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Over the past few days I’ve run into quite a few less than positive reviews of the N770. People don’t seem to understand what this device’s market niche is. It’s not meant to be a fully consumer-grade product yet despite the fact that some big name stores have heard the buzz and opted to sell it at retail outlets.

This first version should be considered a developer release. The underlying Maemo linux distribution isn’t finalized, there’s not as many apps available as most people would like (notably a PDA/PIM suite), there’s no synchronization ability yet with GNOME desktop apps and the media player still needs work. There’s also a reason why the N770 was sent out in advance to developers rather than the media. That tells me that Nokia was looking to build a developer community around the device to imporve it software wise before guaging the market for a future hardware upgrade which will all but surely happen. If you’re a gadget freak or just into playing with linux on extremely non-standard hardware you’ll love this thing as much as I do. If you’re looking for a finalized, polished product to replace that aging PDA, you’re better off holding out for v2.

I’ve compiled a list of N770 bookmarks for resources on everything from applications and games to packaging and development.

• Maemo Linux Home
• Maemo Application Catalogue
• Nokia 770 Firmware Upgrade (from Nokia Europe)
• ScummVM Maemo Port
• Nokia770.com - N770 News, Info and Discussion
• Beginner’s Nokia 770 Dev. HOWTO