Nokia 770 doing surprisingly well

[Laurens]

Nokia 770 Doing Surprisingly Well writes Brighthand:

When Nokia first announced its Linux-based 770 Internet Tablet many people were skeptical. [...] In their defense, demand for the Nokia 770 has turned out to be greater than even its creator expected. Nokia has recently revealed that it has had to increase production of this device beyond its original plans.

That's very good to hear. My personal theory is that people are more interested in dedicated devices (i.e. gadgets that do one particular function and do it well, in this case internet browsing) than "jack of all trades" like PDAs. Just witness the success of the iPod and the buzz around the Sony Reader and iRex Iliad.

[rsperberg]

To underscore this, the article in The Register that the Brighthand report was based on (well, actually, that's a reprint from ElectronicNews.net, so that's the original source, except that that report is based on info from the Wall Street Journal) -- heck, I just wanted to say that The Register said:

The world's largest mobile manufacturer Nokia looks to have scored a major hit with [the 770]

I wanted to emphasize the disparity between the pessimists and the actual results, and "a major hit" does that so well. Of course, "greater than even its creator expected" is saying a lot, since the people at Nokia are obviously fervent believers in its potential.

Roger
OK, I'm a big fan of the 770

[Laurens]

To be honest, I take most of what The Register (or The Inquirer) says with a grain - no, a bucket - of salt.

[rsperberg]

Originally Posted by Laurens

My personal theory is that people are more interested in dedicated devices (i.e. gadgets that do one particular function and do it well, in this case internet browsing) than "jack of all trades" like PDAs. Just witness the success of the iPod and the buzz around the Sony Reader and iRex Iliad.

I would agree that the iPod does one thing and does it well, and that that accounts for part of its success.

But if all the Sony Reader does is read e-books, why do you exclude children's books, photographic books, books with animations, and books, magazines and newspapers that include color illustrations? Not to mention websites converted to e-book format for reading offline. If these are electronic, aren't they e-books too?

How can we say it does it well, if we mean "provides for reading electronic texts" and, on the one hand we exclude so many types of material we want to read, and on the other Sony is trying to force its own new DRMed format onto people. And although we're reading electronic texts on Sony's electronic reader, we can't link any references in these e-books to the greatest electronic resource of all, the internet.

I wrote my opinion on the performance aspect at Teleread, in a piece called "How single-purpose e-readers fail" (www.teleread.org/blog/?p=4094), and David Rothman and others there have written about the DRM side.

To quote myself, "The 'single purpose' that the Sony Reader is designed for is to read black-and-white texts that might contain crude black-and-white images."

I guess for Sony e-books means "electronic paperbacks."

To me, an e-reader that does its job well would at least be able to be used in schools, with textbooks (color illustrations on every spread through about the sixth grade, and mixed thereafter). To the current and earlier generations, "books" might mean "all-text books" but I think the next generation will think the definition includes communication in permanent form that utilizes illustration, motion, sound and interactivity.

For me, text will always be predominant in a book, even in one with these aspects. If it's not, then it's a multimedia thing, but hey, maybe "book" in the future won't have our traditional text bias but will just mean the package and single-purpose device that decodes it.

[rsperberg]

Originally Posted by Laurens

To be honest, I take most of what The Register (or The Inquirer) says with a grain - no, a bucket - of salt.

That sounds ... reasonable. But in this case, it was a complete reprint, with no rewriting and nothing added. So I should have referenced the ElectronicNews.net original and not the Register copy, the better to make "hit" credible.

[cervezas]

I agree with Laurens (and Michael Mace, who makes the argument well ) that "convergence" isn't a good thing for most mobile device users. Even I find that I enjoy using devices that are designed to focus on doing a few things really well more that trying to do "everything" on a PDA or smartphone--even if it sometimes means juggling multiple devices at times. I was trying to put my finger a while back on why I just could never get really excited about the Treo, despite being a Palm OS devotee and a definite power user. I came to the conclusion that the Treo is so multi-purposed that it doesn't seem to have a defined character as a device. That didn't mean that as a geek I didn't find it useful, just that it was hard to get much more attached to it than I do with, say, my PC. Mobile devices are personal and they need to have a little personality, somehow. I'm not talking about bling. I'm talking about identity.

My vintage Handspring Visor Platinum, which I've souped up with extra RAM and a gleaming aircraft aluminum enclosure to keep it alive is still my main PDA. This despite the fact that I own more than a dozen others that will play MP3s and videos and display web pages and navigation maps in brilliant high-resolution and color. But the Visor has a definable character that the rest lack somehow:

• It's dependable: it keeps me on schedule, runs for weeks on end without crashing, and I never have to think about it.
• It's elegantly simple: it doesn't waste its energy on anything I don't care about.
• It has a pleasing minimalism: a spare, clean, retro aesthetic.
• It's precocious: When it occasionally does something amazing that a PDA "shouldn't" do it's a delightful surprise. Every once in a while I still love to write and compile small Palm apps on it using OnBoardC or do light maintainance of my web site with it.

When I look at the Nokia 770, I feel like it's one of the few devices I've seen in years that has the potential of being lovable in the same geeky way that my Visor is. It has a character that Nokia seems to have identified perfectly: Internet tablet.

I'd like to own an Internet tablet. Something that's much smaller and lighter than a laptop or Tablet PC, but which has a beautiful high-resolution screen for browsing web pages and web apps like Gmail and Google Maps as they were meant to be viewed. I may very well go get one.

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by cervezas

I agree with Laurens (and Michael Mace, who makes the argument well ) that "convergence" isn't a good thing for most mobile device users.

Thanks for the pointer! The guy makes some excellent points and they're all articulated very well.

He hits the nail on the head here:

As far as I can tell, the only place where Swiss Army Knife mobile products are popular is in the online discussion forums that we all read. We technophiles, we few proud pioneers, are utterly out of touch with the needs and desires of normal mobile customers.

[cis4life]

I totally agree with the above quote,

But I still believe MARKETING can make people "FEEL" they need these "Swiss Army Knife Mobile Products". Hey thats what Pharm. Companies do, and you see their success.

The 770 will do alot better if they would Market it better and make the avg joes think "Hey, I can use this for..."

[rsperberg]

What's so odd is that this is the only place where people call the Nokia 770 a Swiss-Army-knife kind of device, as though it intended to do as diverse things as pick your teeth, cut paper, screw in screws and saw wood on top of whittling.

The 770 doesn't have a hard disk drive. It doesn't have a keyboard or use a mouse. It doesn't have a way to connect a joystick, or a printer. It doesn't include a camera. It doesn't include a phone.

It's very focused on letting users access the "other" kind of communication than voice, the kind that travels via IP, stuff like web pages, mail, news feeds, internet radio and, as it develops I would guess, video. The WiFi, the small screen that's still 800 pixels wide, Bluetooth -- these are just there to make it possible to access that kind of communication. (And VoIP and IM in the summer.)

The 770 fits smack dab in the middle of Nokia’s definition of itself as not a phone company but a “communications” company. Ari Jaaksi, whose the head of software development for the 770 wrote in his blog about how cellphones freed voice communication from being stationary, tethered to one spot — big thing too; we define them as “mobile” phones instead of “personal” phones, say, or “always available” phones. Ari’s point is that a phone-770combination does the same for the web. Information from the web is now mobile, just as voice communication is (that's what the Bluetooth is for).

Me, I think e-books are part of this kind of information. And so I see e-books as being central to the 770's focus, not a silly add-on like the corkscrew in the Swiss Army knife.

It's only when you say the e-book-type information is the central thing here and everything else is superfluous that it even looks this way.

I've had a 770 for almost three months -- it's a fabulous e-reader. And, yes, when I take a break from reading, I can check my email, look at this site (without horizontal scrolling) and Teleread, review my RSS feeds. Then I set a new playlist and listen to music while I read a PDF, then go back and use the FBReader to look at some html books, then others in aportis doc, Weasel, FictionBook, and Plucker formats, all with the greatest control over the appearance onscreen of any e-book reader there is.

What's not to like?

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by rsperberg

What's not to like?

Have you seen the comments from Mike Cane? I haven't read through his blog, but he seems extremely frustrated and ready to give up on his Nokia 770.

I'm wondering if other people experiencing the same problems, or maybe he's just working with an early model, or a power user pushing it too hard?

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by rsperberg

What's so odd is that this is the only place where people call the Nokia 770 a Swiss-Army-knife kind of device, as though it intended to do as diverse things as pick your teeth, cut paper, screw in screws and saw wood on top of whittling.

I think you're misreading our postings. We're saying exactly the opposite: the Nokia is a dedicated device, NOT a "Swiss army knife"-type gadget.