Re: No Further Support for 770
 

I think its ridiculous that the whole hacker edition hangs on one man's shoulders. so if he gets mono or something, we won't see another hacker edition til next year...if ever.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

That's more like it.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

I want to e-mail this guy and beg him to get on this hacker edition stuff. Hmmm, maybe he can be bribed with cookies and or.... more cookies......... perhaps.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

Yes. Nokia should relocate Maemo development to Brazil instead of moving people to Finland. The Brazilians are already doing all the good work anyway.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

Seriously. I'm not expecting Nokia to allocate any of their very limited corporate budget (HahhaHahah... oh god, I'm crying.) to anything such as this but spit out a kernel that includes the 770 hardware modules and get it to boot to a shell.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

so I've read a little about the 770 in the past (with no clue about these forums), and saw buy.com clearing it out knowing the 800 was released. I see it as current on Nokia's website so I'm figuring the 800 is just an improved model with better processing and internals, more memory, updated exterior, and better i/o capabilities. So I take the plunge for it on the cheap not really thinking much about not having the ability to return it as buy.com clearly stated that it can't be returned and that nokia will take care of any issues. Didn't think that was a problem as it's still a current product and has a one year warranty.

So now that I'm ready to dive into using this, I roam the net for forums and such, and I come across this place. Well all I am now is ticked off knowing I have an EOL'd product who's OS isn't compatible with its successor and has no real future of firmware updates. No mention of any of that on the Nokia site or the buy.com description. I'm all for buyer beware, but what about a little disclosure from the company about its intentions for the product?

Outside of the few philosophy posts claiming people are whining, it is not unreasonable to expect a product to be supported for more than a year, to be supported while it is still actively being sold and listed as current on their website. It is not unreasonable to assume that an updated OS for it's replacement should work on it as well. Maybe new features not on the 770 won't be operable, but the general core and feature set should be there. Most wm5 devices work with wm6 and that was supposedly a big deal of an upgrade. Why would a 06 and 07 in this case be such different animals? That part to me doesn't seem to make sense in all this back and forth. Unless there are specific hardware incompatibilities between the two, I can't imagine why they would improve the OS to alienate the previous model. That just doesn't make sense. And to hear their answers and depend on third party support for general problems and bugs is just nuts.

I think I'd be justified in sending my unit back to Nokia and demanding a full refund because it's almost fraud as nowhere in the descriptions on Nokia's or buy.com's sites mentioned the state of the product.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

You have valid arguments that we've all argued in the past. Even so the 770 in it's current state is a very usable product and by far my favorite gadget at the moment and the foreseeable future. The current firmware is good, sure there are some quirks but those quirks are not as common as some might lead to believe.

Unfortunately for Nokia it's too bad they treated 770 users as 2nd class citizens when they released the N800 and some of this "save face" blogs and such they've been trying to do lately with the 770 basically falls under the "too little too late" category. Therefore because of this I probably won't purchase an N800 or another Nokia product ever again and will wait for competitive alternatives that are expect to start appearing over the next 6-12 months.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

I think fraud is quite a tall accusation. I'm all but positive that nowhere does the law require a company to disclose their intent to develop firmware updates at the point of sale. Nice try, though.

It makes perfect sense to me for them to develop a new OS for the new system. It's a new system...it SHOULD run a different operating system than the older model, it's new. I would assume that the new OS is optimized and designed specifically for the hardware changes made to the n800, so why have an officially maintained release for the 770?
As far as leaving it with bugs...does no one realize that every version of Windows (Or Mac OS, for that matter) ever released was buggy right up until the stores stopped stocking it? 98 was a mess, Millenium Edition was a nightmare, and people still using those systems (yes, there are some left) are stuck with little for tech support and nothing in the way of updates or fixes. Yes, this system appears to have had a blazingly fast turnover, but hardly criminal. This is a very young sector of home computing, and I would expect advances here to be pretty rapid.

So, as mad as you might be about the "injustice" you've suffered by purchasing the 770 without being notified beforehand that Nokia has no plans to release further firmware upgrades, consider this:

You just spent $130 on a gadget that, with a little work, has all the functionality (and then some) of other devices that cost three+ times as much, as well as a monstrous library of third party applications and mods that make this monster well worth the literal chump change you've dropped.

In short, though I haven't received mine yet, I don't think it's the disaster that some of you see it as. The 770 will still work, you'll still have a great piece of tech gear that will make even your nerdiest friends jealous, and there will still be a community out there devoted to furthering the development of the tablet. Besides, now that people can pick them up dirt cheap, perhaps some of the brave folk out there will come up with hardware mods that will blow us away.

Or maybe the TOS2006 source will be released to the public at large and the 770 will become truly open source, which will in turn solve world hunger and bring peace to all on earth.

Edit: After reading through all of the posts in this thread in all its...glory? I'm somehow compelled to point out that I've never owned anything but a Nokia cell phone, and probably never will. One of my phones was fully submerged in water and was working just fine when it came out. Another was hit by a full swing with a 9 Iron and was, once again, just fine. In my experience Nokia provides durable, high quality devices, and my experience with my most recent phone (the 6165i) is no different. I will continue to purchase Nokia phones exclusively...call me a Fanboy, but I love the darn things, and I can't imagine feeling any differently about the 770, future software support or not. After all, it does what I want it to straight out of the box...that's the entire reason I'm buying it. I've got my old desktop running Ubuntu for the benefits of a Linux distro's splendor...I want the tablet for just what it is, a ridiculously portable web browser that just happens to be usable for taking notes, watching movies, listening to music, and of course a bit of DOOM multi player during those boring classes.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

I have been reading this forum for the last 6 months... I also have been closely watching this specific thread. I have to say, because of the Woot.com sale, I picked up 2 - 770s.

It is still a capable product and I think that even with some development issues, its worth it.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

I just got my 770 today through the buy.com & GCO deal. Coming from handheld pc's and pocket PC's running windows CE, this is a big improvement in performance for me. Toshiba, Dell, HP, and pretty much any other company involved with Pocket PCs dropped support once their new devices came out. A few devices were offered upgrades to the next version, but most owners were stuck with a device that was no longer going to be supported.
At least something is being done with the 770 as far as development goes, even if it is an unofficial hacked version. If this device had a Windows CE variant on it there would be little if any hope of further developement.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

You make a lot of sense for a demented lemur. ;)

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

What is it with Scandinavian firms and their penchant to drop support for almost new products? ;) Sony Ericsson recently announced they were dropping support for the P990, M600 and W950i phones (the latter launched only in November 2006 - less than 9 months ago!)

All sounds earily familiar doesn't it? :)

After a big outcry, SE have now backtracked, promised one further update (only one, which isn't going down too well with the natives) and even a release date - now there's something Nokia could learn from their Swedish neighbours, release dates don't have to be kept a secret!

:D

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

wtf, if they can offer replacement for their faulty BL-5C battery, i dont see why they cant do a replacement for the design-flawed WSOD-ed 770. f*** nokia!

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

Remember this thread? Still waiting for Nokia's "vapor-support" for the N-770 and they may soon be "vapor-supporting" the N-800. I notice that the N-700 still has an active page on their web-site.

Too bad, the N-810 may be a good product but I need longer than 9 months for $479 + tax plus + new hardware (mini-SD, 3 year subscription to a GPS service, etc)

Speaking of the 3 year GPS subscription, how can Nokia expect anybody to buy into that when they don't even support their products (the N-770) for that long?

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

First of all, the IT product line is as follows: 770, N800, N810. There are no N-770s or N-700s. Just like the i-Pod, N-800s do not exist.

Nokia has already stated that support for the N800 will continue at least through the next two major OS revisions (Chinook and Diablo). The mistakes of the 770 aren't something they're likely to make again. If the N810 doesn't suit you, buy an N800. It's a lot cheaper and just as fast.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

When I had problems with my 770 earlier this year, I got support from Nokia. So as a 770 owner, I feel they still support the device.

Why they should exchange it I dont know. What would you want in return?

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

you can always flash to OS2007HE, which will give you a few more options. There is also now a flash 9 upgrade that works for both os2006 and os2007he, so that's a plus.

the N810 is based on N800 architecture, so any future development for the n810 will work with the n800.

plus, because of open source development, you'll still see people tweaking on the 770 for some time still.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

That's how Nokia should have handled this.

1) Announce that the 770 is no longer supported

2) Create a "Legacy Community Foundation" for the 770, and also future devices

3) Spend just a little cash designing a decent website for the new foundation, so that it has a good software repository, maybe a tutorials section, a forum etc.

4) Release all the source code, documentation, schematics etc to the community *


* I realise that some software packages are proprietary, such as Opera, but the operating system, kernel and associated files should be GPL. Remember that binary blob drivers can only be included if they're already-existing cross-platform code. Linus himself has said as much. I'm sure this must have already been investigated, but if Nokia is simply keeping back driver code that it doesn't want to release then it's contravening the GPL.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

That part about GPL is for lawyers. I think binary modules are tolerated, that's why the 'tainted' flag is there in kernel.

As for practical issues I guess nothing major will happen from Nokia side as for opening stuff. Opening stuff means throwing lawyers (and perhaps also developers) at the (dead) code. This would cost money and other resources. No reason to do this from their perspective.

The main pain is the wifi driver and partly also dsme. Other stuff would be nice but is mostly just for purists (booloader, bme).

For free/liberated device we would need to move freely to different kernel versions (from current old 2.6.16) which currently breaks dsme in initfs and wi-fi driver.

dsme does brightness control, kicking watchdogs and proxying access to config partition. We know how to kick watchdogs and control brightness but access to config partition would need some reverse-engineering. There are various flags stored there like r&d mode, root device, WLAN MAC address,... but the exact format is unknown (well, at least to to me)

Let's hope the hacker edition project will not die and move 770 to chinook and more recent linux kernel (i.e. they will not open the code but hopefully recompile those parts for us for newer kernel versions).

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

To sum it up - somewhat free system (like KDE, GPE) is possible without any major limitation if we stay with old kernel and non-free initfs partition (which loads bt and wlan firmware and spawns bme and dsme)

Fortunately brightness control and display blanking inside dsme can be controlled via dsmetest command in initfs.

Re: No Further Support for 770
 

With respect, I don't think it's as simple as being allowed to include binary-only code if you declare it.

The official stance from Linus Torvalds seems to be that code derived from the Linux kernel must be licensed under the same terms. I can't see how a wifi driver could be developed from scratch without it being derived form Linux code, unless the developers are extremely good at guess work :)

This is why binary blobs are allowed, because they aren't derived. They're blobs of cross-platform code that an open source driver hooks into.

The same Nvidia binary blob is used on both Linux and Windows. It's just that the open source component of the Nvidia Linux driver hooks-into the binary blob, which is a chunk of code that exists entirely independently of the Linux kernel.

If Nokia is writing drivers from scratch specifically for the internet tablets, then the source code must be released under the GPL. There is no question about this.

Here's what Linus has said about this issue: "The reason I accept binary-only modules at all is that, in many cases, you have, for example, a device driver that is not written for Linux at all, but, for example, works on … other operating systems, and the manufacturer … wants to port that driver to Linux. But because that driver was obviously not derived from Linux (it had a life of its own regardless of any Linux development), I didn’t feel that I had the moral right to require that it be put under the GPL, so the binary-only module interface allows those kinds of modules to exist and work with Linux." (Taken from http://www.venturecake.com/the-vmware-house-of-cards/ -- see also http://kerneltrap.org/node/1735).

You might think that Nokia got lawyers to look at this from day one but bear in mind that many commercial companies completely misunderstand Linux, and assume it's like BSD -- that the code is free for people to take and they can keep bits of it secret. Many commercial companies have been caught out this way.