Two companies stand out as big players in the UMPC and Mobile internet device market right now. One is Gigabyte and the other is ASUS. The R70 is their ‘flagship’ UMPC and myself and JKKMobile made a hands-on video about the device at CeBIT. The R70 has a 120GB drive, GPS and HSDPA built-in, has a 7″ stylus-optimised, high brightness touchscreen, dual cameras (2mp, 0.3mp) and a DVB-T reciever. It runs Vista on an Intel Silverthorne processor with Poulsbo graphics. (Intel Atom platform) Full specifications are listed on the R70a product page. (UMPCPortal product database) Battery life on this pre-production model looks like about 4 hours which is a definite improvement over previous ASUS UMPC models. The device feels fairly light for its size and is an obvious competitor to the Q1 Ultra HSDPA. Vista was working but didn’t seem to be very responsive, possibly due to it being used for testing by CeBIT customers. The specifications list is looking really good. Quality screen, HSDPA, 3G, DVB-T, fingerprint reader and docking port. The mouse could have been better but all in all it was quite an impressive slate-style device. Pricing and availability details not known at this stage.

In the image above you see the Hyperthreading capability of Atom showing up in the device manager. JKKMobile has the YouTube video. A higher quality version is available via blip.tv right here.

Full specification are now in the UMPCPortal UMPC database.