The HTC Shift news of today came much earlier than expected. I was really expecting the first information to come out of Computex in June. But who’s worrying! Accelerated UMPC development seems to be the name of the game at the moment.

Of course it looks great. The specs could be wonderful (1.2Ghz CPU, good graphics capability, lots of radio connectivity and a good looking, workable keyboard design) but there’s one very significant question here. If HTC are showing a UMPC to the world, does it  mean that they’ve already talked to their channel partners and agreed deals to sell this through carriers? Could this be the first UMPC to be available in the high street for a subsidised price? Could this bring UMPC into the mainstream?

On the technical side, one question I can’t resolve in my mind is, how did HTC get aero running on a VIA platform. Either VIA have developed a new chipset/gpu, or they’re using an Intel GMA950 (or better.) Intel would rather go against the grain a bit (seeing as HTC is practically a sister company to VIA) but if VIA don’t have the capability and Aero is seen as significant then they might have taken the decision to go Intel (and perhaps keep Intel happy during the legal troubles that still exist?) Take a close look at the screen shot. I know its only a graphic but there’s an Intel icon in there! If you look to the right of that, the pen-flicks icon is there (meaning HID drivers.) Too good to be a mock up?

Click to enlarge.

Pricing thoughts? Well its got to sit above the Advantage. That’s for sure. The technology inside is  a lot  more expensive than the Advantage  too. And the sales volumes will be less (I assume) so lets put 30% on the price of the Advantage. That  gives us about 1200 Euros. I think that if you’re prepared to put 50 euros a month into a data tariff, this little sweetie will be yours for 600 Euro. ($800)

I can’t find any specs on the size yet but it looks like its going to be one of the smallest 7″ screened UMPCs seen yet (apart from perhaps the KIDC-US700.) We can see stereo speakers, the fingerprint reader, thumb pad (I hope its better than the one on the Medion. I much prefer  the mouse pointer but there could be physical size reasons why they went for a thumb pad.)

And what about the similarity with our very own UMPC-X! Its uncanny. One assumes that HTC had 4 or 5 designs on the table a month ago. I wonder if our work influenced them to choose this one!

• Viliv S7 Atom-based UMPC
• Wibrain i1 shaping up to be first ‘All-day’ UMPC.