A mini-roundup of pieces about the Nokia 770:

Update: Nine-page review of Nokia 770 at MobileBurn.Com. Bottom line: Highly recommended.

Sascha Segan has reviewed the 770 for PC Magazine. He’s enthusiastic about what the device represents but cautious about recommending it to the non-technical buyer, even as an auxiliary device:

The Nokia 770 could be the start of a great thing. Though it’s rough around the edges, this could be a terrific little Internet-surfing gadget once Nokia shakes out the bugs.

Later, he will conclude:

We suspect that developers and geeks will love the 770 in its current state. We heartily recommend it to that crowd, but the average consumer should hold off for now.

He covers all the things we know, but his description of the display bears repeating:

The 770 looks good in an Ikea-meets-Bang-and-Olufsen way and the interface is simple. A truly breathtaking 800- by 480-pixel screen dominates the unit, and that screen makes the 770 a far better Web-surfing gadget than any PDA: you don’t have to reformat pages or scroll horizontally. Really, you have to see this screen to believe it. A 4.1-inch, 800-pixel-wide panel delivers smoother edges and subtler colors than you’ve ever seen on a handheld.

And this: “Battery life with the 770 was very good: we got more than five and a half hours of surfing, reading e-mail, and listening to Internet radio and MP3s.”

I wrote Segan after the review appeared, and he indicated his remarks about how consumers should wait till the dust settles means he’s likely to revisit the 770 once a few more software revs have appeared.

Another major review appeared at MSNBC, written by Gary Krakow. He concludes his glowing comments by writing: “In a week’s time I got to love the 770 and appreciate all of its features. In the future I’m considering leaving my laptop at home and just using the Nokia 770 as my very portable tablet computer.”

The 770 definitely has that potential, but as has been pointed out in the forums here (and quoted in this blog), the 770 lacks some “computer” aspects (you can’t print from it, for one) that aren’t handicaps if you use it as a control device to a desktop computer when certain additional capabilities are wanted. Of course that software isn’t in place yet either.

Krakow seems to have been sold on the chief feature of the 770, its web acuity:

The Nokia 770 is not a cell phone, nor a shrunken laptop. Instead, this nifty little handheld tablet computer is designed to do one thing well: Access the Web, anywhere.

That may sound like limited functionality for a gadget in this multi-tasking world, even for one small enough to fit easily into a jacket pocket. But with more and more desktop functions handled online these days, wireless Web access that works is a hot commodity. And the Nokia 770 works extremely well. …

With my home Wi-Fi connection, the 770 displays Web sites a whole lot better than any other small, handheld devices I’ve tried. It does a very good job with difficult sites, including feature-rich ones such as MSNBC.

Here’s hoping he doesn’t have a reaction in the opposite direction once he finds the 770 isn’t a perfect replacement for a laptop.

Over at Connecting Geeks is a narrative of one user’s test into how long the battery life really is:

I spent about six hours with the device on, using it, browsing some times, other however with WLAN and Bluetooth not working, and about three hours listening to music, at maximum volume, with the lid closed. And there is still battery for I presume about 2 more hours.

So it seems that the Nokia’s specifications are too pessimistic, and that three hours is browsing time (WLAN on all the time), with maximum brightness and sound on.

That’s the conclusion; there’s lots of detail about what was actually done. My own experiences mirror this, except that the last quarter on the battery meter doesn’t seem to be as long as the first quarter.

And Collin Mulliner at his blog, …stuff I do and things I like…, has written up lots of things about the 770 (including his port of Tetris). Here’s one bit I found interesting:

I started going through the filesystem, a modified stuff like /etc/sudoers to include user ALL = NOPASSWD: /bin/sh so I can just get a root shell, without calling gainroot.

Searching further I found all the images, like the big Nokia logo that you see on startup (/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_startup_nokia_logo.png) and the Nokia hands (/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_nokia_hands.png). Guess what, of course I replaced them — no big magic.

He adds: ” Also all the themes are nicely split up into multiple files, so modifying or creating new themes should be easy (I can’t do graphics).”

Another site I’ve gone to recently that’s talking about 770 matters is Antonio Gomes’ blog, my open source activities. Recently he’s been writing about Minimo, the mini Mozilla, which shows up in (as?) the GPE-mini browser and the INdT MANaOS browser.

I should add for completeness sake that I visit mobile analysis and development, Dominique Bonte’s website, most every day. Not sure why this blog isn’t on Planet Maemo, because he’s writing the most material about the Nokia 770 of anyone bar none. Recently he’s written clearly about the process of flashing the device with a new image, and elaborated on all the applications.