A780 and Nokia 770 - Success

[CrossBow]

In the hopes that it will help someone:

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet can use the A780 as a modem over Bluetooth. It takes a few tricks however.

1. You have to do the same trick of adding

: 192.168.0.254

to the end of the Nokia 770's /etc/ppp/options file, just like has been suggested for the Mac.

This can be done by:
1a. Install xterm
2a. Use developer mode, or one of the other methods to allow root access

sudo gainroot
echo ":192.168.0.254" >> /etc/ppp/options

WARNING it is very important to get the two ">" 's. If you hose up your 770's /etc/ppp/options file, you won't ever connect to any phone. It may be safer to add the line with a text editor.

2. Next, delete any pairing between the 2 devices.

3. On the phone, goto Modem, and tap "Find Me".

On the Nokia 770, Add a new phone, and let it discover the A780. Complete the pairing, and accept the message that says that the phone can only be used for dial up networking.
The devices will pair, and then disconnect.

If you try to pair any other way, (i.e. via the Bluetooth app on the A780) the Nokia 770 will say that the Phone cannot be used.

4. Even after the devices are paired, you must tap Open "Modem", and tap "Find Me" on the A780 each time you wish to connect. :

Reference this post:
http://motorolafans.com/index.php?na...ewtopic&t=1804)
and Eugenia's article on OSnews:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=12247

My A780: Recent Asian Market unit.
My 770: Running Maemo 1.1

Note that my 770 was already set up for my WSP by going to the Connection Manager, and using the Mobile Setup Wizard.

The A780 was also already set correctly for my WSP, and I could already use the A780's browser.

Make sure you do those things first.

Enjoy.

[f0x0r]

That's great information CrossBow! Do you like using your Nokia 770? I don't much about them and I would love if you could share with us a little information about them and what you like/dislike about them.

[CrossBow]

I don't much about them and I would love if you could share with us a little information about them and what you like/dislike about them.

OK, since you asked...

I originally bought a Nokia 770 for my wife. She wanted something that could play games (Solitaire, Sudoku, etc.), and something that could also play movies. She also wanted basic Websurfing via WiFi, and she preffered a touch screen.

I looked at the Zaurus, and the GP2x. With it's large screen, touch screen, and built-in bluetooth, and Wifi, the Nokia 770 was a better deal. I did not want to always be asking to borrow her's back, so I bought one for myself too.

The Nokia 770 is very nice hardware. It has a fantastic 800x480 screen. The aspect ratio of the screen makes it (potentially) a great movie player. 16:9 movies look twice as big as they do on similar devices with a 640x480 screen. Unfortunately, the included movie player will not play full screen movies without noticable frame dropping. It is also very pickey about the format and resolution of the movie. The 770 lacks hardware mpeg decoding. Efforts to port mplayer are underway, and in the latest firmware, the included movie player has been improved. Without mpeg hardware, however, the 770 full potential as a movie player may be limited.

I have many movies that play fine with Zmplayer on my A780, but will not play on the 770.

I should mention that the touchscreen supports pressure.

The 770 is primarily designed as a hand-held web surfer, and it does this better than any other small handheld device. Web pages really do look like they do on a desktop system. Even Flash is supported (But not flash 7). With the latest firmware, speed is also acceptable, but not what I would call fast, and it still chokes on some, particularly complicated pages.

The Nokia 770 lacks basic PIM functions. There is no (included) calendar, and the contacts function is quite basic. Googletalk is included in the latest firmware, and does support VoIP, and there are other VoIP apps available, including Gizmo. (I have not tested this yet.)

There is no GSM/GPRS radio.

Also lacking is standard Obex support. The 770 only supports BT directory browsing, which is the one thing that many other BT devices do not support. Since there is no calendar, and only a limited contacts function, there would be nothing to send your object to. There are obex servers available, but they are not well integated. The lack of obex support is ironic for Nokia.

I have to admit that I am very biased toward Qt. I really liked my Zaurus, and finally having a Qt phone is great.

I question Nokia's decision to start developing a whole new platforum (Maemo) instead of just using Qt. I guess it is a licensing/business thing.

Because Maemo is so new, and only runs (right now) on one device, and because they just made a change in the packaging system that broke all existing apps, there are very few applications available. (Although there are more apps for the 770 than there are *native* apps for my A780.)

The A780 makes up for the fact that there are not alot of Qt apps ported over by supporting java (J2ME) apps. There is also no J2ME for the 770 (one was being developed, but I do not know it's current status).

Gaming is also severly limited because, as of write now, there are no game console emulators available. The Nokia 770 also lacks 3D hardware.

My A780 is MUCH faster than my Nokia 770. One place that this can really be seen is in viewing PDF files. Picsel Veiwer on the A780 is much, much faster than the PDF reader on the Nokia 770.

The Nokia 770 also lacks a scroll wheel or toggle. This is a big disadvatage for viewing documents. While there is an effort to port AbiWord to the Nokia 770, there is currently no (stable) way to veiw Word files (or Excel, or PPT) documents on the 770.

Now that I have my A780, I do not use my 770 on a daily basis. If I travel, or if I know I will be someplace with WiFi, I will take my Nokia 770. If my A780 had WiFi, I would sell my Nokia 770.

I really think Nokia should have just written the big check to TrollTech. Perhaps in the long term, Maemo will turn out to be something great. Maemo is doing things the right way as far as opening the platforum to developers, and providing free development tools. (Are you reading this, Motorola?)

[f0x0r]

Nice review CrossBow.

I, too, wish the a780 had builtin WiFi. Also, Motorola could have added A2DP, AVRCP, FM Radio, and IrDA to make it the perfect smart phone. (not to mention releasing the damn source code!)

[drait]

The 770 can also connect to the A780 over BT using the rfcomm utility found in /usr/bin on maemo (I'm currently on 2.0, but it's also available on 1.1).

If you send an rfcomm bind to the BT MAC address of your A780, it'll prompt for a serial BT connection on the phone. Upon answering OK, you can start up LeoPPP and you've then got a connection. From there it's just a simple matter of using Mack's NAT script to redirect GPRS traffic to the 770, which uses the 'dummy' Internet APN (it's on maemo's wiki).

I can post a sample script of the above if anyone's interested.

[cesarcardoso]

Only to ping... Crossbow's tutorial also works on a E680... I tested it