game but a webpad it CERTIANLY is not.

      so how do you click on a fricking link because the PSP lacks a touchscreen? and when is FLASH going to be released for the PSP?

      *cough*
    • Why do manufacturers hate CF so?

      Because CF is based on the ancient ISA parallel bus interface - too many pins, too much overhead. The newer formats use a serial (eg. SPI) interface, more easily supported by microsontrollers, saving a lot of wiring and board space/complexity.

    • Re:Ogg vorbis support? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rillian (12328) on Wednesday May 25 2005, @12:58PM (#12636685) Homepage

      I talked to Uraeus about this a bit. The machine has combined ARM9/TI DSP cores. The idea is that you want the codecs running on the DSP, and apparently the free Xiph codecs we're included in the launch because there's no DSP port of the reference implementations. (There's no GCC back end for the dsp, although some folks [berlios.de] are working on a related series.) This includes Ogg Theora, Speex and FLAC as well as Ogg Vorbis.

      Whether the ARM is too slow (or battery consumptive) to run the decoders on its own, I'm not clear but with everything open source it will be easy to check.

      I'll be a Guadec, where they are apparently also doing a demo, so hopefully will know more next week.

      In the long term though we need help with the DSP gcc port and someone to do hand-optimized asm for the xiph codecs. If anyone's interested, please let us know.

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