Throwback Thursday: Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

By on Apr 14, 2011 at 4:43 PM
General April 14, 2011

In honor of Research In Motion’s upcoming virgin voyage into the mysterious, turbulent waters that are today’s consumer tablet market, we thought we would take a moment to look back fondly at the tablet that started it all. No, not Apple’s iPad… we’re talking about the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. Ok, so the Nokia 770 didn’t really “start it all,” but it was the first notable effort from a cell phone manufacturer to lack voice capabilities and carry the “tablet” branding. Launched in 2005, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet featured specs that would make modern tablets hang their heads in shame, including a 4.1-inch resistive touchscreen display, 64MB of RAM, 64MB of ROM, 3 hours of usage time per charge and a rip-roaring 250MHz TI processor. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be — the 770 didn’t sell well at all, and despite a few subsequent attempts, Nokia would end up packing in its Internet Tablet brand and refocusing on phones. Of course, Nokia plans to build new tablets now that they’re trendy and desirable, and hopefully the Finnish company’s upcoming efforts afford a more intuitive experience than its Internet Tablets of old.

BGR’s Throwback Thursday is a weekly series covering our (and your) favorite gadgets, games, and software of yesterday and yesteryear.

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  • Joel

    Nokia 770 > XOOM

  • Norm’s worst_nightmare

    I wipe my ass with stuff like that.

  • mmmmmHead

    Are you trying to tell me that Apple didn’t invent the tablet/pad? I was told by raging fanboys on this site that they invented everything! OMG! FML!

    • Anonymous

      Actually they did. It was called a Newton.
      (which was as close to today’s definition of a “tablet” as this thing was.)

      • http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com Anonymous

        Not really. The 770 was an actual computer, with full Linux capabilities.

      • Anonymous

        GRiDpad was the first Tablet actually, 4 years before the Newton was even heard of… so yeah…

  • http://twitter.com/n8d n8d

    WHAT?!?! Stop re-writing history!

    EVERYBODY knows that Apple invented the tablet concept. Geeze.

  • Anonymous

    it just a “PDA” not tablet

    • sjgadsby

      A PDA with no calendar and barely a contacts application? No, the Internet Tablets were made for mobile web browsing; post-cellular, VoIP communication in a municipal WiFi-everywhere future that didn’t pan out as predicted; and experimenting with building handhelds based on an open source software stack.

    • http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com Anonymous

      Absolutely incorrect.

  • Anonymous

    Really wanted one of these back then

    • http://twitter.com/ChazClout ChazClout

      Same here. I never did get around to getting one tho.

    • http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com Anonymous

      I gave away one for free at Maemo Summit 2009. :D

  • Oudidntkn0w

    I still have my N800, the 770′s replacement. I loved using the integrated firefox browser and downloading apps via repositories instead of an easy to install from thing called an “app store”. Maemo FTW!

  • Jmac1237

    Pretty sure RIM’s product is gonna be 10 years behind this tablet. RIP RIM

  • Juke Box Hero

    I have the N800 sitting on my desk right now, bought it back in 2007. A really neat bit of tech for it’s time, too bad there was virtually no market support. I kept waiting for someone to port Android to it, but at this point, the hardware hopelessly out of date. The only thing I use it for now is as a portable music box since it has speakers.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000722296108 Herman Guerra

    How sad. Now Nokia is just an OEM. They cant even choose their own chip without M$ permission.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000722296108 Herman Guerra

    How sad. Now Nokia is just an OEM. They cant even choose their own chip without M$ permission.

  • http://twitter.com/aalqadaffi A. H. Al-Qadaffi

    I bought one of these back then! It was definitely a tablet, not just a PDA, and it ruled. I remember whenever I pulled it out everyone asked “what is that thing!?”

  • Anonymous

    I am staring at one of these right now! Bought it several years ago and threw it somewhere when i stopped using it. This article made me go look for it and dig it out! I wonder if i can use it for anything these days…..

  • http://twitter.com/simoncabron Simon Cabron

    Maemo could’ve been a contender. Too bad Nokia didn’t really put much effort into it.

  • http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com Anonymous

    Hmmm… did my earlier post go into a black hole?

  • http://ryanb.pip.verisignlabs.com/ Ryan B

    I still have my 770 kicking around somewhere. I installed my first taste of Cupcake on it. :-D I recently reverted back to Maemo because it just doesn’t have enough memory to really run Android well. My more recent Android devices G1 -> N1 -> NS -> NookColor have finally produced a device that was as capable and now with the NC finally realizes my desire for a portable web tablet that I had hopped the N770 would become. I think it could have been too, if Nokia hadn’t relegated Maemo to a niche OS for niche devices.

  • Bob

    I had one of these and it sucked with the wind of a thousand hurricanes. If I ever meet any of the retards who worked on Maemo or any of the Maemo apps, I am kicking them in the nuts.

  • http://floydnoel.info johnny.deathmatch

    Just sold mine a little over a year ago. I loved that thing, and the next product on the market that had capabilities like that, and replaced it for me was the iPhone. So it was king for a few years.

  • Anonymous

    So RIM grows revenue at %40 percent and beats earnings by $.02 and there stocks goes down %12

    But Google misses earnings and is growing at %27 percent with Bing taking market share and they drop %2.

    Sounds like the same crap here, Google had %90 search engine share, and now it’s down to %70, I guess when your the leader you only have one way to go and that’s down.

  • Brian

    Loved the idea, hated the execution.
    Every step of the way up to and including today the consummate convergent device has had a robust back-end OS, an easy to use interactive UI (whether SW/HW/aux keyboard, pen, etc), a good all condition display, decent camera, accelerometer, GPS, wireless networking, hand-held extensive form factor with docking (display, sound, tablet, laptop, entertainment, etc)…
    These requirements have been hanging out there for as long as computing has been around but manufacturers used economics as the basis to develop arguments that said consumers would never go for it.
    No wonder today the latest generation of devices is taking off.
    It’s finally come together.

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