Nokia 770 - a FON killer device? April 3, 2006
Free, ubiquitous WiFi is great - but you don't want to carry around your 3 lb laptop all the time. So, what is a real killer device for Fon and free WiFi networks? Obviously, browsing the web is the number on application. Email, IM and VoIP are probably the next important tasks you want to do when you are away from your desk. In the course of finding the killer device for Fon we thought the Nokia 770 might be a good point to start. We purchased it for $299 at CompUSA. This promotion has ended unfortunately but it's available for $349 almost everywhere (e.g. here on Amazon). It comes with a nice aluminium cover, a pouch, charger, USB cable and 64MB reduced size MMC. You turn it on and there is the first whoa effect: the display is amazing! Connecting to our FONtastic access point (via the FON network) was easy but unfortunately you have to login each time you turn the device off. The Opera browser also doesn't seem to save form entries of any kind and you have to re-type both email and password every time again. This is a bit of a pain but other that that browsing the internet is just great - as a matter of fact, compared to all PDA-ish devices I used to surf the web, this is the greatest experience ever! Nearly every webpage actually looks like it does on your desktop browser. Despite of the lack of memory and processor power, internet browsing is really fast, too. However, if you open more apps at a time (e.g. the bookmarks manager) slows down the Nokia 770 remarkably. But there are both de.icio.us and Bloglines apps available that help to manage bookmarks a great deal. Almost every application available for the Nokia 770 (which runs a Debian Linux derivate) can be found on the Maemo.org website.
Instant messaging is solved thru a GAIM port and we have been able to IM to Microsoft Messenger and GTalk buddies. Now we can't wait to use the Nokia 770 for VoIP. There is a SIP client out there but currently it can't be downloaded. Skype would be the killer app for the killer device (Nokia 770) on the killer network (FON). There is Debian client available but reading the Skype forum it appears not to be too easy to actually port it to the 770. If Skype was open source it would be there already, I guess, but as it's not we have to wait and hope. Stay tuned for more field reports on the Nokia 770.
- Posted in : fontastic.org, WiFi Products, FON
- Author : JOK
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I just came across an cool review of yet another killer device for FON: the tiny Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. This baby gives you wireless broadband access, media players, an email client and a bunch of other features, all in……
[…] Thanks to William of the official FON blog we have been fonblogged! They also refer to our Nokia 770 review. Thanks for your nice words. But we also want to say hi to all the other blogger out there that help getting the free WiFi movement to receive so much attention these days. Thanks, Steve at FONternet.com and Gerhard at fonblog.de. With our next sidebar update we add a link, too. […]
Instead of Skype, look at WengoPhone OpenWengo.org … same thing but open-source and even has a debian package in the main repository
Hi Kevin,
you can’t just use any application for Debian and put on the Noki 770. It has to be build/ ported to the Nokia. I even tried it but it failed, of course.
Best………Olaf