Archive for December, 2006

Have you seen the Uren Auto UMPC unboxing video over at UltraMobileLife?

Bjorn Stromberg, who runs this VIA sponsored blog, got hold of the Uren and gave us a good intro to the physicals of the device. The first information on the Uren came out in September (see Navigadget) and it was the first time that a UMPC was offered with dedicated car accessories, a port replicator and remote control.

Personally I think that all UMPC’s should offer the car-mount option. There’s no reason that a dedicated UMPC needs to made and I don’t expect the Uren to ever arrive in the Americas or Europe. Its not worth it. The eo i7200s, and the Raon Digital Vega could make great car PCs if the cradle was available. The Q1 already had a car mount available so just load up the much talked about StreetDeck, RoadRunner or even create a poor-mans CarPC interface using Streets and Trips (Autoroute 2007) WMP with the 800×480 skin and a modified program launcher. Job done.

I think there’s something missing on the Uren too. The Cellular data capability. Having used Autoroute with its Windows Live search capability and knowing that live traffic data, weather, audio streaming and messaging is available, the modem is right up there on the top of my CarPC wishlist.  When the HSDPA enabled Q1B hits the floor, (knock knock Samsung. Where the hell is it?) it will make a much better Auto PC (MAPC, Carputer, CarPC) than the Uren V1.

Why didn’t I mention the ASUS R2H? because its got a heavy touchscreen. While it reduces palm touch errors, it makes in-car use a pain in the fingernail.

All the known specifications on the Uren V1 are listed in the Carrypad UMPC database.

Steve

If you’re following UMPC-related information on the ‘net then you’ve probably seen the Uren Auto UMPC unboxing video over at UltraMobileLife.

Bjorn Stromberg, who runs this VIA sponsored blog, got hold of the Uren and gave us a good intro to the physicals of the device. The first information on the Uren came out in September (see Navigadget) and if our memory serves us right, we ha a little laugh at the name and then concluded it was cool. For the first time we were seeing a UMPC being delivered with dedicated car accessories a port replicator and remote control.

Its a VIA C7-M device with a simple design (presumably to reduce its surface area when placed in the viewing line on a car dashboard) and the all-important overlay software. Just as StreetDeck, RoadRunner or even program launcher do, it simplifies touch access to the most commonly used programs. This is absolutely essential for in-car use.

Other specifications include 30GB HDD, built-in GPS, DMB receiver and rear-mounted (forward facing) camera all in a 700gm package. The only thing we think is missing is a cellular modem which is important for the Google/live look-up, live traffic info and messaging capabilities.

The Uren is unfortunately only available in Asia for the equivalent of about $1000. Hopefully someone will pick up on it and put it or a similar device through the FCC/CE/ROHS certifications and ship them over because there’s a serious lack of decent car-focused software and hardware at the moment.

All the known specifications are listed in the Carrypad UMPC database.

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A few pounds heavier (thanks Mum.) and with a huge number of emails and feeds marked for attention, Chippys back. I’m quite surprised at how much news there has actually been over the last week and while going through the feed-reader a lot of thoughts and opinions came into my head that I need to write down. Here’s a quick run down of things that I want to look in depth at over the next few posts.

There was a news story that Carrypad is taking over Origamiportal.com. Yes, its true. A lot of work will be going into that in the first half of 2007 and I’ll give you all the details in a detailed post in the next 24 hours.

I was really excited to see a flurry of posts on the Arima UM650UV1 / Medion RIM 1000. Slashgear’s ‘in the wild’ post made some comments and showed two new pictures but the article doesn’t seem to offer much more than we already know. I really really like the specs of that device and I can’t wait to read more about it. I’m desperately trying to get info out of Medion in Germany but they are really keeping their cards close to their chest.  Medion are well known in Germany for producing very good value electronics and all I know is that it will be available in 2007.

The UREN got an airing and I need to take a look at the video that came out. Could it make the ultimate carputer?

There’s an interesting CES session planned about the 7″ screen size. That’s one that I really wish I could attend because I have already come to conclusions about how screen sizes will fit into certain target markets. I will follow it closely.

Loads of people have commented on the HTC Athena and have assumed that its the first result of the HTC UMPC effort. I don’t think it is. You, me and HTC all know that UMPC means ‘PC’ and not Smartphone and I tend to agree with many predictions that the HTC UMPC will run a VIA x86 processor. The pricing rumor ($1700) should be taken with a pinch of salt too. It is derived from an unconfirmed source. I’ve heard a different price and its certainly not that high. 

Vistagami seems to be a buzzword thats knocking about at the moment. Remember, all Intel and VIA-based PC’s will run Vista. This has already been proved. It may take a number of months for drivers to appear for some of the specialist components but I feel sure that we’ll see many of the 2006 UMPCs re-appear running Vista along with the all the new UMPCs. I don’t get too excited about Vista to be honest. There are some nice touch improvements but there’s going to be cost, work, and instability until it matures. I will probably stay away from Vista until the 2nd half of 2007.

The Tatung ‘UMPC’ post got some airtime. I didn’t expect anyone to take any notice of it because all we have is an image showing what looks like Windows Mobile running. There’s nothing to see there until we get new news.

Other items that caught my eye: A fuel cell for a Samsung notebook. Two great ‘intro’ articles by Thoughtfix that I hope get pushed way up to the top of Google because they are full of UMPC goodness. A solar powered GPS receiver. News on the Docking Station for the TabletKiosk eo v7110 (about time too!) Lastly there’s tiny bit of hope for the Euro Q1B with HSDPA.

I’ve still got hundreds more news items to go through over the next 24 hours. I’m sure there will be some good snippets in there but I’ve got one more job to do before I get 100% back into Carrypad. I need to fix my i7210. Its dead. I suspect the power/charging module has broken. There’s no response from it at all. No lights. No noises. All very annoying as I was using it as my main PC (data is stored elsewhere) and have been testing a new BIOS which has unlocked the CPU under battery power. She was flying but now she needs Doctor Chippy. Very sad.

Regards for now.

Steve / Chippy.

As a Christmas gift to all here is UMPC Cast #6 - UMPCs in 2007 and Beyond.

We talk about new changes going on with the site and what new UMPCs will be released in 2007. Plus our usual bantering about nothing.

Subscribe to the show through Itunes by clicking

Or subscribe directly to the XML RSS feed

Or just download the [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/origami/podcasts/OrigamiPortal.com_-_UMPC_Cast_6_-_2007_UMPCs_and_Beyond.mp3]MP3 directly[/url].

And if you just want to catch up on the old shows, they are all available in the [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=1]Podcast Section[/url] (more…)

Look at me. What an embarrassment. This is what I wanted to take to the UK.

 
I need to drastically reduce this mess. Let me try to pare it down a bit….

Look on the right hand side. That’s all power-related rubbish. I know what my first project in the new year is. 2 universal 12/110/240v adaptors with multi-voltage and multi-tips. Preferably with an integrated AA battery charger.  How would you reduce that mess?Your suggestions are very very welcome.

On the left are 2 UMPCs, a GPS, PocketPC, Digital Camera and mobile phone. Its a serious road warrior kit. Hehe. 3KG of mobile goodness. I may be a mobile junkie but I’m also a very lucky chap indeed.

• 2 x UMPC’s + keyboard case: 2050gm
• Pocket PC + case: 217gm
• Camera: 420gm
• Other bits+bag: 3100gm.

Now I’m ready for the UK. For more UK mobility tips, see Matt Millers Seattle to London report.

Steve.

Rob Bushway of GottaBeMobile has a few nice CES/Origami tips for us today.

He points to a ZDNet article where its said that Mr Gates will mention Origami devices in his keynote speech. These, apparently, will be UMPC’s running Vista.

There’s also a hint from MS that there will be a focus on devices with slide out keyboards. We’re not surprised at that. The keyboardless computer is a tough sell. The Yahoo-Go partnership UMPC could be one of these.

There’s also a hint from TabletKiosk that they will have a new rugged device to show off at CES. TK have an association with ECS (the i7200 series came through that) so maybe ECS have new devices to show off too. The other possibility is that they’ve taken the Mobits VX3 design and used that. We’ll have to see.

Read between all the lines at GottaBeMobile.

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Here’s one that slipped through the net at Computex.

 
I just got a tip-off on these images that were obviously taken at Computex 2006. Its got a UMPC form factor and I had never seen or heard anything about it until now.

 
The original website is here. (This product appears half-way down.)

It says ‘UMPC’ on the front but it looks like its running WM5

I’ve tried to find details but I couldn’t find anything. Anyone know anything about this one? Tatung are at CES so if someone could go and tap them up for info it would be great.

Tomorrow I’ll be getting ready to go to the UK to stay with family for the Christmas week and I’ll be pretty much offline until the 29th. Don’t expect too much from Carrypad over the next week.

One last thing though. As a blogger, I feel obliged to post one of those ‘top 3 best moments retrospective’ type posts but I’ll keep it short.

My best UMPC moment of 2006 was unboxing the Black Flybook V33i. She was good. Damn good!

Steve.

I saw it high on Tailrank at one point yesterday which means a lot of people must have been talking about it and now i’ve had time to dry my trousers I can sit down and analyse what we’ve actually got here.

There seems to be two sets of specifications floating about. One with a 3.5″ screen and a 320×240 resolution and the other with a 5″ screen and 640×480 resolution. I think we can see from the images that its not a 3.5″. I’m going with the VGA specs. This Athena is bigger than a PDA and needs 640×480 otherwise the text is going to look terrible.  

Its not a UMPC. There’s no real getting away from that fact. As I’ve said before, if it’s not 800 wide, its not a UMPC. To me the UMPC starts with rich browsing and you just don’t get that on anything less that on 800 pixels wide. It smaller and lighter than nearly all UMPCs too. This is something that looks like 400grams. Not 1000.

Is it a smartphone though? Well, to be honest, I think it’s to big to be a phone. A mobile phone needs to be with you all the time. This is something that you can’t take with you all the time. This is more like one of those personal filofax’s. I had one of those and I never put it in a pocket. In fact, I always forgot to take it with me.

Its a damn interesting device, its one that I want its one that I think satifies most of my original Carrypad requirements. Because of that I’m going to go through it in a little detail. Feel free to switch off at any moment readers because this could get a little detailed. Theres a summary of the stats on the datasheet that I’ve just created for the Athena.

Starting with The screen. 5″ diagonal. A nice size but its a 4:3 format, 640×480 job. 640×480 is certainly a lot of screen space. You’ll be able to do some office work on pocket Excel and pocket Word. I’ve used these apps on 320×240 so something that’s 4 times the size is going to be really nice. In fact, you’ll get someting like 5 times the working space becuase the extra space is all used for working area. Not menus. For videos its going to be OK. Not perfect though. Widescreen format is common now so you’ll have to crop DVD’s to fit the screen or suffer with black bars top and bottom. Not ideal but there’s plently of 4:3 content still out there and your own time-shifted TV content should look very nice on it. What it will be good for though is navigation. The screen is about the perfect size and resolution for that. Its also perfect for emails. No doubt about that. But what about browsing. Well. Its not going to be that good. With Opera installed things will be OK and if you dont mind a little left-right scrolling, I think it could be bareable. Finally, the touchscreen experience will be pretty good. Becuase its going to be so light, you’ll easily be able to hold it in one hand and write memos. DOn’t expect the Tablet PC experience but I think its going to be muh more useful than a 320×240 touchscreen.

Screen Summary:

• Video: 8/10
• Office: 6/10
• Music: 10/10
• Email: 10/10
• Browsing: 6/10
• Navigation: 10/10

Lets move on to the keyboard. There’s two things to consider. The size/feel of it and the positioning of it. Because we can’t actually touch this device theres no telling what its going to be like but at that size you won’t be getting anything over 40% of your normal typing speed on a table. The positioning is bad. Just like the Samsung SPH-P9000 it looks like it needs a flat surface. This is a problem. Actually quite a major problem. I’ve learnt that thumbing while standing up is pretty useful. 95% of teens probably do 90% of their writing standing up too. It fits into spare moments on the bus, in a traffic jam and around the house quite nicely so if you need a table with the Athena then you’ve lost a lot of mobility. From the pictures, I cant see any way that you could have the keyboard flat against the back. Theres a bevel and a raised edge on the keybaord that would prevent that.

Keyboard: 5/10. It needs to be able to slide on to the back to make it really useful. However, the fact that it has one at all is a plus-point.

Processor. Both the Xscale and Samsung processors that have been talked about are high end. Clock-for-clock the Samsungs are more powerful. It really depends on wether a GPU is included to speed up 2D (and 3D gaming!) performance. I think i’d be quite happy with a 624Mhz processor. Multitasking isn’t going to be spot on (Ewan at SMS Text News talks about a way to really upset WM5 users for example.) but for things like skype and video playback, its going to be fine.

Layout. It looks like there’s dual cameras and a LED flashlight. The main camera is rumored to have 3MP. As long as its got good optics it could make a good happy snapper but its not going to beat the N93. You can see that by just looking at the apperture size. On the front we see the two portait mode WM5 buttons and something that looks like a mouse pointer. I doubt it is though. Note there are no speaker grills but its rumored to have stereo speakers. Its a shame you can’t see any details of the ports either but its supposed to have a VGA out (would that support a bigger resolution perhaps. If so, it could be an interesting option for presentations.) and a MiniSD slot. I haven’t seen any mention of USB but it has to be in there somewhere. As do the Mic/Line-Out sockets.

Radios + GPS. Apart from the GPS unit, you can pretty much forget the radios at this stage. It will totally depend on the region and provider. Lets assume that its being tested with a number of radios and keep fingers crossed that it supports the highest data rates available today. The GPS receiver is nice. There are some great navigation packages for WM5 and things will really improve. This could make the perfect touring device.

Storage. One report said 8GB. I think this is correct. I don’t know if its HDD or flash though. I really hope its flash but there’s a mention of G-sensor somewhere. Thats the fall-detection mechanism for hard drives. This could hit battery life quite hard.

Battery life. The rumor is: 2200mah battery. That doesn’t really tell us anything. If we assume standard voltages though, its a lot bigger than your average PDA battery. If you lock out the HDD and turn the radios off, it will probably last 9 or 10 hours but thats not exactly a real-life scenario is it. I guess (yes, guess) that its going to hit 4-5 hours useage over a 24hour ‘on’ period.

Price. This is not going to be cheap. More expensive than the existing HTC Universal so lets say 900-1000 Euro. $1000 perhaps. On a 24 month contract that brings it down to something like 30% of that.

Availability. I heard that its real. On the roadmap and ready for showing in Jan. Its hardly a consumer device so maybe we won’t see it it CES but I think we’ll see a lot more about the Athena in the new year.

I guess there’s more to talk about but this post is gettting redicuously long. Embarrasing even. How can anyone write so much about a silly little rumour! I guess no-one read this far except perhaps my always reliable listener Mr Google. This post is dedicated to him!

For the rest of you, I’ll drop a summary in the datasheet because I’ve decided to put it in the UMPC database. It deserves the place that has just been vacated by the Sharp SL-C1000! (I kicked it out!)

Update: Mobile-review.com report that its 350gm, has TV-out and VGA-out and uses the ATi 2282 Graphic Chip. I’ll update the datasheet.

Steve 

Jenn (Pocketables) has already made a post on this but I’d like to follow it up with a little more technical info.

Firstly, can I just say - 3Mbps MPEG-4 performance!

Yup, they updated the mplayer package and its really boosted the performance. I noticed it when I played my favorite 2mbps - Xvid/AC3 encoded “Best of Top Gear” DVD Rip. It was smoother than before. I checked the CPU performance and it was just sitting there picking its nose around the 35% mark. So I ripped a PAL VOB (DVD MPEG2 file) and encoded it into XVID/MP3 with a 2.7mbps bitrate at native PAL resolution. It flew! It was absolutely lovely. Not quite as lovely as the 6mbps WMV-HD sample that I use to demo videos on the i7210 but still, very very good.

And there’s a host of other enhancements too. Loads of Keyboard shortcuts for zero arm-movement when browsing on the sofa! An improved right mouse click and support for SSL-based mail protocols (Gmail uses this) are just some of the improvements. To be honest, they’ve covered all the software issues I had. Not bad for a point upgrade. You can even download the source if you fancy tweaking it further. [Check the Pepper forums out for developer action.]

This clip shows the Pepper playing back through a TV. Its only a composite signal but its very watcheable. Unfortunately the video doesn’t do justice to the quality of the playback but you’ll get the idea!

Click to download the wmv9 clip. 12MB. 

Well done to the Pepper team.

Steve.

From the articles from a week ago department comes a posting from [url=http://onlyumpc.com/news/mac-os-x-on-asus-r2h]OnlyUMPC.com[/url] showing Mac OSX running on an Asus R2H.

The system is functional but has incorrect screen calibration and device issues.

OnlyUMPC also has a video of the system running, so go check it out [url=http://onlyumpc.com/news/video-mac-os-x-on-asus-r2h]here[/url]. (more…)

This isn’t bad. Its a ‘UMPC Verse’ by Ultranauts. We won’t spoil it by posting it here so pop over and take a look. Well done lads. Now step away from the brandy butter and get back to work!

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Update: I’m tracking the latest info on this HTC Athena datasheet.

Look!

There’s many more pics here.

As Grandpa Joe said in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’:

‘PRAISE THE LORD. We’ve found the Golden Carrypad. Possibly.’

I have to leave the office now. I’m looking forward to reading what the blogosphere thinks about it.

Many thanks to ‘Fragles’ who tipped me off.

More Carrypad news about the Athena here and here.

Steve.

I’m still highly skeptical about the transparentness of Three’s X-Series service. There’s too many marketing words floating around the product for my liking. ‘Unlimited Web Browsing’ instead in Internet Access. ‘Fair Use’ and other such warning signs.

Ewan Macleod who runs SMS Text News uses the X-Series product and is really putting it through its paces. He’s posted a number of really interesting and honest articles and this one from yesterday is very positive. Ewan quotes the X-series blog (well done to the X-Series team for having the foresight to communicate in this way.) which says:

We have not intentionally blocked access to services or prevented access to, or downloads from, any particular sites.  However, we have not tested the service or the handsets for applications or uses other than those promoted by 3. 

If you can download clients and access websites or web-based services of your choosing, then this access will be included as part of the Unlimited data offer

Ewan is a happy chappy but I can still see a hole. It doesn’t say that access to Internet service won’t be billed. All it says is that website access or web-based services are included. Mmmm. Now what’s a Web-Service when it comes to network access. To me, its TCP port 80 and port 443. (HTTP, HTTPS.) What about FTP or IMAP or POP3 or SSH or VPN use? These aren’t ‘web’ applications, these are Internet applications. These are capabilities that you get with a normal broadband connection.

The question remains. Can I use the X-Series phone as a data modem for a UMPC/Notebook?  Ewan, if you read this, can you put the Q to Three UK for me? Cheers Matey.

Steve

Did anyone see this on DigiTimes?

The stock price of VIA rose nearly 7% to close at NT$27.15 on December 19 due to rumors that the company will partner with High Tech Computer (HTC) on development of a new UMPC. The price reached a three month peak.

HOW MUCH? 7%. To me that seems a huge effect. While I personally think that VIA are best positioned to dominate the x86-based ultra-mobile PC space due to possible partnerships with HTC, Dopod and Microsoft, I had no idea that people buying stock believe that same thing. Was the stock buying actually triggered by this statement perhaps?

The global market for UMPCs will reach 130 million units next year, Chen estimated.

130 Million? Is he joking? That is a number that just can not be reached through the current sales channels. Around 200-300 Million notebooks are sold each year so there’s no way that you’re going to be able to put UMPC’s on shelves and expect them to sell in those figures unless you bubble-pack them and sell them for 20 Dollars next to the chewing gum at the checkout desk.

Is he talking about a different channel I wonder? Where’s the biggest sales channel right now? A sales channel that shifts over a billion devices a year? That would be the cellphone sales channel. But even then it seems like a crazy figure. Symbian ships something like 100 million smartphones a year. Looking at a number of stats, it appears to me that HTC themselves ‘only’ ship around 10 Million smartphones per year so did someone get their maths wrong? 

There is no way that figure is going to be reached. 1.30 million more like it. Remember that In-Stat reported that the market will reach 8 million units by 2011 and ASUS reports that the R2H, one of the most successful UMPCs had only sold 40000 units in 3 months.

Here’s my prediction for 2006, based on the stats I’ve seen (there isn’t many) and cross calculating from notebook sales figures and smartphone sales figures, I’d say we’re looking at global sales of around 500,000 UMPC units in 2006 using the correct sales channels ad maybe 1 million if they get into cellular carriers hands. VIA’s prediction is 130 times bigger than mine. Someone’s wrong but I’d rather put my money on my figure than Chen’s.

Steve.

The latest HTC Athena specs shown at The Unwired now match closely to the specifications I’ve seen and I feel quite confident that these are true.

Rather than the 3.5″ screen, its got a 5″ screen at VGA resolution and there’s the 624Mhz Xscale there rather than the Samsung 400Mhz CPU. 5″ Screen. Its going to challenge the Nokia Communicator/E90 perhaps?

Shame its not an 800×480 screen but it should make an awesome net-connected PMP. Will HTC offer the VIA Ondemand service on it I wonder?

Here’s the Unwired news with full specs and remember that this device is rumored to be just around the corner!

Steve.