Prospective owner question: is it slow ?
 

Hey all, quick question. Is it slow?

Heres why I ask. I currently have owned 2 S60 nokia phones so far, and they are really feature packed and I absoltly love them, but unfortunatly the hardware can't keep up with the software, and they are just slow devices in general. Its my phone, so I can deal with it since I use it for talking more then browsing.

But this device is going to be primarily used for browsing the web and I need it to be fast.

I was just in compusa where I got to play with both the Sony and the 770. The sony (at 2000$) was lightening fast, great screen, no complaints what so ever. The Nokia had a screen that was 98% as great, a fairly inferior browser, things that are just fine considering the massive prive difference.

However, the nokia was extremly SLOW. clicking the little globe icon for the internet had a huge delay before the final webpage was loaded. It was quite painful and really takes away from the main purpose of this device (surfing the web on the fly).

Now I cant tell if it was because this was a store display model that was used by a hundred other ppl who had loaded up the memory with other crap and it was just running so slow by the time I got to it, or if the device itself is just slow, or relativly slow?

This thread is most definitly not troll bait in any way, I'm just looking for serious opinions that anyone could kindly offer. Also im not trying to compare the two at all, since I can in no way afford the sony device, its just that I was able to use them back to back so the speed of the Nokia is the one thing that stood out to me as a big negative.

Thanks!!

Try overclocking. the 770. What sony product were you comparing it to.

Is it slow compared to a $2000 laptop? Err... yes, definately. Not really a sensible comparison though, is it?

Inferior browser? Are you comparing Opera on the 770 to IE on the laptop? IE is probably one of the poorest browsers on the planet so hardly inferior to Opera - Opera is a very good browser.

The 770 is what it is; it's a great little device for browsing the internet. The version of Flash that comes with the 770 is outdated, but the only people to blame for that situation are Macromedia/Adobe as they haven't released updated Linux versions in a long while.

I'd hazard a guess that the 770 unit you demoed in CompUSA is still running the original release of OS 2005 (there were a total of 3 major releases for OS 2005, each of which improved performance). OS 2006 brings further performance improvements.

Try getting a demo of the 770 running the latest firmware, it's entirely usable for your intended requirements (surfing on the fly).

Yes the Nokia is slow, opening a new browser window takes a few seconds and so does following a link on a website.
I also do not know which sony-product you refer to but plz ignore the prev. posters stupid remark to overclock anything on the N770.

The 770 you saw in the shop was probably running the 2005 OS. 2006 OS has significantly improved performance.
Web browsing is not particularly proccessor intensive. Sometimes javascript and flash will slow things down a bit, and the application startup time is a little slow, but the 770 is certianly fast enough for what it is intended for.

My impression as a fairly new 770 owner is that a lot of the alleged slowness on the 770 could be alleviated by a user interface that gave more instant feedback about what it was doing. This is why Minimo feels much faster to me than Opera (though Minimo's not quite ready for production use).

I think many of the issues we see today are because apps have been quickly ported from their desktop equivalents, which haven't had to bother with the "Please wait, loading" kind of dialogs, because it's that much faster in the PC environment. And of course the ports have not been fully optimized for the 770 CPU. But additionally the core "launcher" for the 770 is poor IMHO. Clicking on widgets should give you immediate feedback, and in most cases it just doesn't.

This is not about x86 vs. ARM -- I have used ARM-based devices that were responsive, and it's down to the UI. PalmOS 5 is a good example of an environment that is focused on quick response to user input.

If Nokia and the dev community can solve this perception problem they will have a winner.

Wesley

2006 OS was a great leap forward in responsiveness. I've found that -most- pages load quite quickly. Browsing via bluetooth+cellphone is just as fast and responsive as my laptop, and browsing via WiFi is notably faster, if not quite as fast as my laptop.

Flash advertisements do SEVERE damage to this. Privoxy dramatically reduces this problem. Skweezer (http://www.skweezer.net/) helps too.

Honestly, I see the 770 as a way to surf the web wherever I wouldn't normally have access to it. The browsing experience is orders of magnitude better than my cellphone --- and much better than my Axim x3i.

Finally, that $2000 Sony probably gets around two hours of battery life. My Nokia gets somewhere between two to four times that easily, even with the backlight cranked to full.

lol @ overclock statement.

overclock ? ... :confused:

SLOW??? I use my Nokia 770 as a TOOL... I have installed and use *only* software that is needed to get my tasks done. Basically, I use Web, E-Mail, Radio, RSS Reader, GoogleTalk, and GAIM. I don't like Eye Candy (Microsoft makes Great Eye Candy!). The only "Slow"-part I see is when the Nokia 770 is starting up. Once it is running, I am able to accomplish my tasks, FASTER than the Palm TX.

I also own 2 Javascript-based phones: Motorola V360 and Nokia N70.

I am not running any Javascript programs on the Motorola V360.
On the Nokia N70, I keep Yahoo!Go & Messenger all the time. This phone is constantly connected to my mail server, and notifies me when I receive E-Mail. This eliminates having a computer E-Mail client loaded up & checking. The N70 runs only programs that I need it to run... (No Games!).

For me, I don't compare devices on SPEED... The Usefulness of a device is important to me. There are no Games on my Nokia 770, except the Chess program, which I never play. And, again, the Nokia 770 is a Great Tool!

Marcos

I've had the 770 since the original NYC press confab. Nokia probably regretted that because I have blasted it mercilessly (but I don't think *undeservedly*).

I upgraded from Tablet OS 2005 to 2006 recently.

Although there are still bugs (and it seems Nokia introduces *new* bugs every time they touch the damned software!), the speed compared to 2005 just takes my breath away. I cannot at all say it is slow any longer.

Does Opera still crash for me (even with 8MB VM now!)? Yes.

Have I wound up crashing the unit doing simple things? Yes.

There are still bugs. But I can no longer complain about the speed at all.

Can I recommend it? *Almost*. If you are adventurous and need the kind of web browsing it offers, OK. If you are looking for something 100% rock solid, keep waiting. If you think this will be a pocket computer; forget it! In the words of one of the Aris, "It is what it is." An Internet Tablet. Don't go looking for much more than that. It's not even a PDA.

Right now, I think it is 90% towards being a real product. Before OS 2006, it was near-zero.

For myself, I still want more muscular hardware. I don't care what their *theory* says about things being able to run in the current amount of RAM, it simply isn't good enough (and the addition of VM with 2006 is an *admission* of that!). I also want Adobe to get off its rear-end and update Flash so that a future version can access things like YouTube -- which would also require a faster CPU and more RAM, I think.

Now I will again withdraw from the site, having had my say.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...
 

<<<...snip...>>>

I still cannot understand the "It is not a pda" bit.

Mike thinks he needs a PDA. He also thinks the 770 is not what he needs. But he still craves the 770's cool-factor.

That about sums it up, I guess.

It isn't that. I find that I can do the same things with the 770 that I can do with my PocketPC. Just because the 770 doesn't come loaded with a ton of PIM apps doesn't mean it isn't a PDA.

I can speak for myself, thank you. You are totally wrong.

Some people come to the 770 with the mistaken notion it can also handle PIM stuff like a PDA. Forget that. Ignore any 3rd-party apps you might see that say they can handle that.

*That* is what I meant.

TTFN, Odin.

That is like taking a computer and saying it isn't a pc if it isn't bundled with Office or other apps. PIM is only one function of a PDA.

Even so, why discount 3rd party when 3rd party is part of the beauty of the 770's linux platform? We are talking free downloads. It is better that the disto not include everything so that the user can maximize the usage of the storage capability of the device. If all it takes is adding a line to the repository list is all that is necessary for the 770 to have builtin PIM (via appmanager install) would you consider it any differently?

After a while...
 

...people forget what acronyms stand for, like "Personal Digital Assistant". Hello?! That means scheduling, timing, contacts, calendars, notepads in a small, handheld device. Well, the 770 certainly can do all that and it is a <cough> small, handheld device, but is it really a PDA under the accepted definition? It does not do PDA stuff at all well and the apps are hardly integrated for PDA functionality like a Palm, which is a "true" PDA.

Realistically, the 770 is a UMPC, but Nokia, for some strange reason (Finlandia Vodka?) just steers clear of calling it that and sticks with Internet Tablet. Jeez, full-blown (pretty much) Unix with graphical interface, uber-comm capability and a handheld package? I mean, what more do you want in a UMPC?

Apparently a Microsoft OS. It's too bad really, they are missing out on the more important features for whatever reason.