The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet features wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi and a touch screen.
At the LinuxWorld conference going on in New York, Nokia introduced a device that could be an alternative to purchasing a second computer for the home. The Nokia 770 offers a small form factor tablet that can be used to browse the Web or respond to e-mail from around the house.
The new tablet device will try to gain traction in a market that has not embraced tablet PCs beyond a few niche industries, and very little home consumer adoption. The 770 has been crafted into an appealing little device, showing Nokia still has the skills to make visually appealing hardware.
An 800×480 touch screen with over 65,000 colors provides the interface for the user. The 770 comes with a stylus, and features navigation buttons on the left side. Since the device is meant to perform just some specific tasks, it has been equipped with only 64 NB of DDR RAM, plus 128 MB of onboard flash memory.
The device has a stereo headphone jack and can connect to a PC via USB. Also, the 770 has Bluetooth and can connect with that to a Bluetooth-enabled PC; with a Bluetooth mobile phone, the 770 can connect through that to the Internet.
One slot that can accept 64MB Reduced Size MultiMedia Cards has been included on the tablet as well. Nokia claims the lithium ion battery will give approximately 3.5 hours of battery life.
As reported previously, Nokia has configured the 770 to run its Internet Tablet software on top of the Debian Linux operating system. And with the release of a Linux developer toolkit called Maemo, the Finnish company hopes to tap the open source community for applications that will help drive adoption of the 770.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.