Nokia 770 Development to Continue

[Reggie]

Ari Jaaksi, on his latest post on his blog announces that Nokia has decided to continue with the bug fixing and release of newer 'Hacker Edition' firmware for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. Quim Gil writes on his blog:We will keep working on the IT OS 2007 Hacker edition for the 770. We will go through IT OS 2006 bugs submitted in maemo’s Bugzilla, trying to solve at least the most relevant and the ones already fixed in the official IT OS 2007. We will release the fixes in updated images, all of them unofficial and to be used at your own risk. We can’t make any promise on performance levels or specific bug fixes, but hopefully you will be happier than now with the results.Quim Gil also apologizes:This is our goal, and sometimes we need to rush in order to achieve the milestones in the way. The 770 support while delivering the N800 on time suffered from one of these sprints. A mistake was made, our apologies. We are trying to ammend it and learn from it. Please be patient with this ongoing project, and expect progress from our side around the topics that concern you most.Links: Ari Jaaksi's Blog Quim Gil's BlogRead the full article. (http://www.internettablettalk.com/2007/04/30/nokia-770-developement-to-continue/)

[phi]

sweet! I wish they would have at least bugfixed IT2006 one more time though before going to the unsupported IT2007 route. But I'll take what I can get.

[Milhouse]

This is extremely good news - IT2007 runs very well on 770, it needs more polish but it sounds like Nokia have realised IT2007 on 770 is a viable platform after all and solves many of the problems that have angered the community.

Not only have Nokia done the right thing (and promised to continue opening the platform) but most importantly they have demonstrated they are listening and willing to respond accordingly. Thumbs up Nokia!

[=DC=]

Yes, this is definitely good news. I'm glad Nokia is actually taking appropriate action to the feedback many of us have given as it concerns the continued development of the 770 and IT2007. It'll be good to see the platform (which is still quite young) continue to grow and mature further. :)

[Jerome]

Kudos for Nokia!

I have a N800, but my 770 still works.... ;)

[Arjun]

This is extremely good news - IT2007 runs very well on 770, it needs more polish but it sounds like Nokia have realised IT2007 on 770 is a viable platform after all and solves many of the problems that have angered the community.

Not only have Nokia done the right thing (and promised to continue opening the platform) but most importantly they have demonstrated they are listening and willing to respond accordingly. Thumbs up Nokia!


I think we can openly " blame " :D Milhouse for this. He fought for this cause with all his tooth...tooth and nail. If I was in UK, I would have bought him a barrel of the best Ale around that area.

[aflegg]

What I'd *really* like to see is the OS2007on770 build process opened up, so it could be owned (or at least co-owned) by the community.

[Milhouse]

Ha, not down to just me - plenty of others had their voices heard and were far more eloquent than I. A community effort got Nokia to turn this decision around! :)

PS. Beer tokens gratefully accepted. :D

[Texrat]

Ha, not down to just me - plenty of others had their voices heard and were far more eloquent than I. A community effort got Nokia to turn this decision around! :)

PS. Beer tokens gratefully accepted. :D

I'd like to think a certain email helped too. ;)

[phatcat33]

All I can say is, WOW! What a surprising turn of events. This is excellent news. Good going Nokia!!! Many thanks to Nokia and this awesome community.

[ilia]

thanks nokia! this is very good!

[fpp]

What I'd *really* like to see is the OS2007on770 build process opened up, so it could be owned (or at least co-owned) by the community.
Maybe people should join the Garage project in droves and exert pressure there ? :-)

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/os2007on770/

[bac522]

Sounds promising but there is a saying in the US that goes "I've from the Missouri state, Show Me". So I'm somewhat skeptical that this isn't just some talk to appease irate 770 owners that never actually goes anywhere.

[Modulok]

This all sounds like a contradiction.

NOKIA continues the development but it is not official and a HACKER edition. How can this be ??? I thought the device was made by NOKIA.

From my viewpoint only full support makes sense. Either full support from NOKIA or full support of a community driven distro.

They can stop the the hacker edition whenever they want and they will do this (again) after a short period of time.

They can only make money by selling hardware ...

[Milhouse]

It will be official (ie. from Nokia) but there will be no official support - ie. don't bother calling the Nokia Helpline for assistance if an application is crashing or you have some other software related issue.

Since I imagine few of us needed to make this phone call with OS 2006 I don't see this as a big loss, and the announcement from Nokia is merely a disclaimer of sorts to cover their increased exposure to future software related issues. Software support (for both OS 2006 and the "Hacker Edition" OS 2007) will no doubt continue much as it does now - via the forums, newsgroups, bugzilla, blogs and IRC.

If you have a hardware problem however, you will continue to be fully supported by Nokia.

In terms of the future, Nokia have stated their intention to open the platform further so one can only hope that by the time Nokia firmware support finally comes to an end the community will be better placed to pick it up and continue.

Note also that Nokia are endeavouring to abstract the software from the hardware, so who knows we might even see OS 2008 "Hacker Edition" appear for the 770! :)

[Rocketman]

I am glad that Nokia has decided to continue 770 development. I am still going to be very hesitant to recommend the 770/800 to people until I see them deliver on their words. I think the best thing they could do to regain people's confidence is to truly open source the platform, so that the community could continue to develop for it in the future. People need more than just assurances that if they buy a $400 device, they are going to be able to make productive use of it for more than just a few years.