Further support for Nokia 770

[ArnimS]

Since the 'no further support' thread is no longer applicable, i'd like to direct community attention to what we can do to continue development on the 770, and that is testing, bugreports and development of ITOS 2007. See these threads.

Some hope for 770 owners... (http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3988)
Nokia 770 Development to Continue (http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6082)

And especially,
OS 2007 on 770 mk2 now available (http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4852)

The garage page is here:
http://garage.maemo.org/projects/os2007on770/

The wiki is here:
http://maemo.org/maemowiki/Os2007On770

In particular, my last issue with Os2006 appears to have been addressed in 2007:

"If new Xomap [Hardware scaling on Os2007] doesn't work on the 770, I'd like to know about it. (I don't have time to constantly test it, but I can -- and will -- fix it.)" - Daniel Stone

Does he rock, or what? :D

So clearly, it2007 is where we can do something productive to keep improvements and bugfixes coming to the 770. I've currently flashed my device to it, and am working to resolve or file bug reports against issues I find.

Cheers

[daverup]

I'll be convinced when Nokia admits to defective hardware, resulting in WSOD. Maybe then they would finally fix the 770. My guess is that they really don't care, they are just making some comforting noises to calm the storm.
The new 2007 OS does little good on my tablet sitting there with it's third WSOD.
I really don't think that the hardware is up to long term development.
Nokia, anyone care to FIX the WSOD, for good? No more endless 2 month trips to outsourced repair hell please.
I'm waiting...

No action really expected, Nokia = worthless customer service.

[taborclayton]

I just got my 770, just before they announced continued support. My question is, exactly what does that mean? Is it OS updates? That's pretty cool. Actual customer support? I haven't dealt with them yet, so I don't know how that goes.

daverup: Pardon my ignorance, but what is the WSOD?

[Karel Jansens]

I just got my 770, just before they announced continued support. My question is, exactly what does that mean? Is it OS updates? That's pretty cool. Actual customer support? I haven't dealt with them yet, so I don't know how that goes.

daverup: Pardon my ignorance, but what is the WSOD?

I've never read that Nokia announcement as "continued support for the 770"; it actually reads more as a refusal to admit they're going to do nothing about the 770 anymore.

Marketing-speak, IOW.

[brendan]

daverup: Pardon my ignorance, but what is the WSOD?

WSOD - White Screen Of Death. this is when you turn on the device and nothing but a white screen appears. The OS does not load and your pretty much hung. The cure seems to be re-flashing the device, as long as the issue is not hardware based.

[Texrat]

I've never read that Nokia announcement as "continued support for the 770"; it actually reads more as a refusal to admit they're going to do nothing about the 770 anymore.

Marketing-speak, IOW.

It's not marketeers making the statements. That's a very important detail. I can speak with great confidence to that.

[convulted]

WSOD - White Screen Of Death. this is when you turn on the device and nothing but a white screen appears. The OS does not load and your pretty much hung. The cure seems to be re-flashing the device, as long as the issue is not hardware based.

I have to correct you on this one. The "death" in WSOD is pretty important: a WSOD is caused by a failure in the LCD controller chip that breaks the screen. The rest of the device functions 100% well, but without the screen it is pretty useless.
AFAIK, this issue happens only with 770's coming from a couple of batches, and the only known cure is to send the unit back so that they replace the screen.

HTH,
Dre

[Milhouse]

WSOD - White Screen Of Death. this is when you turn on the device and nothing but a white screen appears. The OS does not load and your pretty much hung. The cure seems to be re-flashing the device, as long as the issue is not hardware based.

No, the WSOD is when the LCD driver burns itself out due to a race condition when the device boots. The OS continues to load, and what you'll see is a corrupted display most often white (during boot) with vertial streaks and parts of the display transposed. WSOD is a bit of a misnomer because once the device has booted the display is no longer white, but the device is to all intents and purposes dead (as in unusable). A trip back to Nokia is needed to repair it as it's a hardware failure. This hardware defect should now have been resolved on later revision 770s, and from what I've read I don't think it affected early revision 770s either (mine - bought Nov 2005 - is fine).

EDIT: Convulted beat me to it! :)

[convulted]

Your post seems more informed than mine though :)
Interestingly, and I mentioned this in some other thread, I think that even in units not affected by the "normal" WSOD syndrome, certain (race?) conditions can occur to trigger the WSOD. A case in point may be connecting the tablet to a Linux OS (Ubuntu) running on vmWare Workstation 5.x in Windows XP and using Flasher, which causes XP to crash irrecoverably, and might cause some garbage to be sent over USB, which might confuse the LCD controller. All hypothetical of course, but I do have some strong circumstantial evidence :) I have rebooted my tablet 100+ times since getting it back from repair and the problem did not occur again. Legend has it that I should have experienced anothr WSOD in the first 10 or so reboots. This is all irrelevant to the current thread, of course, but I just thought I should mention it.