Thursday, June 16, 2005
Nokia 770 Internet Appliance, the new Audrey?
Nokia has introduced a new 4.7” internet tablet with handwriting recognition and PDA like features. Sound interesting but familiar?
Any mention of “internet appliance” should give one pause as these devices were hyped to death during the heady dot com era of the late 1990’s and 2000. According to this review”International Data Corp released a February 2000 study suggesting Internet appliances would be an 18 billion-dollar industry with nearly 90 million units shipped by 2004.”
Umm...so why does the Nokia 770 sound so familiar? Remember the Audrey from 3com? No? Don’t worry neither have most people. Introduced in late 2000 by 3com it was promptly discontinued by March of 2001.
The Audrey bears close resemblance in basic functionality to the Nokia device, it was a web surfing device with email capability that featured hand writing recognition and allowed you to synch it with Palm PDA’s. It has recently garnered a small cult following as fans and hackers have turned the device into routers or simply use it as intended as the former $499 device now sells for less than $80 on Ebay.
Nokia’s device brings the essentials up to current standards by making it wireless, cranks up the display resolution and colors, supports Bluetooth, and beefs up the memory and shrinks the form factor substantially. The Audrey was a rather unwieldy plastic block.
The 770 is due in the third quarter of this year. Will we see it’s discontinuation by next year? Will this device take off because Nokia figured out the whole Internet appliance puzzle with the 770’s small size and wireless capability or will it’s functions be eclipsed by cell phones, full PDA’s with Wi-Fi and personal video players like the Archos PMA400?
Difficult to say at this point but we most likely will see devotees buying it for less than $100 on Ebay five years from now and hacking it for their own purposes.
Nokia 770 early look
Nokia 770 early review
Audrey Specs
Audrey End of Life announcement