The key is that each new rendition of mobile device brings something new. Something different. This essentially causes the chances of success of these devices to increase. The Zaurus was a little better than the Palm, the 770 a little better than the Zaurus. So, it is to be expected that there will be new mobile devices that will get right the things the 770 didn't and couldn't. I don't think there will ever be a perfect mobile device made for everyone, but we will see many more mobile devices that one will easily find one or two that are just right for them.

Actually, given the history of technology - all of the missed opportunities for truly useful tech and the stupid crap pushed on the public (camera phones - why?) - I think it's got little to do with what users want or need. It's more like: let's try to predict what corporations think they can make money selling to us, and then from that pool of technology let's try to predict the 10% that people actually find useful and/or popular (which are not the same things). In other words: it's a damn near impossible exercise.

That's why I think it's up to those folk with the vision and tech smarts to stay ahead of the curve and voice their crazy idealistic notions of how things _should_ be, and meanwhile adapt the existing technology, regardless of it's intended purpose, to our needs. It's up to us tinkerers and "early adopters" to show the public and the tech industry what's possible.



Funny thing that. One day while waiting in a cafe for my breakfast to arrive I whipped out my 770 to check on something and my friend, a total technophobe, practically grabbed it out of my hands when I told him what it could do. He checked his email and surfed the web for ten minutes while his breakfast went cold. Then he says to me, "Hey man, that thing is so cool! I want one! Nokia could sell those things just by paying people to pull them out in cafes and start surfing the web." I was amazed, and my notion that the 770 is just a geek toy and could become a popular consumer device was shattered. So everybody: take your 770 to the nearest cafe or wifi space and just start using it. We could start a revolution!

John

i need to setup a bluetooth gps can anybody help,i have earthmate logger

i need help to setup a bluetooth gps,i have a earthmate bluelogger

Reading stuff (web browsing, esp) is the killer app.

The real killer application for mobile phones is talking to people from whereever one happens to be, although some secondary applications (SMS really) have been surprisingly successful.

The killer application for the 770 is reading stuff and browsing the web from whereever one happens to be. The 770's screen is adequate for the task (barely), but still larger than I want on my mobile phone (so I don't really see a mobile phone doing this job). Its form-factor is small enough (either barely, or even smaller than needed, depending on circumstances) to be convenient. Its price is still a bit high, but still much lower than anything comparable that I am aware of.

The problems with the 770 are many. It should have a scroll wheel; failing that the arrow keys should scroll (actually, one can edit opera.ini to do this; I don't know why Nokia didn't make it the default). The PDF reader should be better (the current one is next to unusable). Screen protectors should be available and easy to replace. And the secondary applications should not be ignored: bluetooth keyboards and mice should be supported; a working email client is desperately needed; all the PDA functionality would be nice; better integration with mobile phones would be a win; etc. etc.

So, IMHO, I think Nokia got it basically right. The 770 is a device which can be held in a single hand with good connectivity and the best screen possible for a relatively low price. This is not revolutionary (certainly nothing as revolutionary as mobile phones), but does represent an evolutionary tipping point (the screen-quality / connectivity / cost / battery-life tradeoffs made this unfeasible or impossible until recently). If the 770 doesn't succeed, then something similar will, in the not distant future. The market will never be as large as mobile phones (people don't like reading as much as they like talking), but should be sufficient. As these devices become more popular, there is obviously room for a variety of improvements to be made to cater for differing tastes regarding the tradeoffs (screen quality, size, price, battery life, storage space, computing power, built-in keyboard or not, etc).

/Lon

P.S. My biggest problem with the 770 is that now that I actually have a use for mobile-phone data transfer, I am running my bills up dangerously high. The rates the carriers charge are outrageous! Maybe I can talk them into buying my 770 replacement for me, but I'm afraid the market is not sufficiently large that they'll start financing the web-pads the way they do the phones.

Nokia 770 has a lot of promise. Unless Nokia uncharacteristically screws up I expect this thing to be a huge success.

That said, I've got a few nits with the current 770 feature set.

First, this is a mobile device. If people don't take it with them, it's useless. If you are at your desk, you'll use your desktop 19" monitor and full size keyboard.

So the 770 does not do voice (I agree it should not). That means you have to carry a cell. The 770 lacks a lot of the functionality of a decent PIM (no alarms, no sync). So you have to carry a PIM.

So now I'm batman with three gadgets to lug around. I know this is a religious topic with some but convergence is the key. People don't want to carry more gadgets, they want to do more with less.

David

Once I came to the mountains by car. I expected to find some hotel uphill in the village. But village was totally covered with snow and every hotel, pension or restaurant was closed. There was nobody. It was dark night and it started to snow. I swithed on my N770 and thanks to the Internet I have found the nearest open hotel.

And that is 770's killer aplication. Fully featured Internet browsing. Nothing else.

[QUOTE=So now I'm batman with three gadgets to lug around. I know this is a religious topic with some but convergence is the key. People don't want to carry more gadgets, they want to do more with less.[/QUOTE]
People usually don't know what they really want, otherwise they would do what they really wanted to do without complaining about being tied down with multiple mobile devices. If you want less to carry, carry less. It's really that simple. Good luck finding an all-in-one mobile device that does all those things right.

I think people are too quick to forget what the world was like without the current mobile devices. Without cellphones, high speed networks, and wifi and bluetooth. We've become so dependant on our mobile and wireless tech, that we would panic at even the hint of loosing the ability to use them. All it would take is a strong solar flare, or in the case of Katrina, a hurricane.

I'm not saying we should give up these wonderful tools of communication and recreation. I just think we should root ourselves in the knowledge that such technologies are merely tools that make using other tools (i.e. the Internet) easier.

it failed cause it's a Sharp, which makes really crappy low end PIM's and Zaurus is a stupid name. If it was a different company name, and a less weird sounding name the device might have done better. it's really mostly about marketing, and Nokia's got a name associated with "that phone I dropped to concrete daily for years and still works!".

Very good post, something I was asking for

Web is the killer application - or a platform, rather - of our time. I think quite a few people buy PCs for that one application, and if you are offered with something which is smaller, less expensive, and lets you get the information you want... The point about flash etc is probably correct, you could solve this with adding more CPU, RAM, etc, but then you'd increase cost, decrease battery life, and so on, and you'd be out of the sweet spot again with your tablet product.

One key question indeed is how easy it is to make people recognize their need for web browsing/internet communication on the go. Many get enough web usage hours at work/home with the PC. Perhaps some have other uses for the PC time, and would rather browse for news on the bus. Or they could just prefer casual browsing while sitting on the couch at home, or find other uses for the tablet while at work.

Fixable problem, for example you could just make a tablet with a version of Windows. I hear Windows PDAs have difficulty editing the documents, but still...

I think VoIP on 770 would be a killer application only for certain early adopters. People who have used Skype for years. And who dislike cell phones for some reason. Maybe net hungry people in their early 20's and on a budget?

I read that IP will be the most efficient medium for voice traffic in the next few years. Widespread adoption might take a bit longer I figure, say in 5-10 years VoIP devices might be the norm. But this wouldn't help with our scenario as the time frame is different.

These are important, because a tablet can function as a general purpose platform much better than a cellphone, and will thus provide various things to different users. Nokia would be stupid to ignore the PDA/PIM side, the plethora of other applications will come from the community. Little board games and HTML/javascript based web games would be very nice on a tablet.

You could help this side by giving beefier hardware: CPU, RAM, storage... Make this well with a device that also has superb player capability, and you may even turn a nice profit. However the bulk of the tablet market will be around the $200-400 mark, and you need to push that hard in the beginning to achieve mind share. This is a problem for the OQO, and I don't think that device will catch on for a few years yet.

True in the North Am, not true in parts of Europe, little clue about the rest of the world here. Even in Finland cell phones are paid by the employers for some people, getting the same financing for a tablet might not be that easy.

This is a troublesome point: The adopters of tablets would need to be forerunners favouring internet style economies - significant initial investement in infrastructure, after that lots of content and service for almost free.

The number of WLAN providers is increasing, and often they don't have anything to do with cell operators. Lucrative competition with the cellular world can even push the building of WLAN networks.Telcos are powerful though and they could hinder the adoption of tablets.

The web is obvious. Other things are mainly the same as on a PDA. But you will have the 'newer, bigger and better' effect over PDAs, which means the technology market could flow in the direction of tablets as well. My Mom liked playing Mahjongg and Crazyparking, well she is a geek in disguise but you should not underestimate the number and power of geeks as drivers of technology markets either.