Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
Introduction — Nokia 770 — It's been a long quest, the search for the perfect handheld device has. It dates back to the late 1990s for me and has seen a progression of PDAs, smartphones, and Pocket PCs through house—much to the consternation of my wife.
Context & Ripple Effects
This hands-on arrives at a moment when Nokia is visibly re-sorting its device portfolio. In November 2005 the company confirmed it will stop developing new versions of the N-Gage gaming phone and said it plans to hold off on mobile gaming for a couple of years while concentrating on mobile music and video; days earlier it had shown the N92 integrated DVB-H device at the Nokia Mobility Conference 2005.
Against that backdrop, the 770 review reads as a probe of Nokia's ambitions beyond the phone itself. The reviewer's framing — a years-long quest through PDAs, smartphones, and Pocket PCs — supplies exactly the comparison set Nokia needs the 770 to survive, since the tablet has to win over buyers whose default answer to 'handheld' has been a PDA or a converged phone.
First-order effects
- The 770 puts Nokia into the handheld category that reviewers have traditionally filled with PDAs and Pocket PCs, giving the company a non-phone device to position alongside its handset line during the holiday buying season.
- Nokia's own November 2005 decisions — retiring N-Gage development and deprioritizing mobile gaming for roughly two years in favor of music and video — mean the 770 lands while the company's messaging is actively pivoting toward media-centric devices like the N92.
Second-order effects
- With gaming resources freed up by the N-Gage wind-down, Nokia can direct engineering and marketing attention at the tablet-plus-media-device track (770, N92), effectively betting that internet access and video consumption — not games — drive its next hardware cycle.
- The FCC approval activity around the N80 variants in late November 2005 shows Nokia pushing its smartphone line on a parallel track; the 770 and the N80 family together force retailers and carriers to decide how to merchandise a vendor selling both converged phones and single-purpose internet devices.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Nokia is hedging between two futures for the handheld: full convergence in the smartphone versus dedicated networked appliances like internet tablets and mobile-TV handsets — and whichever thesis wins, the loser's product lines get consolidated out of portfolios across the industry.
The trend: Nokia's late-2005 lineup — N-Gage retired, the DVB-H-capable N92 unveiled, the 770 under review — marks the industry's hedge between converged smartphones and dedicated internet-and-media appliances.