Kaz911 has managed to get some hands on time with the HTC Shift (is it at IFA in Berlin today?) He writes some impressions on his latest blog entry.

My initial impressions are that it is a really solid device. Much better than I anticipated. The screen tilt stuff works well and you can position the screen as you like. The screen supports is really only 800 x 480 but supports 1024 x 600 resolution – but at 1024×600 it can seem a bit “muddy to look at”

Check out the post for more info including pricing and availability.

Packard Bell, one of the two companies that have taken the VIA Nanobook reference design, have today launched the Easynote XS.

I guess the announcement was made at the IFA but I’ve picked up the press release from the Packard Bell website. I suspect others have already reported this by now too!

They call it a ‘notebook’ and quote 3-hours battery life with WiFi On which is less than I was hoping for but its 50% better that is competitor, the Kohjinsha SH6. Its running Windows XP home edition, a sensible choice, up to 1GB of RAM and 30GB of HDD. The price is not shown on the press release (PDF) and I can’t find that info anywhere yet.I’ll update when I get a price. I’m expecting it at around the 600 Euro mark. The press release has no info about processor or screen details but I assume its the same as the information we already have.

Have you ever tried going mobile without a mobile phone? Its impossible and will be for some time. A mobile phone is a small, efficient comms device that can be carried 24/7 and as it develops, there’s a lot more to the mobile phone than just voice. As I lie here inside my tent waiting for the Li-Ion battery to charge (looking good today for 4 hours of UMPC energy) I have some time left on yesterdays charge to detail something that I’ve already written about many time and summarised in one of my handful of posts back in Feb 2006. The diagram below shows the smallest device that you can perform certain applications on. For example, email and RSS reading along with IM and microblogging sits perfectly on a mobile phone. Photo editing needs an bigger screen and processor.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of applications and uses that need to be split between a mobile phone and a portable x86-based computer. A lot of this if obvious but has been confirmed by the way i’ve been using the devices during the Solar UMPC tour.

The challenge for the future is to bring features from the right column into the left column. Some of the won’t fit until screen technology advances to the point where we have roll-out 5″ colour touchscreens. Thats 5 years away at least. Do you have anything that you would add, remove or modify on this list?

This one is worth wasting some battery life over (see Solar-UMPC.com !)

Engadget have just run a story about a new Nokia device. Completely touchscreen!

Announced at Nokia’s GoPlay even this morning so we know its for real and planned for 2008.

The screen dimensions look very wide. Like an E90 screen.

Unfortunately I don’t see any specs but there’s a video available in the Engadget news story. I’ve watched a small segment and it looks sweet. Is it a completely new operating system? Based on Tablet OS or Series 60?

Anyone managed to pick up anything from the video?

Samsung just took the wraps off of their new Deluxe MIT UMPC. This one looks like a new and improved version of the older one they used to show.The design is pretty  innovative, notice how the keyboard folds and has game controls and a touch pad on the other side. Much better then the weird swiveling screen of the predecessor. Shame this probably wont see a release in any other place than Korea.

“SEOUL, Korea (AVING) — Samsung Electronics unveiled its compact UMPC ‘Deluxe MITs(model: SPH-P9200)’ at the Samsung 4G Forum 2007 in Korea market. As a successor model of SPH-P9000, it can connect to wireless internet and VoIP phone via Mobile WiMax. Running on Windows XP, the SPH-P9200 adopts 5-inch touch screen, folding QWERTY keyboard and 30GB HDD.”

[via AVING.NET]

That makes it confirmed. A recent article from the official GITEX newspaper has a quote from Vishnu Vardhan, HTC executive director for the Middle East and North Africa that clearly states they will unveil the HTC Shift  at the upcoming tradeshow. Mark your calendars everyone, September 8th will be HTC Shift day! (Click the image to read the full article.)

[via the::unwired]

Matt Miller has been using the HTC advantage as his primary device for 10 days. Wow! Well done Matt. Using a UMPC for 10 days is one thing but a Windows Mobile 6 device is on a different level!

There are two problems with the HTC Advantage that I see. 1) Its not a phone you can use 24/7 and therefore you will need another mobile phone. 2) It doesn’t give you the FIA. I wouldn’t be able to sit here by the Rhein, write this blog, update my mashup, log into my forum and delete the Russian spam or edit my photos if I had the Advantage and that’s why I’m using a small mobile phone and a UMPC. Matt says in his review that the browser is ‘MUCH better than Internet Explorer Mobile’ but I don’t think that would be good enough for me. Especially in 640×480.

Still, the Advantage has its Advantages and this could be a good inbetweeney device for a log of people. Check out Matt’s review here.

Hugo Ortega has taken some time out of his vacation to provide us with the answers to the HTC Shift questions readers sent him. The article is pretty long so I direct you over to GottaBeMobile. It is a 800×480 screen though. How disappointing .

Look what I stumbled upon on the OrigamiProject forums! Two videos of booting the u1010, one with SSD and one with the HDD. The difference is quite noticeable. Which one wins? See yourself, although I think its pretty obvious .  First one is HDD, Second one is SSD.

On a side note, sorry for not having posted anything over the last 2 months. Nothing happened to me, I just get a little lazy over the summer .

I’m sitting under a tree, looking out on the Rhein river and the world is good! I’ve got time for one of those on-the-spot creativity moments and I’m thinking hard about what would be the ultimate travelers journaling PC. The Q1b is good of course but there’s always room for improvement and the first thing I see that needs improving is screen brightness under sunlight. I’m actually in the shade right now and with full screen brightness its still not that good. A screen with the clarity and contrast of the one on the SH6 would be much better. 300nits, LED backlit is the starting point for any outdoor work in my opinion. 800×480 at 7″ would be the ideal size I think.

Wait for it. I’ll get to battery life in a minute!

Full keyboard is a must. The Samsung organiser keyboard is one of these best there is although maybe there’s a possibility that it could be a little smaller. Not too much though otherwise you have to concentrate on typing rather writing. A keyboard like the one on the SH6 and Nanobook would be the best size but it would be better if it was detachable because being able to split components up is good when you’re traveling.

Price. This is important. These devices need to be sub $500. There’s no point having $1500 worth of equipment with you when you travel and even $500 is a little too much.

I’m pausing at ‘operating system’ and wondering exactly what a traveler would need. Instant, or at least sub-3 seconds on and the ability to provide a rich but efficient  writing environment like that provided with LiveWriter. HTML WYSIWYG, image drag and resize, capability to save drafts and post through different API’s. I’m not sure about the full Internet experience but something close to it would be good. I have no intention of watching YouTube or any sort of video media on my tour so a plugin-free browser would probably be OK.  This bring up the question of processor base and I’m wondering if something like an Advantage with an 800×480 screen and large format detachable keyboard would suffice but you’d have to find the right software. Taking the step down to RISC processors also brings the advantage of cheaper components and battery life, which really needs to be 6 hours or more with a quick charging time of 1-2 hours. You can not creative while you’re worrying about battery life.

And here we reach a point where there is no device to satisfy the above requirements. No WM5 device has an 800×480 7″ screen as far as I know. The HTC Shift is close to the ideal device but so so expensive and having the dual OS just makes it more complex. For 800×480 at 7″ you have to look at X86-only devices (Yes I know WinCE is an option but software would be a major issue here. WinCE is still Web 0.1!) then you really have to look closely at the Nanobook platform. I don’t believe it will have 6 hours battery life but if the outdoor screen clarity is good and it really is $600 then it could be the best travelers PC available at the moment. If you’ve got the money then the HTC Shift or SH6 would be options. None of these really bring me any major advantages over the Q1b and to be honest, if this device had a brighter screen it would be perfect. What do you think?

I’ll have time to think about this again tommorrow and if I have any ideas, i’ll leave a note in the comments.

The entry posted from the trees HERE. Follow my journey on the map here.

On Aug 31st, the International Funk Ausstellung (IFA) takes place in Germany. Last year over 6000 journalists attended and so, as a leading consumer trade fair, it makes sense to launch products there.

No-one is telling me exactly what’s going to happen but something’s definitely up and it looks like I might have to take an extra long lunch break on Friday and Saturday to make sure I don’t miss anything.

Any guesses?

No not a real body bag, the Jack Wolfskin Body Bag.

I bought one the other day and I have to say its perfect for a 7″ (or less) UMPC plus mobile phone. I can even put the Everun, a GPS receiver and a small digicam in there. It could be good for Justin.TV style activities too! Its with me on the Solar UMPC tour and working out well although I’m not carrying a UMPC in it. The Q1b is tucked away safely inside the organiser pack.

The best bit was that it was only 19.99 Euros. Bargain!

I’m writing this on my Samsung Q1b inside a tent in a campsite near a town called Sonderheim in Germany! The 9 day solar tour has started!

It was a really hot day today and very hard work getting the bike and equipment down here on the train but I guess that’s nothing compared to the 400km I’ve got ahead of me.

I’ve heard that the sun will continue for the next 2 days at least meaning I can get some good testing in with the solar UMPC equipment and hopefully load-up the batteries to take me through a cloudy day or two if the weather changes.

I will continue to update news here over the next 9 days along with keeping the blog and map updated with the track and images over at Solar-UMPC.com. Wish me luck!

In April 2006, shortly after the launch of ‘Origami’, In-Stat produced a report that surprised a lot of people. “8 million units by 2011″ it said. Then we had an estimate of 22 million by 2010 from both VIA and Intel and from Chippy, who’s not the most recognised statistician in the world, we had “700,000 units in 2007.”

Graph based on “10% by 2010″

In the latest report from In-Stat written by Ian Lao, they are sticking with the prediction of 8 million units in 2011 which is much much less than VIA or Intel predicted. They are using the term ‘UMD’ now though and that will please VIA because that’s the term they use ion their marketing. 

Unfortunately we can’t get hold of the report details because the report isn’t free but Windows For Devices managed to extract a snippet from the report: “2008-2010 will be key years for the development of anytime/anywhere wireless connectivity, which is considered necessary for widespread adoption of the UMD paradigm.” and noted that In-Stat didn’t define the form factor of a UMD. Its not surprising as its a designers dream market out there right now. “one ultra mobile device will not be able to meet all of the different usages and applications.” say In-Stat. Absolutley true! Its all about personalised mobile computing in the UMPC space.

In-Stat’s definition of a UMD.

They are careful not to say ‘x86 only’ there aren’t they! Looking at the contents page I’d certainly like to read the ‘Market Drivers’ section and ‘Technologies and Market Inflection points’ section and I’m sure a lot of other people would too! At this point though, I feel its the right time to plug my own reports and information!

Here’s my base definition of a UMPC from 2006 along with some good discussion about form factor here. My definition of the Full Internet Experience (FIE) is here and you can find good info in the buyers guide including ‘What is a UMPC’, ‘Mobile Device categories’ and ‘Types of UMPCs’ . The site overview is here along with a list of RSS feeds here. That should keep you going for a while but If you need more specific info or analysis then drop me a line and we can talk about a tailored report.

Via Windows For Devices.

There was an announcement by Adobe today and its one that I feel is rather important for web focused devices. The Flash 9 player will support H.264 encoding (MPEG-4 Part 10). Those words may not mean much to some people but what is happening could have a big impact on the way we view online video on our mobile devices. Basically, the most common browser plugin in use today, Flash, is going to support an new video format and there’s a chance that this embeded video player could be made a lot more CPU efficient. Ryan Stewart, an Abode employee and blogger says:

Flash Player will also support MPEG-4 standard container files that contain video and audio data encoded using H.264/HE-AAC, including MP4, M4V, M4A, MOV, Mp4v, 3gp, 3g2.  So basically you can play full, hardware accelerated 1080p Quicktime videos inside of the updated Flash Player. Welcome to the next generation of web video. [my emphasis]

UMPC-owners should ignore the ‘HD’ part of that statement because H.264 requires a lot of CPU for HD content but this new support could mean a more efficient low-bandwidth solution. Currently the Flash plugin uses the FLV container format with H.263 or VC6 encoded content but the efficiency of the plugin leaves a lot to be desired. You can see this easily in devices like the Q1b, Kohjinsha SA1 and Everun where YouTube playback, although low-bandwidth, is very choppy.  If Adobe has taken the opportunity to implemented H.264 decoding efficiently in the embedded player then things are looking up for embedded and streamed video on UMPCs. The press release does mention ‘hardware accelerated’ playback too but we’ll have to see exactly what that means when Moviestar is made available in public beta format later today on the Adobe Labs website I’ll be testing it out as soon as I can to see what sort of CPU-load it requires and how it performs on the Q1B/P and Everun. I’m hoping we can say goodbye to choppy, low quality YouTube videos in the very near future.

I worked late last night and rewarded myself with a huge lie-in this morning. I dreamt that someone was ringing the doorbell…..HOLY COW its the EVERUN! You never saw anyone get out of bed so quickly in all your life! I just about managed to make myself a cup of tea and get some clothes on before I turned the video cam on for a quick unboxing to see what the differences were between the retail and production sample devices. I’m pleased to say that Raon have refined the final build quite nicely, apart from the XP installation on the device I got. It wouldn’t activate and all I had was a Korean language install disc! It turns out that Raon sent me the wrong software build and that’s being sorted out now so I should be ready to do the SSD tests later tomorrow. I made a video of the unboxing which isn’t the most exciting video I’ve ever done but if you’re considering the Everun its worth watching.

More info about the Everun including specs, images and review links can be found in the product portal.

Click ‘Read more’ if you’re not already reading the full article…

If you want to see a demo of Vista running on the Kohjinsha SH6 with Aero Glass and in full sunlight, take a look at this great video by JKK.

At this point I would say something like ‘for more commentary, pop over to JKK’s site’ but jkk is not a big fan of typing so there’s not much else to see apart from a link back here! See if you can tease something out of him in the comments!