Nokia FCC filing reveals more details on next tablet
 

I deconstructed the document and pulled out all important parts:
here is the article

There's only one confirmed hardware change, and it is a welcome change!

Hm...what is the maximum size of a MiniSD? 2 gig, right?

Where did you read about miniSD? one of the reports contain

FCC Part 15B Compliance Test Report

"Tested devices/accessories: Nokia Internet Tablet; RX-34 (HW: 1101), Battery; BP-5L, AC-Charger; AC-4E, Headset; HS-48, Multi Media Card; MU-17, Data Cable; DKE-2"

Er...in the article originally linked to, right at the bottom. I skipped the tech talk and just scrolled down to the author's conclusion.

oh, nevermind, I see - MU-17, serial number SDSDM-128, really looks like 128MB miniSD

Nokia FCC filing reveals more details on next tablet
 

"Please note that while the manual states that the device can use WLAN or Bluetooth, there does not appear to be anything stating that they cannot be run simultaneously."

"This issue has been explained in Co-Existance chapter of Operation Description. Simultaneous transmission is not possible."

(from http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/fo...ive_or_pdf=pdf)

Is that different to the 770?

No, probably not. There is single antenna for both bt and wlan. While both devices can be enabled and work together only one transmits at the same time. The switching is so fast it doesn't cause big problems. Well it fact there were problems in bugzilla related to this https://maemo.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=326 but it is better now.

Think of it like this - there is only one CPU in computer so simultaneous running of two programs is not possible :-)

BTW the device was submitted to FCC in September with firmware release wk36-17. Anyone knows what is usual time from FCC certification to device release for similar devices? Maybe we can have this device before christmas after all?

We don't need data on both, but headset profile via Bluetooth would certainly make VOIP much more likely to be used...

Such a shame! I thought Nokia still produced in Europe. The current Nokia 770 is made in Estonia and Germany, but accordig to this picture this one will be made in Korea. I just hope that the software is still developed in Europe. Maybe they outsourced that also to a Korean company.

Unfortunately, that's globalization for you.

(Not that there is anything wrong with Korean products, per se. Not at all. But I still don't see why East Asia should be the only place in the world that still has a *gasp* manufacturing sector...just because corporations can make a bigger buck that way.)

One thing I saw on the FCC. Nokia requested '45 days short term confidential' on revealing documents like:
- Exhibit 3: External photos
- Exhibit 7: Test setup photos
- Exhibit 8: User's manual
- Exhibit 9: Internal photos
The request was signed 19oct. So maybe we'll get more info at start of December. Here's hoping :)

Also another person has spotted that the SAR test contains the following text on page 12:
- With MC / Without headset, Camera extended / 0.390
So camera is looking like a good posibility (the stick out thingy on the photo).

... and even more importantly "Extended"... meaning you can pop the bastard back in so it doesn't get ripped off in your pocket.

A camera wasn't even on my top 10 list of desired changes to the 770...

why a camera? it is a known disincentivising feature for the business segment. you can get all kinds of cell phones with cameras.

sveinan: I updated the post with your information and credited you for catching it. Thanks again!

SD69. I agree... I've never once been sitting there with my 770 thinking "Damn, I wish I had a (probably) crappy low res webcam"

@thoughtfix
Thanks for the credit. Although the camera spotting was not my doing. I'm not that 'anonymous' (I'm only the 45 days conf. 'anonymous'). I just brough it up here for the others to see. Guess we'll never know who that anonymous hero was ;)

@Hedgecore
Although we are in speculative mode here, I do partly agree. It's good the camera probably is a pop-up thingy that won't break off at first use. But I don't think its such a bad idea. Even if not all here are gonna use it, it may generate more interest/support of the device. And you gotta wonder, what application are Nokia gonna support built in with it ? Do Gizmo or GoogleTalk support video ? Maybe finally a Skype client ? Is high on my list.


One thing I miss in all this was a IR sender. Would soo like this device to be a universal remote.

O well. I think one very important fact is gonna be the CPU + memory config. I will buy one anyway, been hanging on the fence because of late entry and waiting for the 770 replacement. Would be brilliant if they managed to push it out before newyears.

Think of the possibilities: the next time you are stuck outside of wifi range, you can kill time by...er....taking pictures of your own feet? Or something. :D

Lol.. corporations are supposed to make bigger buck! Either the rest of the world has to reduce its production costs or get another advantage or restructure their economy.

I am not at all pleased with the inclusion of a camera. As a feature, it is WAY down my list of what I wanted in a revision 2 tablet. The camera is likely to raise the price of the device slightly, draws developer attention away from implementing critically needed features (i.e. utterly crappy email client, lack of granular power management, random reboots, etc) that will need to be addressed before I ever consider buying a second IT from Nokia, as well as frustrate the biz community (many companies have stern policies against any device with a camera).

So far, the only change that interests me at all about the 870 is that they have finally ditched RS-MMC in favor of a well supported format, and that is far from enough to entice my wallet.

I hate to be such a wet blanket prior to any official announcements about the device, but I really get the feeling that Nokia is just looking to add more bullet points to their spec sheets and I have seen very little evidence that they have taken widely expressed concerns to heart. It would be nice if Nokia appointed some sort of ombudsman to serve as an interface with/to the ITT community.

The camera is probably going to be aimed at video for use with Google Talk or other video-phone protocols.

Not that I care - also not my #1 requested feature...

Well, here's the thing. I think they're not judging their user base too well. That survey on Tableteer had a huge section about cell phone usage. I don't have a cell, nor do I want one. I think that with the internet tablet niche, many users who do own a cell never pair the two together. If this is supposed to be a boost for their phone division, I think they missed the mark on it. I'd be interested to see a survey as to the user demographic that either a.) doesn't own a cell, b.) does but never uses it with the 770, and c.) does and uses them in combination.

I think the cam is really a stab at the combo market, mainly internet kiddies with MySpace pages. (not to say the combo market is made of them entirely) But c'mon. It's a linux based tablet without the pink sparkly grossness that MSN/Yahoo/AIM have "blessed" the internet with. That market is more likely to pick up a Mylo.

Agreed - so to speak. I think the addition of the camera is twofold:
one: Put the last nail in the Sony Mylo coffin
two: Try to appeal to a broader userbase.

Webcam for video calls.

Not that I want to, but I often have to use my cellphone as a modem for my 770. It's good to have that as an option when WiFi is unavailable or inaccessable.

I don't understand not wanting to have a camera. Cameras are TINY! There is no weight concern. You have to carry a camera anyhow.

Here is the choice:
1) 770 + phone + camera + scanner + fax/copier(with printer)
2) 870

I've been wanting to write a program that uses multiple passes of a web-cam to do high-res scanning and faxing/printer-copying. If the camera is of sufficient quality I'll probably take the plunge. Why have a separate (and not really portable) scanner/fax? I can take my entire office in my pocket unless I need scanning/faxing; then it's back to the luggable briefcase. YUCK!

My wish list is:
better processor (So audio/video doesn't ever skip)
more memory (So I don't have to use expansion for software/VM; only for media)
SD expansion (for all of my books, music, video, photos, scanned files, etc.)
camera (3 to 5 mega pixels with internal optical zoom)
data link (e.g., EDGE or WiMAX)
powered USB (and USB charging).

I would like a keyboard and better battery if they add no weight/size. (A built-in laser virtual keyboard would be amazing!)

I would like software for PRINTING!, bluetooth steero/VOIP profiles, a USB monitor driver and my fax/scan software.

The bottom line is I don't want to carry five devices and all their cables.

Bruce

more cpu, more memory, a camera,... and the same battery. I hope that the battery live is like 770, otherwise it's a problem.

I have to carry a camera anyhow? I really don't have to, and don't want to. There is no use case where I could find any camera phone useful. If I want to take a picture, I want a proper camera; I want my phone to be four things:

1. A device for having voice conversations with people far away.
2. A device to sending short text messages to people to pick up when convenient.
3. A device to managing my voicemail.
4. A device to act as a high speed connection to the Internet when I've got my 770 with me.

This package should be as small and stylish as possible. A camera is most certainly not part of it.

Except the "870" doesn't have a GSM/GPRS/UMTS component (quite rightly) so the actual choices are:

1. 770 + phone (with camera)
2. 870 (with camera) + phone (with camera)

A nice idea, but why not use the existing capabilities of the 770 to read images over Bluetooth from the paired phone's camera (if present)?

Of course, without sacrificing battery life, size or weight. Not that they won't do this, but it smacks of the wanting the moon on a stick!

I understand that people dislike RS-MMC, but it doesn't bother me. Having now got a 1GB RS-MMC card, I wouldn't want to have to replace it for use with the next device.

EDGE is just GPRS+ or UMTS-, so is a technical dead end. As I said above, it's been clear why - from business and tarket market use-case points of view - they've no interest in adding GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS. As for WiMAX, I'd be surprised - there don't seem to be any large usages - but I could be wrong.

Indeed, that's a killer.

Effectively, then, something with the power to afford the flexibility of a full-blown desktop computer, with the comparable computing power and expansion options. In a device smaller than an A6 piece of paper, which is lightweight and costs around £250.

I agree it'd be nice, but so would winning the lottery!

Cheers,

Andrew

You don't get it - the key to having a good internet tablet is knowing what to leave out. Try to do too much and you lose mobility.

Printing and better file-sharing are a must for the success of these devices. An internet device is only as useful as its interoperability with the rest of the world. These features are just a matter of software so I don't see them as a big hurdle.

Come on, Nokia, get on the ball!

I think the real question is being avoided at this point. What does everyone think the price of this thing will be? I say $400. I'd pay that if it's smaller than the 770, the cpu is a little faster, it has a little more memory, and if that really is a camera. If any two of these turn out to not be, I think I'll wait for the next one to surface and stick with the OS updates for the 770.

I would entertain the idea of video calls when the VOIP calls I've attempted don't have a 2 second delay that sounds like "#n3jN$#J$NJ#$NJ#$NJ#$#$# hell #*($ o? #*($*#$&*"

Andrew:
Yes! Exactly! Except smaller and lighter with a bigger screen and easier input. How is that possible? I don't know, that is for Nokia to figure out (though I could offer a number of ideas.)


SD69,
Respectfully, I DO get it. There are only three dimensions of inputs that can be on a single device: Point-like events (points, keypreses), linear information (e.g., sound) and planar information (video). For higher dimensions triangulation and thus multiple, inter-communicating devices are needed. However, a single device should have inputs for all three dimensions of information. If you are not using a camera you may not be using all the information you could be using to optimise your life (whatever that means for you). E.g., If you see a train schedule, do you manually copy it into a note book or take a picture? With faster processors gestures and other pieces of information can become part of your process. There are hundreds of ways that audio and video information can be used in the future, but only if the machines first have the sensors. If no machines have those sensors then no one will write the software that uses them.

Bruce

Respectfully Bruce, no you don't get it. We've been politely hinting that feature creep can be danger for a mobile computing device, but that didn't work so I will try again with your use scenario

It is an Internet Tablet - portable, optimized for viewing web pages, and always connected. So the idea that you would use a camera to capture and store an image of a train schedule is the very anti-thesis of what this device is about. What you are supposed to do is link to the website that includes the train schedule, maybe bookmark the page using less than 1/1000th the memory of an image file. In other words, you don't add imaging hardware, sensors or gobs of memory just to capture and locally store what is already on the Net. Do you get it now??

"I don't know how to do it, but that's for you guys to figure out", but in the real world everything does add size and weight, decreases battery life and involves compromise of some sort. A good product can never emerge if bad choices are made when setting specs.

Should the new version have a camera?
 

Of course I was assuming in my "train schedule" example that the information was NOT on the net. There are lots of examples where needed visual information is not on the net, choose one.

If there were an infinite variety of information sources in our everyday life then it might be useful to choose a few that one would specialize in and then purchase a device limited to one information-type for each of those sources. Otherwise, one might find a device with thousands of sensors (e.g., a camera is a sensor, so is a radio antenna or a microphone), none of which are useful to that person.

But there aren't that many different sources that are important to us. That means that feature creep is finite -- look at MS Word -- it has had no major new features in years. It also means that adding a camera isn't a slippery-slope leading to a 2 kilogram device.

There are just a handful of information streams that are important, but they are all very important in that they can be used to improve/optimize our lives. Now someone may pick one or another and choose not to benefit from its use, but does that mean the rest of the world should also do without its benefit?

That is a pragmatic argument; naming the device "Internet Tablet" and defining that things of that name leave out this or that benefit doesn't really prove anything. If the name "Internet Tablet" were to be definitively accepted as having the meaning "doesn't have a camera" Nokia would respond to pragmatics, as any market-driven entity does, and change the name to something else. I suspect that the name was chosen to highlight the extra benefit that the 770 has over, say, a Treo, rather than to enforce a limitation on future enhancements.

As far as weight goes, as long as you also carry a phone and/or a separate camera you also carry an extra processor, screen, DSP, speaker, microphone, antenna, battery, charger, etc. In other words, including the essential information sources in a single device decreases rather than increases size and weight. And I AM a size/weight hound. I am annoyed that the 770 weighs as much as it does -- it drags in my pant pockets and I find it goofy that the cover weighs 2.5 oz!; I want smaller AND better, and in today's world, that is not only possible, but inevitable! My first camera phone was smaller and lighter than my previous non-camera phone.

Regards,

Bruce

Bruce, do you want it to make coffee, clean your bathroom and control your VCR, too? Or would it be sufficient if it only played hide and seek with your children?

Ha Ha HA!!!
No, the above list is sufficient for me. As I said, there are only a handful of useful information streams in our world; a camera and WiMax are the only NEW items I want.

However, if someday a robot body can be controlled by a computer, cleaning the bathroom, fixing the car, making breakfast... Minor surgery... :o

BL

:rolleyes: Benny: Hahahhah :)

I'm glad to see this hasn't turned into a huge flame war.

Interesting point on 'feature creep'... it puts my concerns into a solid term. A long time ago I had ranted about modularization and how it could apply to the 770. After building a USB power injector, I can see how my feelings were right on the mark (in my world anyway). I don't have a consistent need to have 40GB of storage hooked up to the 770, but if I find myself on a long train/bus/car ride I can plug my MP3 player into it and access a wealth of movies, pictures, mp3s, etc. I also don't always need a keyboard, but now I can plug a mini USB one into it if I need to type something up... which brings me to the most relevant point; If I needed a camera, I would have no problem plugging one in to take a few snaps, or use a real one.

We're violating preferred design principles here as well. A camera is designed for a specific use, the body is shaped to accomodate the hand for the method in which it will be used. The controls are all optimized for the method in which it will be used. Imagine bringing a web browser and wifi onto your digicam. While the reverse (integrating a camera into the 770) isn't as much of a poor fit, but the device still isn't optimized to the task at hand. Nobody knows how many megapixels that camera is though I suspect it's 2 or less and will give us the same crap-tastic grainy quality we get from cell phones. (Barring those 80mp Japanese phones).

Putting too many eggs in one basket (feature creep) can lead to a sacrifice in the overall quality. The increase in cost and the additional components that can break are a sure detractor to potential customers.

What really gets me, is with all of the wants and needs the userbase on this messageboard have been vocal about they add a camera?!

My two cents are this. Give 'er a little more horsepower (enough that it doesn't drive the cost up substantially) and FIX THE OS/APPS.

A slow-as-hell camera app that crashes every two seconds is about as useless as... oh I don't know... a camera?

@Hedgecore: If there's a cam and if it doesnt influence the price a lot, I dont need it but I also don't mind a lot.

Whats worse, as you said, is that they put the camera in and (at least from what we know) did not listen to what users wanted and what would have made sense. I still cannot attach my camera to the 770s USB-port without strange constructs that I'm not willing to carry with me, and there's no indication so far that I will be able to do so with the 880/870.

Fixing connectivity issues should be the main priority, so that each user can enhance his device with what he needs. (BTW: "real" USB support would also mean support for standard USB web cams...)

I agree. People don't realize how important development cycle is to these types of devices, and the 770 in particular. (The latest Nokia E-series phone has a better email app right now than the 770) Oh, a camera is relatively small and light, so adding it is no big deal, they think. All of the man-hours spent figuring out how to integrate it; they could have left the camera on the cell phone and spent that time better on basic HW/SW improvements, better USB support generally and then let users add a webcam if they want.

My other concern is that a camera could be a sort of gimmicky thing to do for advertising to consumers. I hope they haven't changed focus from a mobile, modular, low-cost, open, tablet computing platform, to a mylo-like gadget.

I absolutely agree. If the hardware/software on the new machine is exactly the same as the 770 I probably won't bother to "upgrade" The only major changes that we know about are that it has a camera, SD-card support and is ugly as sin. That by itself is not worth it. USB support, printing support, and better out-of-the-box connectivity are critical. I can't imagine that those items have not been addressed, but I could be wrong.

I am optimistic. It is certainly possible because, basically, the 770 is a heavy Treo with Linux and a better screen but no keyboard/phone/camera. Have you noticed that the 770 screen would fit on a Treo if they removed that god-awful keyboard? But Treo is smaller and lighter.

There are rumors in the Palm community that Palm's next OS will be Linux. Perhaps they will choose Maemo!