numbersix.org

Got a Nokia 770 on release weekend, thankfully as they seem to have sold out very quickly. First thing to do with it ? Install stuff of course (after playing with the great browser and suprisingly useless e-mail client). Of course, after I installed an xterm, ssh client and gaim the thing bricked itself. And no firmware to download on the official nokia site. Well, some searching came up with a developers firmware download link. Coupled with the OS X firmware flasher and the USB cable, the following command line fixed things, along with enabling root access via R&D mode: sudo ./flasher.macosx -F Nokia_770_0.2005.42-9.bin -f –enable-rd-mode -R

At least the very slick phone bluetooth setup and setting things up to work with the office and home wireless made the reinstall painless. Lucklily I didn’t experience the WPA key-length issues some people have reported. And I discovered the ‘backup all settings to MMC’ option, which will make life easier in future.

Once it was back up and running again, I battled the e-mail client some more. Seems it dislikes IMAPS (at least to my cyrus mailstore) and/or large mailboxes. POP3S and a pruned-to-7-days mailbox seems to placate it, but I’d really like to see proper IMAP support - Inboxes-per-account, folders etc shouldn’t be that hard to implement, surely?

Realplayer comes installed with it, and copes fine with the BBC radio streams. Not quite perfected settings for reencoding DivX videos for optimal playback yet.

The web-browser (Opera I believe) seems to cope fine with most things I’ve thrown at it - certainly it’s great for general forum whoring, the superb screen making for excellent text, even at small font sizes. On the ‘home’ screen there’s a neat RSS reader along with a slightly random ‘home’ page button (which I don’t think I’ve used yet), and a DI Play button… uh… internet radio I mean

Overall, worth £250, and a nice first product in what I’m assuming will be a series. A few rough edges, but that’s to be expected IMO. All I’d ask for in the next software release (due in 2006 allegedly) is a better e-mail client, and preferably some PIM functionality (iSync!). Be interesting to see what IM and VoIP standards it will support in this release.