Smartphone Thoughts: Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

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.