Joohan | # 1 | 2005-11-13, 10:13 | Report

In several posts it has been mentioned that the 770 is not a PDA and has weak hardware. The most recent PocketPC's have only 64 MB RAM and 128 ROM and several of them runs on Texas Instruments OMAP processor in the 200 MHz range (HTC Wizard). They can do all sorts of stuff. Why would the 770 be inferior to them?

I can agree that the 770 lacks a lot of software to be true PDA out of the box, but isn't the whole Linux thing is about a community providing new software for it? The only slow down of the 770 would be its high resolution that drains some cpu (there is no graphics engine in it?). Whats the Linux requirements on a pc? Pentium 166 MHz? 64 MB RAM? This device should after proper tuning be able to be a small PC.

//Johan

daf | # 2 | 2005-11-13, 13:31 | Report

There is a DSP processor in 770, so it is like there is 2 processors

linux exist since 386. But it is not your question i think. Maybe http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/486.html would be an answer for you

dsmudger | # 3 | 2005-11-13, 23:54 | Report

Joohan - I've been thinking along the same lines - my 770 does to be honest feel a /little/ on the sluggish side (opening a bowser or the news reader is a 'crunch-crunch-crunch...drawing window...rendering text...and...open' rather than a 'spinning cursor...PING!' experience )

Now if you look at what's been going on in the HTC community (I don't have one but I know someone who does and have been reading up on it - would have bought one if the announcement of the 770 hadn't stopped me!), there are various 'hacked' versions of the OS that for example will load a whole bunch of useful apps from a compressed rom image after every hard reset, various tweaks, memory management etc etc. Basically lots of clever stuff done by the 'slighly obsessed' side of the user community

To this end I'm hoping that several things will happen:

(sure I'll get flamed for this one but here goes... )
1) that NOKIA having made their R&D investment will leave the hardware alone to make some money for them, and not release more similar devices too soon - much like what happened with the original Playstation whose hardware didn't change for seemingly ages and ages, developers learned a lot of neat tricks and the software increasingly took advantage of various quirks and all sorts clever optimisations were implemented - PS1 games were immensely better towards the end of its career than the first batch released..
2) Hopefully it'll also be a little while before a competitor (Sharp? Microsoft?) release something similar, to allow the 770 to reach a certain 'critical mass' i.e. being 'pretty much THE (only) internet tablet' will drive many developers and hackers to the platform. (Very interested to hear what others think about this - maybe I'm completely wrong and maybe the existence of a number of competing platforms don't dilute innovation/developer uptake?)
3) Because of the hardware staying the same, and the lack of competition, development/hacking of the OS will go through the roof in a way that perhaps has not happened on desktop Linux due to the dispersal of developer talent among the various distributions (this has always seemed like a bit of a waste to me since so many distros overlap so much in purpose and functionlity....again, perhaps I'm missing the point?)

Basically I'm waiting with bated breath for various optimised/hacked/cunningly recompiled OS images springing up for download, complete with all the 'laptop-like' features that like you, I really rather want (divx, mobile web server, voip, java etc, as well as overall improved speed/responsiveness)

In a similar vein, and perhaps warranting a separate thread - why not mix in the subject of hardware hacks?! Has anyone mentioned overclocking yet for example? USB charging? Antenna mods anyone? It's all a bit early for most of this - but I'm just kind of salivating at the thought of all the possibilities!

Joohan | # 4 | 2005-11-14, 11:49 | Report

The HTC community is big and is not negatively affected by the fact that there is many versions of the HTC Windows Mobile phones. One reasons why I ordered the 770 was this site. A good community infrastructure based on a product (or type of product) will inevitably lead to new exiting hacks and ports.

Good hardware can always be killed by poorly optimised software, but I hope that the sluggishness will disapear with time and new roms.

thenabbster | # 5 | 2005-11-14, 20:21 | Report

Going along the lines of cpu speed and graphics processing, I wonder how fast the 770 actually is, i see it can play doom well as i saw clips of it, but how far can we really push the 770, what games more demanding than doom could it run? Maybe slim down versions of counter strike in software mode? maybe other fps games? can someone test it out and post what the results are?

Remote User | # 6 | 2005-11-15, 23:08 | Report

The 770 is based on a 220-MHz, ARM9-based Texas Instruments (TI) OMAP 1710. It only supports 2D graphics acceleration.
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtb...data/omap_1710

It looks like the next version of the 770 will feature the TI OMAP 2420, which supports 3D graphics acceleration. This chip includes an ARM1136 processor operating at 330MHz, TI's programmable TMS320C55x operating at 220MHz, a DSP designed for low power, a 2D/3D graphics accelerator that offers up to two million polygons per second, a sophisticated DMA controller, and a power management companion chip, the TML92230, that is optimized for the OMAP2410 and further reduces system cost and board area. It has support for high-end features such as 4+ megapixel cameras, VGA-quality video, high-end interactive gaming functionality, and analog/digital TV video output. It includes 5 MB of internal SRAM that boosts streaming media performance.
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtb...data/omap_2420

The bigger the embrace of the 770, the more certain it will be followed up by the 2420 version.