Sure, the iPhone is a sweet phone (even at $600), but how does it compare to the less definable internet tablet category?

I’ve actually used a Pepper Pad and held an OLPC in my hands (yes, they exist), but what I know about the Nokia n800 (the successor to the n770) is limited to what I’ve been told.

All four devices have feature-complete browsers and can take advantage of the rich web 2.0 applications their larger cousins can. And each offers some local applications, including media players. But these aren’t general purpose PCs, and they’re not trying to replace PCs. These are information age devices that deliver the network in places we generally don’t bring our laptops.

The iPhone is the smallest and lightest of the bunch, though it also has the smallest screen (counting both pixels and inches). Still, it’s claimed battery life bests everything but the famously power-efficient OLPC. Yet even the 8GB iPhone isn’t the most expensive of the bunch, and the 4GB model is just a bit more than the least expensive publicly available tablet.

Mix the mainstreaming of social software over the past couple years with a device like this and step back. Twitter was just the start. Still, the iPhone might also find use among ebook users (though what we really need is a browser-based book reader) and for other purposes.

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Gizmodo’s reporting the Nokia 770 is in customer’s hands and getting some buttons pushed. Now we’ve got Nokia and Pepper exploring this space. Where to next?

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I’ve been babbling like a stoolie for Pepper here for the past couple weeks, but after some prodding by Roger Sperberg I’ve started to take a serious look at the Nokia 770 linux-based internet tablet. To get me started is Mike Cane’s hands on report from some time spent with it at LinuxWorld Expo. Nokia is pushing Maemo.org to support the developer/hacker community, and there’s already some interesting work being done. And Mike Cane is keeping things up to date at Mike Cane’s ersatz 770 blog.

The 770 has a lot to like, including a nice 800×480 screen, WiFi, and a much lower price than the Pepper Pad. But I’m concerned about its dependance on handwriting recognition and that its small size may actually be counterproductive for my purposes.

tags: electric forest, internet tablet, internet tablets, mike cane, nokia, nokia 770, pepper, pepper pad, portable computing, roger sperberg, teleread, ultraportable, web pad