A few weeks ago I wrote about some testing that ‘Captain’ of Handtops had done on the Flipstart UMPC. He had completed a good range of tests on the device and included the Battery Eater life test. The result was pretty good at 2 and 1/4 hours - 30 minutes (30%) more than the Q1 which uses a similar architecture. Impressive.

The only outstanding variable was the battery capacity. Was it the same as the Q1 or was it a big fat lump of Li-ion? It turns out that its just a big fat lump of energy sitting on the bottom. In fact, its a 40W/hr battery which is over 30% more than the Q1.

I think if the Flipstart had been launched 12 months earlier it would have looked much more impressive and stood a much better chance. In today’s market, with 12 months knowledge and market research floating around on the net, it doesn’t. Even worse, its going to age even more quickly over the next 6 months if Intel has anything to do with it. Flipstart might do well to quickly drop the price of this one and look at getting next-Gen screen and CPU tech inside before the winter season starts.