The story of the Internet Appliance (and the many variations on the same idea) is a long and mostly unhappy one. Tablets, terminals, thin clients and browser-phones have all come… and mostly they’ve all gone again, leaving little impression on a market that’s become used to more sophisticated items. So it’s a brave step by Nokia to produce its own take on the same idea. Billed as an Internet Tablet, it’s a palm-sized, but not Palm-compatible, mini-browser. With built-in WiFi and phone connections, it’s designed to sniff out connectivity and connect as automatically as it can. Once online you can use it to browse the web, check and send email, play media content, and read PDF files.

First impressions are dominated by the fact that it’s just so damn small. While the pocketability factor is high – as long as it’s a jacket pocket – the flip side of this is the small screen. It’s bigger than anything you’ll find on most browser-phones, but at 800 x 480 it’s still a little cramped. The quality itself is superb, and you can full-screen the web browser to make full use of what’s available. But most sites require some horizontal scrolling, and this makes the experience less satisfying than it could be. There also seems to be a permanent trade-off between readable lettering and wide-screen browsing. That said, the connectivity features work well. The trial model had no problem finding and using a Wi-Fi connection, even when connecting at poor signal levels that a laptop had trouble with. Similarly, a phone connection to a Nokia 9500 worked without any problems.

Design quirks
However, some of the operational details are a little quirky. The main body is housed in a metal sheath that can be flipped to either protect or reveal the screen. But someone wasn’t paying attention at design school, because in both orientations the sheath fouls the stylus slot – not a lethal error, but still a surprising one. The stylus itself is passive, and you can use your fingers on the touch screen instead, with the usual caveat that the screen soon becomes an oily mess. There’s a built-in micro-speaker, and a standard stereo mini-jack socket for ear buds. It’s worth noting that while the charger is a standard Nokia model, it has a non-standard minijack. There is a micro-USB connector, though, and with a suitable adaptor you can persuade this to connect to an Ethernet socket. The main problem with the Nokia 770 is the battery life – less than three hours, meaning the device isn’t nearly as portable as its diminutive size would imply.

Internally the software is slick, but fairly limited. There are the usual clients for web and email browsing, RSS feeds, Flash and media players; and extras that include a file manager, a clock, and other standard items. Because there’s no phone there’s no contacts section, which is going to limit use away from home. Text input is by way of a point-and-pick onscreen keyboard, which is bearable for URLs and short emails. There’s also text recognition, which – as always – takes some time and effort to master.

One final touch that will interest über-geeks is that all of the internal software is open source, available for free download under a GPL license. There’s a whiff of marketing here, and Nokia may perhaps be hoping that this small and rather specialized market may take to the 770, customize it into something more interesting, and perhaps even bestow cult status on it. If that’s the thinking, it will be interesting to see how successfully that works out.

Overall the verdict is mixed. This is a handy toy you can sneak into a briefcase or rucksack, or use around the home as an alternative browser. But sometimes smaller isn’t better. A cheap tablet-based browser with a larger screen, perhaps with an optional Bluetooth keyboard, would be a wonderful thing. The Nokia 770 looks and feels more like a phone-browser with the phone bits taken out. If Nokia had only left the phone in, it would have been a far more compelling product, especially with added contact and other functionality that would make it worth taking out of the house. This may change later in 2006 if a rumoured upgrade offering VoIP becomes available. As it is right now, the Nokia 770 scores higher on gimmick appeal than practical usefulness.