Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

My bubble is fully fortified and growing stronger by the minute. Plus I have steel toe boots on thank you. :)

Anyways, I think Nokia has learned it's lesson from the 770 fiasco, and are listening to the rumblings of the community voice. Much like the N95 upgrades with more memory, higher capacity battery, and US 3G, the N800 brought more to the Internet Tablet side than we first expected from Nokia. True, they each lost a hardware feature that was important to many users: the protective cover for the N800, and the lens cover for the new N95-3/N95 8GB (good thing I'm in that bubble).

I can't say enough times that this is uncharted territory for Nokia, and is bound to make mistakes along the way. But unlike other large corporations I know of, they seem to actually care and are willing to learn from those mistakes and at least attempt to rectify the flaws that it's customers see in many of it's products.

Being one of the many 770 users that was very disappointed in how Nokia handled the "transition" to the N800 and later the dropping of 770 support, I know how hard it is to believe Nokia won't make that mistake again. I guess that's where hope kicks in.

I also understand that a hardware upgrade as significant as the 770 to N800 on was is expected to break things. It's akin to the upgrade from 32 bit processors to 64 bit. Probably not as smooth, but just as annoying to developers.

If I'm wrong about any of this, and I hope I'm not, I may become more like iball and start kicking Nokia in the jimmy (and remember, I have steel toe boots on).

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

In this sense it was not significant upgrade at all. Yes CPU is a bit faster and there is more RAM but nothing significantly different. You cannot compare it with big changes in architecture like going from 32 to 64 bits. It is like going from PC with 64MB RAM and Pentium@266Mhz to PC with 128MB RAM and Pentium II @333Mhz. Such changes happen all the time and there is no technical excuse for not having OS2007 running fully on N770. In fact this is what hacker edition is and you can see that it works quite fine on N770. The reasons for ditching N770 were not technical. They simply had no resources for maintaining both devices.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Haha. Amen! I want as much storage on this thing as possible, and dual-SD slots is a good way towards that goal.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Ah, I knew I was off the mark with that comparison somehow. I just woke up and my brain is just starting to come online. You are absolutely right about the 770 being able to run OS2007 just fine. I'm not too bothered by the shifting of resources to the N800 as my 770 works just as well as the day I got it (if not a little better via the few firmware updates). Of course I never expected as much as I got from the cool little device either.

In the end I think there has been a lot more growth on the N800 side because of the shift of resources and support. It will only get better with future tablets, and I plan on upgrading to one of those because of that fact alone. I think Nokia can do better at providing the resources and support for all its tablets going forward, but I have to admit that this community has done one heck of a job filling the gaps in that department also.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

There is some truth in that, but I wouldn't completely agree on "nothing significantly different". Nokia 770 runs OMAP 1710 processor whereas the N800 has the OMAP 2420. Google the TI pages for details on those two, if you haven't already. As the hacker edition shows, quite many parts of the new software can be made to work - to some extent - but there are valid differences in certain things like DSP handling, which certainly aren't by no means trivial.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

It is OS kernel responsibility to handle these hardware differences (and this problem is solved/workarounded by running old kernel in OS2007HE). Userland should really see little differences between 770 and n800 when properly implemented. Both of these devices have an ARM core, they use the same C55x DSP (Nokia 770 DSP is probably even more powerful than N800 as it is running at higher clock frequency), LCD controllers are very similar (N800 uses a newer revision of Epson chip). So fanoush is right, the differences are comparable to the differences between Pentium and Pentium II on desktop (which are also mostly handled in kernel, so nobody notices them).

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

Because you were specifically promised Nokia wouldn't.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

I'm always amazed to see that sort of remark.

What's your benchmark, Garage? A desktop computer with a 2.4 Ghz dual processor and a gig of ram? Come on. A little perspective goes a long way.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

There are much faster UMPCs, but either their battery lives are awful, or they're not exactly pocket-sized.

The most important thing to know about mobile devices is that whatever you add takes something else away.

Re: Third Internet Tablet spotted on FCC
 

GPS is very much much a possibility as Nokia has invested a lot in their mapping services. A harware keyboard would be nice, but I find it just complicates the device. I think the virtual keyboard serves just fine, but it could use some software improvements.