when I first got my Nokia770 I started right away with hacking (developing and porting applications) rather then actually using it. I started being just a user over the Thanksgiving weekend. Some user things I noticed where:

We have Flash/Shockwave support, thats kind of nice. I actually didn't expect this. Also web browsing is really nice, just sitting on the couch watching TV and surfing on the tablet. But unfortunately the browser (Opera) is sometimes a little picky and crashes or just eats memory when going to some of my favorite sites.

A PDF reader, yes there is one on the 770. Don't reading the product manual really pays of - if you like surprises :)

Now for some bad things, the email client. I think I remember somebody complaining about the lack of SMTPS (SMTP with SSL) support. Yes, this is unbelievable the email client doesn't support SSL for outgoing mail, why? This makes the mail client totally useless and just a waste of storage space. Maybe the idea behind the email client is a email reader because IMAP supports SSL. Anyway Opera nicely renders my webmail page (IMP/Horde), so it's not to bad.

Some remarks about the filemanager, especially about the OBEX browser (this is the thing that gives you access to the files on your phone). The OBEX part is supper aggressive, it not only gets the current directory information it also goes into subdirectories. If you browse directories with a lot of subdirectories and files, the filemanager sometimes is just blocked totally because of all the pre-fetching.

Also you can't directly use files from OBEX sources, I wanted to play a MP3 from my phone on my 770 but the audio player complains. I thought I could just use the big SD card in my phone as network storage for my 770, but I guess I have to finally finish btfs to get this functionality.

One last thing, I noticed that the wireless antenna (802.11/WiFi) seems to be pretty good for such a small device.

I wanted to start writing my first maemo application but instead I ended up porting xtris a very cool Tetris implementation. The package is available here. The nice thing about this game is that it supports multiplayer mode, the foto shows me playing against myself (laptop vs. 770). To play in multiplayer mode you need to start xtris by hand from the console (xterm) like this: xtris x.z.y.a where x.y.z.a is the IP address of the host running xtserv. If you start it via the menu the server is started for you, so your opponent just needs to know your IP and your good to go.

Now I want a second 770 :-)

so I started pulling my 770 apart. First I flashed in the developer rootfs, which turned out to be very striped down - so I decided to immediately switch back to standard and add a few things on the way. But first I needed to get the original image back, to do this you have to go here. And by the way, this nice awesome hardware is made in good old Germany!

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. I also found this funny logo - actually its not funny if you get to see it (/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/hildon/qgn_indi_startup_failed.png).


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).

I guess I'll built me a real nice image over the next days. Also I don't know how the licensing is - can modified images based on the original firmware be redistributed?

I played around with WiFi (802.11) over the weekend. And found that promisc mode is not working on the 770, this means no fun with tcpdump or dsniff (which I spend hours on building). Also the whole monitor mode thing doesn't seem to work right now. When asking on the developer list about this issue, I got told that they are currently working on these things (due to popular demand!), which is nice to hear.

Also changing the MAC address of the device seems to work, its not really a feature that is needed by many people but I happen to need it.

so I just did the sunlight test (to see if the display is readable under direct sunlight [I used genuine Californian sun]). In the default brightness setting it is very hard to read anything (images are ok). If you crank up the brightness setting to the maximum setting the text is actually readable. I guess the battery wont last as long in the max setting.

I guess the display passed :-)