???????? Nokia 770 Internet Tablet in 2026: Part 1 (First Look) [#TCE0678]

Let's have a quick look at Nokia's first Internet Tablet, the 770 from 2005, which runs the Maemo OS, derived from the Debian Linux distribution. It's WiFi (or WLAN) only (IEEE 802.11b/g open networks) with Bluetooth 1.2 and Mini USB connectivity as well - no cellular mobile radio. It has 64MB of RAM, 128MB of internal storage and this one came with a 1GB Reduced Size MultiMediaCard (RS-MMC) for removable storage ... with some Johnny Cash MP3s!

It beat the iPad to market by five years ... the iPad still doesn't have removable storage ???? ... and has a rather nice 800x480 touch screen.

It was succeeded by the N800 and N810.

It is running the last official OS version for it: Internet Tablet 2006 edition, Version 3.2006.49-2. There were 2007 and 2008 "Hacker Editions" released but they're a bit hard to find these days ... just like the WLAN bug fix:
https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=11824

On boot it displays:
Kernel version: 2.6.16.27-omap1
initfs version osso-n770 2006-48 1

It wouldn't see my WiFi network (ironically a Nokia Beacon 3 system) but I do have all of my older Apple Airport base stations that would pre-date this so I might hook one up and see what happens.

Regarding information about the device, I have found these pages still active (as of Jan 2026), but most the links ... especially any pointing back to nokia.com ... are dead. The major drawback of hyperlinking. Archive/Wayback machine weren't really working (503 error) when I made this video so couldn't check what they had.
http://wikistatic.jasonantman.com/index.php/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet/index.html
http://mstation.org/770-os2007he.php
https://maemo.viniciuspaes.com

I did manage to activate Red Pill mode which gives a lot more system access, versus Blue Pill mode which is the standard mode:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Red_Pill_mode

In case that page disappears here's how to activate it:
[1] Open Application manager and go to [Tools] then [Application catalogue]
[2] Click [New]
[3] Type "matrix" into the [Web Address] field
[4] Click [Cancel]
[5] Tap [Red] in the dialog to enabled Red Pill mode, or [Blue] to keep the Application manager as-is or to disable Red Pill.

00:00 ... Intro
01:00 ... Overview
03:15 ... Booting
05:30 ... Checking OS version
07:00 ... Charging
09:40 ... Sketching
10:40 ... Gaming
14:15 ... Red Pilling
17:55 ... Mapping
19:20 ... Playing Music
20:50 ... Channel thanks & outro

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