Nokia 770 not useful?
 

The news post in the Inquirer is labeled as "Nokia 770 finally gets useful" (after getting navigation software)

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35159

That story made me to think usefulness of the device. I think it is useful. Here are some not so hard to figure:

- Previewing & deleting photos taken with camera phone.
- Self education by reading old books from gutenberg.org
- gaming while waiting for a date
- Blogging

Let's try to find real, not so obvious, uses for the device. Please also include ideas that you think it could be used but is not yet.

VoIP with google talk

Browsing wikipedia

No problem with the others, but your first choice is quite impossible for me, unless I were to hack together a powered USB-hub and fritz around with the 770's system software. My camera uses CF cards.

Also, you forgot to add:
- Couch-surfing (it's what the thing is marketed as!)
- lazying around in the garden, playing music without need for annoying earbuds
- Sheeting spreads with Gnumeric
- Making other people jealous

Then there is the fact that there already is a quite effective (and free) navigation app with maemo mapper...

Remote Controlling of UPNP-Media-Clients

My mate bought it specifically as a Slimserver remote

- VNC viewer [It's like a remote control for my PC these days]
- Check e-mail [Gmail works quite well]
- I listen to some podcasts every now and then on the thing
- External RS-MMC card reader
- Voice recorder
- Photo viewer
- Google Talk [mostly for the text chat]
- Web surfing/search

All in all, it's pretty much become an extension of my brain at this point.

and lest we forget:

VoIP with Gizmo
Landline calls with Gizmo
Viewing "PRON" on the web, while in Church ;)
Monitoring Ebay sales
Reading RSS feeds
etc, etc, etc

Omega

Probably the most not so obvious use:
internet tablet

Nokia 770 not useful
 

he he Luna, that made me smile, lets reduce this down, as they say less is more.
.........something to hold my internet tablet stylus :D

I was just having this same discussion over email with a friend of mine ... to quote myself:

"I am finding it to be a really useful device ... GPS nav (with the addon Bluetooth GPS module that I bought), voice recorder, ebook reader, mp3 player, video player, gmail checker (from the comfort of bed :] ), SIP VoIP, puzzle games, taking notes ... those are the things that I end up using it for on a regular basis and it works superbly for all of them."

The majority of use is doing quick checks of gmail via the mobile interface:
http://m.gmail.com/

The functionality that I still want:
- BT headset support for voice recorder and VoIP via ...
- BT cellular broadband support ... not Nokia's fault but rather the Canadian Cellular providers

Other than that, it is a brilliant device.

mwiktowy: Are you in Canada as well? If so, how'd you end up getting your 770? I hate cell phones, they're one of the worst, most intrusive inventions and the rates in this country suck.

I'm in Toronto and there are enough *ahem* open APs that I can get around (the downtown core is saturated with free (for the time being) wireless). VOIP is still a nightmare on any of those solutions however.

I'm in Toronto as well. what's so bad about the cell phone rates here? I was in France two months ago and the phone rates are not any better there.

P.S. the 770 proved indispensable to check email and do VOIP while in Paris and even in Cabourg.

ilia: Check the data plans... they're fantastically expensive for such a small amount of data. The US had something like $40 for unlimited monthly usage; I'd do that in a second, the subway's gotta come out from underground near Davisville long enough to fire up a few pages ;)

How'd you get yours? (I ended up roadtrippin to Troy Michigan with a friend and we each got one Dec last year)

I agree with you about the data plans.

I spent some time in Boston and got it off Craigslist there...

Yup ... up in Ottawa. I got my folks to pick one up on their snowbird trip last year :] I see that you can get them through tigerdirect now though.

You are fortunate that Toronto Hydro is setting up blanket Wifi in your downtown core. We have no such thing in Ottawa. Although the *ahem* open APs are just as accessible ;]

"Fortunate"... it's free during the winter because they're six months behind, and you need to get a txt msg to a cel phone to activate your session. (I just steal the girlfriend's phone) :) Still though, it's been kinda useful.

I was on gtalk with my friend Andrew who's in Ottawa and we were gonna test out VOIP. So I call him, it's scratchy but he starts laughing when he realizes I'm sitting at Queen & Peter downtown. Then randomly his girlfriend Carrie comes up out of nowhere so I pass the 770 to her. Sounds like a commercial.

I've been trying to scope out all the free wifi that is available. It seems that all the Best Buys and Future Shops have free APs. Also, the National Archives downtown has a system similar to what you describe with the cell authentication.

Rogers and Bell are part of the Hotspot consortium that I see in a lot of places. Unfortunately, they don't offer an unlimited package. Some of the other companies that are part of that group do have a monthly unlimited rate but not in this neck of the woods.

I hear of all this talk of 3G and EDGE broadband via cell phone in the US but I think that is only available here if you bundle it with a Blackberry ... not just any personal phone that is capable ... and those suckers are expensive (and redundant with the 770) to buy and rent the service personally.

what about the new rogers portable or sympatico unplugged? http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/1134/98/

I wonder if you can get a modem that integrates a wifi access point?

I doubt it; you probably need to hook up a wifi router to their modems.

Thanks for pointing this out. Pretty cool! I didn't know about it. It is a fairly reasonable cost. Inukshuk sounds a whole lot like a Wimax deployment. Plug a wifi router into one of these and you'd be set.

If I could get one of these with integrated wifi that was the size of a cellphone and ran on batteries, I would ditch my broadband and cellphone and go with this immediately. Maybe soon.

I don't like the sound of roaming fees though.

These aren't regular modems, though, they're more like high-capacity receivers.

The whole concept looks very similar to what ClearWire does, and the devices I've seen are bigger and bulkier than modern ADSL/cable modems. They also require a fair amount of power. It can be moved from one room of your house to a different one, but that is the limit of its mobility. And this aspect is not likely to change.