– the OQO has great technology but in the wrong form factor. That is why so few are sold (SF Weekly recently had an article which listed yearly revenue; if you divide that by the cost of an OQO its about 15K a year or if you divide by an OQO plus a few accesories it might be as low as 11K). The advantage of the D4 is the size. How does the world use full windows? they use a touch type keyboard, duh, that is why so few OQO sell each year after being on the mraket for 8 years. I’d rather have a longer clamshell with a touch type keyboard any day.

Vakeros Says:
July 11th, 2008 at 9:41 am
My question was meant to be rhetorical - in other words ask yourself what you need. I like the D4, but the battery life sucks big time - no good reason why as the OQO seems to last longer.

– I think the battery life is long enough based on the Pocketables info; I am eager to see the first reviews of the released product. Thus far the only reviews were the beta units not the final product.

The cool thing to me with the D4 is that unlike the other UMPC’s including the OQO, Sony, etc. this is the only UMPC that is both jacket pocket in size and has a normal keyboard layout. The problem with OQO is that a thumb input is just not functional for real full Windows usage. The Sony is not too wide to fit in a jacket and also suffers from the same input problems of the OQO. The other UMPC’s are much worse as they are too large to be carried in a jacket pocket and if you can not do that you eithe wear a “man purse” or you might be just better off getting a sub notebook or laptop since you have to carry it anyway.

The D4 is in a different category that blackberries, windows mobile, Iphones, etc. as those do not have the ability to run Full Windows and thus not a full computer. The D4 can be your complete computer on the go since it runs full windows as other UMPC ’s do but the great form factor make it much more attractive and practical to input and carry.

Quote from Pocketables
According to Willcom (and Babelfish):

Approximately 3 times (4.5 hours) actualizing drive time by utilizing the WILLCOM D4 private bulk battery, by comparison with the time of substance bundled standard battery utilization! Compared to Mobile data communication of long haul becomes possible.

Or in non-computer-generated translation terms, the CE-BL58 extended battery’s runtime is three times longer than that of the CE-BL57 standard battery. Direct From Japan (via UMPCPortal) reports that the figures listed on Willcom’s product page actually apply only to WWAN usage, so wi-fi browsing and basic computing runtimes are expected to be longer.

I agree that WM phones have been renowned for poor battery in the phone comparisons but this has usually been in comparison to traditional cell phones and people expect equal battery life.

I work for a mobile company and when you compare Smart Phone vs Smart Phone WM competes fine.

Keep in mind most Smart Phones are the exact same architecture. They all run ARM processors. BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone.

The difference is the OS requirements & bundled software.

1. BlackBerry is tops in battery longevity. However currently they have a poor web browser and are mainly used only for email. Lower requirements = lower cpu = longer battery.

2. Windows Mobile has a wide range of devices going from 200mhz ARM processors that last all day to 624mhz (same as iPhone if I recall) that do not last well. Just in general today for WM6 the average cpu is 400-500mhz. Not many ship with the 624mhz version but some do.

3. iPhone is not a minimalized OS and has huge hardware requirements. It runs the current high end ARM processor (624mhz I believe, 500+ atleast).

Rumor also has it that RIM in the new devices is using higher power processors to catch up with features and are having battery troubles. No kidding!

So compare apples to apples when you say WM is renowned for poor batteries. It had difficulty with consumers because they were comparing it to traditional cell phones which traditionally run sub-50mhz processors.

Btw if your saying WM is on life support, perhaps in internet hype I agree but when you look at sales numbers. MS just doubled last years-same quarter sales which is approximately 4x what apple shipped in the same quarter.

iPhone is a very good device don’t get me wrong but people get blinded by the hype so easily. Don’t speculate, guess etc come with fact.

Out of this entire Smart Phone fire that Apple has created (competition is good remember, it spurs innovation, intel vs amd of the 2000’s) its RIM who should be most worried. Why?

RIM is #1 smart phone seller.
Apple has lit a fire under MS’s ass.
This means Apple MS are going to be innovating back at each other for the next coming years. MS is tripling their WM division size.

So right now its RIM who has to get ready for the wave because Apple & MS are ramping up to be fast and furious.

Sorry to take so much Smart Phone talk to a UMPC forum but I work in this space specifically and monitor UMPC’s as “the future” we may need to adopt and I like to bring realism of what happens in the mobile space oppose to hype.

The OQO has a much larger battery which is why it’ll last longer. Saying that, I hope that OQO will release the next model with a better screen, Menlow and a lower price.

Synced, I’m not sure where you got your informatiom from, but WM devices are renowned for their appalling battery life. There is no way that a WM device can browse the net for 5 hours without a recharge in between.

HTC TyTn II users (known as the AT&T Tilt in the US) don’t go anywhere without a spare battery and/or a charger.

I’ve listend to so many podcasts where the users have complained that the new HTC Diamond has enough battery power to last until mid-afternoon.

Samsung knows about the battery life problem so they ship 2 batteries with their WM devices along with a desktop charger!

WM devices use similar SoCs to the iPhone and I think some may even be using the exact same Samsung SoC. The iPhone and high-end WM devices need a powerful CPU to render webpages.

Apple have also optimised the iPhone software to offload as much processing as possible to the specialised co-processors (such as graphics, video decoding and audio decoding) on the SoC which are far more efficient than the ARM11 CPU. WM devices on the other hand have such poor software/hardware integration that a lof of features of the SoC are rarely used. HTC TyTN II users are threatening a class action against HTC because of the poor video drivers for the device!

If the iPhone had Bluetooth PAN or DUN so I could use it as a data modem, I’d ditch my WM6 device (Samsung i780) in a heartbeat! Unfortunately it is a feature I cannot life without.

Windows Mobile is on life support at the moment and unless a miracle happens, it will die. WM7 seems like a boring evolution of WM6 and is unlikely to entice users back to the platform.

New devices with the next gen ARMv7-based SoCs should be appearing soon. To be honest, I’m surprised so few have been released. The only one I know that has seen the light of day is the Pandora which uses the Cortex-A8 based TI OMAP3.

Cortex-A8… I can’t wait for WWDC 09!

Steve.