After a short break from UMPC news and journaling, Carrypad is back with a round-up of the UMPC news from the last week.
Eo faulty UMPC update.
Some of the Faulty Tablet Kiosk Eo’s that were sent back have now been received by their owners. The indications are that the power problem has been fixed and that the Eo’s are running as expected at around 2 hours with wifi. The C3 state problem still exists though. The Amtek variants can not fully utilise the VIA C7 yet. which is dissapointing considering this is a problem that has been known about for at least two months now. Unfortunately I don’t have the design skill to know exactly who’s fault it is other wise i’d be pointing a fat finger at them right now!
Xscale sold.
Intel sold off Xscale! I find this interesting. The chips cover smartphone and PDA devices. Do they want to pull out of RISC-based architecture altogether and concentrate on x86? Its exactly what AMD did a few weeks ago.
ARM, the developer of the ARM architectures that Xscale used, haven’t suffered too much on share price (a few % less than the FTSE-100 over the last days) so I guess the show will go on on for people like Samsung, ATMEL, Ti and the others that have paid for ARM licenses.
We wrote up a short article about x86 and RISC processors not so long ago which will give you more info if you need it.
Sodiff UMPC.
Interesting. If you haven’t seen the news, check out the info at MobileMag. This is the forth slide-screen UMPC that we’ve seen so far. The OQO, Averatec and Sony UX being the other three. All have very small screens (around 5 inches) and at this screen size, the keyboard can be used with the thumbs. The design wouldn’t really work for 6 or 7 inch screens which is a shame because it’s a nice space-efficient bit of engineering.
As for the specs, I guess its a WinCE-based device that is just a small step up from a personal media player but it would be interesting to see how much of the Sony UX50 functionality it has and to work out the price premium for the additional features!
Dell UMPC rumor.
Ultranauts reported that Dell would be producing a UMPC. Its no suprise really. They have already talked about stopping work on PocketPC’s and the X51v is such an advanced PocketPC that if you put it in a new casing with a bigger screen, you could call it an Ultra Mobile PC with no problem. A $500 price point would make it very attractive and a major problem for Nokia.
One other thought on that one though. Isn’t it HTC that are the ODM (Original Designer/Manufacturer) for the Dell PocketPC’s? HTC are the sister company to VIA and are in a very good position to be able to produce a UMPC. We speculated on HTC and UMPC’s before.
Tablet Kiosk rumor.
More rumors via Ultranauts. They appear to have contacts! This time about new Tablet Kiosk devices. There’s no detail at all about what they might be. We’re only told that 6-8 weeks is the timescale until the announcement. Could we be looking at the first devices with LED backlights? Keyboards? Could they be distributing the 5.6″ Mo-Bits device we talked about recently? We’ll have to wait and see.
Interesting conversations.
During my time off over the last 6 days, I had some great conversations with a guy who has nothing to do with UMPC’s but has a very clear head when it comes to analysing a new idea. We talked at length about why UMPC’s are needed and why we don’t just wait for smartphones to evolve with fold-out screens and fold-out keyboards. Its an interesting point. How long have we got until paper/foldable/rollable screens are available? My guess is 5-7 years before we can integrate touch, lighting and get to efficient production costs. When that happens, we might see the death of the UMPC, just like we’re seeing it with the PDA.
Sony UMPC flash drive option - Speed or space.
I like the way that Sony have introduced the flash drive option on the UX. With minimal aditional cost and lower storage space, the user gets faster response and better battery life. It’s a trade-off I think i’d make myself. Most of my storage is moving to a centralised model so why do I need a 60GB disk? For the last 12 months i’ve been streaming my MP3’s to my devices and with products like the Slingbox, who needs to take videos with them? 8Gb seems about the right balance to me.
Regards
Steve / Chippy.
