It's not this week's hot topic but has been on the list for 35 weeks... which requires something from the product, maybe Nokia has done its promotion well ;-) CNet editors however only give it 4.9 out of 10, criticizing the lack of features (and extreme slowness).
(9) Worst-rated product that CNET readers love:
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
Nokia 770 Internet Tablet This thing, it surfs Internet. You want to make phone call? You can't make phone call. You like Ethernet? No Ethernet. You get Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is nice. No wires! You like slow load times? Yes? It is good for that. You like battery that lasts more than three hours? It does not have one. Nice screen, though.
Less than three hour battery life? He must have been streaming radio the whole time, with screen on at full brightness.
Slow load times? Comparing to my PC, which gets 6kbps, I would guess it is about half that. (Wish I could test, but speed test sites use a Java applet that the Nokia can't load) That's not bad.
I think tech reviewers always try to look what a device does, and ask it to do more.Really, nowadays, for almost any piece of technology that comes out, the only comment possible is "wow".It's beyond what we could have expected a few years ago, no matter what device we look at.
And no critic can get a living just saying "wow" to everything.So we will ask the devices to do the dishes for us.
The point in technology, imho, is what you get for that price.Nokia 770 has a screen bigger than any other device of the same price.And a full OS, not a "shrinked" version....an (almost) full browser..and, more than that, a bright future..
They say you cant do phone calls with it...I guess they have asked for the same thing to all the PDAs they've reviewed in the last years...who said this device should make phone calls?And for the same price?And for the same battery life?(which, btw, is far more than 3 hours...)
"VoIP is limited and unusable" And PDA market is struggling - because they can't do phone calls. People are moving to communicators like the Treo.
Mobile computing today has 2 benchmarks I think:
1) Communicators (Treo)
2) Mini-laptops (Fujitsu Lifebook at $1500)
Any smart mobile device introduced has to beat these benchmarks somehow to be a real success. The UMPC competes with price against the mini-laptops. For the Nokia 770, it competes with mobility and price (big advantages here!) against the mini-laptops while it can do more as a computer (web browsing, various applications) than a communicator (and it might have a small price advantage).
Nokia is pushing the smart mobile device envelope and trying to establish a new benchmark (the surfboard). OQO and Sony Vaio U-series tried pushing into slightly different direction (the handtop), at the cost of high price and some limitations. I think they have not been very succesful, despite impressive effort. We will see how the 770 fares, it still needs lots of development to appeal to the tech-savvy main stream user.
Nokia, imo, has a much better shot at succeeding, for one main reason: Linux. Whatever needs to be developed, will be developed, and probably at no cost. I doubt any XP based machine could make that claim.
The 770 will do just fine when someone figures out how to do vertical market value added packages with it - bundle it with a keyboard and abi-word for the people who can't get a small enough laptop; make a car bundle with GPS, dashboard holder, and improve the MP3 player functionality, maybe even a "car network" where you can control /stream the kids movies (maybe even a remote for the in-dash MacMini... the list goes on.
Right now, it is trying to do a lot of different things, and while that is a noble goal, the hardware (and price-point constrictions) are limiting.
Unfortunately as a "web" tablet, it is lacking given speed and the complexity of data entry (even just URLs - how about a smart virtual keyboard that switches to URL entry mode?).
Give it some time, and see what people can make with the existing hardware... and a little effort.
The fundemental limitations I see right now are the upstream connections (wifi isn't everywhere, and many people don't want to carry a phone for access as well as this device). Most of the other issues are software or accessories.
And PDA market is struggling - because they can't do phone calls. People are moving to communicators like the Treo.