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This is the first-step towards free mininote computers with contracts because Airis and Telefonica (Spain) have got together to subsidise the normal 299 Euro cost of the VIA-based Kira down to 99 Euro when you sign up for ‘Duo 3Mb’ which appears to an ADSL contract at 40 Euro per month.

I find it strange that it’s combined with an ADSL contract because this type of mobile mininote would make a perfect PC for promoting 3.5G Internet contracts. The Phone Shop might start offering it with 3G soon though. According to an article in Business Mobile (France), the mobile phone reseller will start selling it on the 24th April. Expect free 3G USB sticks or heavy discounting.

The Airis Kira is currently in the database as the Pioneer Dreambook Light and is available in Spain and France. It is also known as the Nortec Gecko.

Via Eeextra. Source Linux Wizard

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I’m sorry everyone. UMPCPortal is down due to a storage array problem that has hit my hosting service.

Feel free to browse Carrypad although some of the images here are served by the same server as UMPCPortal!

Steve ‘Chippy’

It’s very interesting to see the physical differences between these two devices. The Mylo is a lot thicker and the screen much smaller. I already think the N810’s screen is too small for 800×480 browsing.

The Mylo 2 keyboard looks better though. One of the issues I have with the N810 is the lack of separation between keys so the Mylo 2 could actually be easier to use.

As Jenn says in her article though, these two devices are targeted at different people and don’t really need to be compared. If I had to choose though, I’d keep the money and put it towards an LG Xnote or Gigabyte MID.

Pocketables: Sony Mylo 2 (Com-2) vs Nokia N810

Two years ago I submitted the first post on Carrypad after spending weeks trying to analyse exactly what device I wanted when my 2 year Vodafone contract was finished. It turned out that nothing fitted my needs and so the definition of a Carrypad was born.

Here’s the first few paragraphs of the first post:

The simple fact is that you’ll never get everything on one device. It wont happen until we evolve better eyes and smaller fingers.
You cant watch a video for any length of time on anything under 3.5″ across.
You cant type at an efficient speed on anything less than a mini-qwerty keyboard.
So why bother trying to cram it all in to one device? i guess the marketing people can answer that question and its probably something to do with customer perception.
If you do buy the all-in-one device though, I can guarantee you wont get the best out of it.

Which runs along the same lines as the two-device strategy post I made yesterday.

The Carrypad definition still holds true. The two defining features - large screen and mini-qwerty keyboard - are the core of a good Carrypad although I have made one important update to the requirement. 3G cellular data access. I would have previously accepted a tethered solution (Bluetooth to mobile phone) but having had devices with it built-in, I know how much more freedom it creates.

Two years on, I still haven’t found the Carrypad. Devices like the Raon Digital Everun get very close but the hole in the market for the ultimate Carrypad device is still there. The LG Xnote, Digifriends and Gigabyte MID’s are looking promising though and i’ll be looking forward to tracking them down at CeBIT in a few weeks.

As for the Vodafone contract, I took a Nokia 6280 then and this time round its a Nokia N82.

Jonathan Greene has written a nice piece on the Nokia Internet Tablets today. He makes some comparisons with Intel MIDs which is well worth reading and I agree with most of it.

• Nokia’s vision for the Internet tablet is good.
• The N810 is more pocketable than most MIDs
• Adding horsepower is not the answer to a positive user experience
• “the multi-part strategy in the Nokia Internet Tablet platform is very compelling for those seeking advanced connectivity, entertainment and productivity”

This is not the whole equation of course, but the points are important ones.

For example, in the really high-volume market for mobile communications I don’t think the customers will want a single, large device like the SE Xperia, Nokia e90 or HTC Advantage. People want one small phone with a camera, ‘texting’, music features and possibly GPS-related features. They might want to get some cool Internet-capable apps on their screens too and that will probably be about it for the next 3 years.

Some of these people will want video and Internet though and this is where the two-device strategy comes into play. Just like some people carry a reading book, PMP or Walkman, this subset will be looking for a second device that gives them the video and Internet.

It looks like Nokia will be a big player in this multi-part strategy and as I’ve said before, I think ARM-based platforms could gain a lot of early wins but as time goes on and as the market matures into mainstream, the x86-based devices will be there too. The software, size and battery life gap will close because all parties understand that these are important issues to solve. We’ll see some excellent devices from both sides.

As customers, I think we’re always going to be winners because those 4 points above seem to be understood by most players now and to us, it really doesn’t matter what’s under the hood as long as it works to our expectations.

This image has just been un-earthed by Ricky (Symbian-Guru) and posted at TabletBlog.com

Could it be a refresh with WiMax, just a colour change or something more significant? A new processor perhaps?

Dan has some thoughts and another pic over at TabletBlog.

The HTC Advantage gets some very rave reviews from people saying they can get a lot of work done it. I agree, its an excellent device but would it be as good if you took the 3G modem, keyboard, Cam and GPS out of it? How about if you could have it in stripped-down version for half the price?  If you’ve got the right mobile phone, it could be exactly what you need for mobile Internet duties.

Image via Brighthand 

In a way, the Ipaq 210/214 (214 is the EU-version) is the N800 of the Windows mobile world. It doesn’t have quite the high resolution but on the up-side, there are some pretty good browsing solutions for it. In some respects its even better than the N800. It has a more mature software set. It has a faster, 624Mhz XScale Monahans, processor. It has SD (with SDHC+SDIO) and CF slots. It has a mobile office suite. It has an unrivaled set of 3rd-party applications and accessories.

Brighthand have just reviewed the 210 and said:

Witness what the Brighthand home page–a very complex site–looks like in full VGA glory. Not only can you render complicated sites in something pretty close to their original form, but you can still read the text when you’re done.

No time-wasting zooming to read text!

If you’re like me and want your 24/7 mobile phone to be small and capable then you’re not going to want a VGA-capable mobile phone and if spending Euro 800-1000 on a UMPC doesn’t appeal but you still want Windows Mobile ‘productivity’ and a reasonable Internet experience I recon the Ipaq 210/214 is an excellent choice.

If this had an 800×480 4.5″ screen and a Cortex processor, I would have already bought one. As it is, I’m considering selling the N810 and testing out an Ipaq 214 to see how it compares to the Raon Digital Everun as my grab-it device.

I have trouble imagining what customer actually want’s one of these but, for some strange reason, I like the idea of having one despite the fact that I know I would never use it!

It’s basically an iPod Touch /  Nokia N810 mix that could find a good home on campus or with people that carry small, feature-starved fashion phones and still want to be able to communicate while in the cafe. For teens that aren’t permitted PC’s in their bedrooms this could also make the perfect gift from a rebellious Uncle.

In terms of marketing, I think it’s going up the same road as the Pink Eee PC.

Keep a watch on Pocketables to get the latest thoughts from an iPhone, N810, Pink Eeepc-owning fan!

While many of us are waiting for Cortex-based mobile Internet devices to appear in late 2008, there is one little stepping stone that could form an impressive bridge into the next-gen for ARM-based devices. Its the multi-core capable ARM11 architechture (MPCore.)

A little research reveals that up to four cores can be combined to produce some impressive processor performance figures. Think 4 Nokia N810 cores working together!

Nvidia have taken it a step further though and licensed the architecture from ARM to built a system on chip, the APX 2500, that includes 3D and hi-end video processing to make, what appears to be, a bloody impressive system. The 3D support means that developers can do cool stuff with UI’s. The video support means it will work as a PVR for HD content and the multi-core capability (it’s not clear if Nvidia have actually implemented multiple cores) boosts performance for operating systems that can handle it.

SlashGear/PhoneMag got an impressive demo.

More information at Nvidia’s website.

Any ARM specialists care to comment on the MPCore element? How many operating systems out there can take advantage of it? WM? LiMo? Android?

Personally, I think this is the processor that we’ll see in the SE Xperia. I hope they have a big battery ready! 

In a recent moblogging test I was rather shocked to hear my smartphone sound the low-battery warning sound after only 45 minutes on the go! I was playing music, doing a live GPS track and running an IM program at the same. No calls, no gaming, no web surfing! While I was out, I blogged about the problem (from my UMPC.) Yes I was pretty annoyed and you’ll see that from the text.

I should have known better because I’ve seen this problem before. Only a few weeks earlier I had killed the same device in 4 hours while playing with it on a train. I had also heard about Robert Scoble, the guy that live video blogs using an N95, getting only 40 minutes from his device and I had even been told by engineers that 3G uploads simply take a huge amount of energy.

When I got home, I re-charged the device fully and did a static test using the same apps. Music playing, live GPS tracking (I use Nokia Sports Tracker) and IM via Gizmo. I left the device alone and didn’t use it. After 110 minutes it switched off indicating a 2.1W average drain from the 3.7wh battery.

I then did the same test and turned off UMTS (running on the old, lower power GPRS/GSM standard instead.) This time I got 3 hours indicating an average drain of 1.2W.

Standby power on a Nokia N82 is 15mw

Estimated ‘normal phone use’ is about 36 hours. (A few emails, a bit of music, calendar activities, some SMS’s and 5 phone calls) which is about a 100mw average drain.

The results:

Always-on Internet applications increases the average power requirement of a smartphone by a minimum of 1000% and up to 3000%

Let me take a reality kick. 2.1W average drain is amazing.  ARM and Nokia should be applauded for squeezing so much out of a device that can do so much. The best x86-based UMPCs take about 8W to do the same.

I’ll take a second reality kick because not many people actually do this in real life.Granted, this is a fairly leading-edge test.

I’ll take a third kick too because technology will improve.

BUT….

If you do want to be ‘always connected’ on a high speed network today (and many many people do) you need a HUGE battery. For the average 16 hour day on a smartphone, you need nine batteries which would weigh 200g making your phone, using the smallest possible components today, over 300gm in weight. [*1] That’s close to the size of the Intel MIDs.

Even using low-speed Internet access (like the iPhone does) you would need a device looking something like this:

And putting it into ‘real’ terms. If you went online for 4 hours per day, which I think will be the norm once people start to get used to web, email, IM and YouTube on the go, you would need a battery three times as big. 10wh. If it was possible to do it, the usage figures would sky-rocket once people learn how to be live on their tailored facebook widget or available on their Skype service all day.

And another thing, You won’t want this all-day device in your pocket all-day! It would be at least twice the volume of a current smartphone and trust me, 3W generates a lot of heat when it’s in your pocket.

The last point I want to make here is that despite the big talk about low-power CPU’s from ARM and Intel, it doesn’t really matter any more for Mobile Internet. In average ‘background activity’ mobile Internet conditions. the biggest power drains are the radios. (Don’t even get me started on simultaneous 3G and Wifi use!)  and other components that both Intel and ARM has similar access too. Neither has exclusive rights on low-power radio tech. Neither has rights to magic backlighting technology either. Considering Intel now has CPU’s that idle down to fractions of a watt and average less than a watt drain, the playing field is all of a sudden very level.

The next time you hear a Nokia or Intel exec talking about all-day always-connected Internet in your pocket, think about those batteries!

*1 - I used a new Nokia N82 in this test.

I like the little Archos 605 Wifi but not because its a portable device with a browser. Mine is serving time under my TV as an Internet TV and PVR unit with the docking station and remote control.

The reason I don’t use it as a mobile Internet device is 1) Because it’s WiFi only. 3G is easier and cheaper for me than Wifi when I’m on the go. 2) The processing power and browser software just aren’t up to scratch.

It looks like problem number 1 will be solved with the next-gen Archos devices because Archos have signed an HSDPA deal with SFR. I’m not sure why they need to sign a deal. Maybe SFR will offer it discounted with their own content portal. As it’[s being sold in France it can’t be locked to a provider either so it’s bound to appear in other countries in Europe.

Let hope they get problem number 2 sorted out with an upgrade to Opera 9.5 and a faster CPU. If they do that, it will be a much more flexible solution than the 605 and a serious competitor to the iPod Touch.

Via GottaBeMobile

Source: Electronista and ArchosFans

In short, the ARM Cortex A8-based CPUs are about 2-3 times more powerful than the CPU’s in the most powerful smartphones available today. When you compare it to Menlow in it’s low-end MID-targeted setup, its in the same ball-park.  So what we’re seeing is:

• Texas Instruments offering a mobile-Internet hardware platform on which a Linux-based core will run.
• Intel offering a mobile-Internet hardware platform  on which a Linux-based core will run

I’m very pleased to see Cortex being promoted for use as an Android platform. It won’t be the only platform of course but it does mean that we could see relatively high-end Android phones in late 2008.

Image and news: Engadget Mobile.

My Pay-as-you-go SIM card from Vodafone arrived yesterday. It cost 20 Euros (with 10 Euros of credit on the contract) and its going to form the last part of my 4-tier mobile Internet connectivity plan for my cloud-based applications and storage, both at home/office and when i’m mobile.

Tier 1 is, of course, my home broadband connection. Cable. 6mbps / 600kbps upload. Bundled with Digital TV, digital radio and telephony its a great value package for the home (which is also my office.)

Tier 2 is a 200MB per month HSDPA 7.2Mbps-capable, business-level Internet access contract from Vodafone. The SIM card normally sits in my Everun which I use when I’m out. It can also act as a hotspot if Tier1 fails or if I’m out and need to share a connection. 200MB is a lot of data and unless you are downloading big documents or wanting to do always-on work, it works well. Costs - 20 Euro per month.

Tier 3 is a flat-rate html/http proxied access service from Vodafone. This service is on my mobile phone voice contract and actually acts as an always-on Tier1 for email, rss, IM, A-gps and maps when I’m mobile. In certain situations, I might use this as a short-term Bluetooth tethered connection for devices that don’t have built-in HSDPA. Cost - 10 Euro per month.

Tier 4 is the new addition that will act as fall-back for everything. When needed I can use this as a business-level flat-rate Internet access service for 15 Euros per day. I don’t expect to use this much at all but there might be mobile situations where I need it because soon, my Tier 2 will switch to T-Mobile HSDPA+hotspot, thus spreading the risk over 2 providers. Tier 4 also includes an element of cheap roaming capability.

For mobile professionals that rely on the Internet, a tiered access strategy is a must and at 30 Euros/month, its easy to justify in a business situation. This PAYG solution makes an even cheaper solution for people wanting to use Internet on a daily basis too.

Do you have a connectivity strategy? What about U.S. readers. The strategy above would be very difficult to set up would it not?

Note: I live in Germany.

I’ve just installed Maps 2.0 on my Nokia N82. This is mobile Internet at its best and its a big upgrade from the previous version. Apart from some nice UI changes, there’s some nice new features.

Firstly, the very important live search facility has been added. Its easy and it picked up my local restaurants first go. It seems to be puling info from Nokia and not from partner search engines. This is good and bad. Good because it allows them to keep the quality of POI’s high. Bad because POI’s go out of date very quickly. There’s a live traffic update facility. (20 Euro per year with daily and weekly options too) which doesn’t seem to be working for me at the moment but if you look at the settings, it can be used for auto-routing. Having traffic info over the net makes so much more sense than having to but an FM receiver for the existing services. There’s satellite imagery which, again, is limited in the area I’m in right now but I can see how that will advance. There’s a better walking mode and a lot of UI changes which include on-screen info like speed, Kbyte usage ad quick access to view modes when navigating.

Here’s a brief look at Maps2.0 running on the N82.

[Apologies for the Kylie Minogue background. I was listening to the new single 'Wow' and 'I should be so lucky' auto-queued after it! How embarrassing!]

I plan to get out in the car (or by foot perhaps!) and do some more testing later.

Just imagine what they can do with this in V3.0 - Live user info, friend tracking, live advertising, alerting. I try not to use the expression ‘killer-app’ but I really think that the combination of smartphone, GPS, compass (on the new 6210) maps and live Internet access to POIs and traffic is something amazing. I was using the Raon Digital Everun in the car but it looks like the N82 is going to take over car duties. The N82 will do everything in the car that I did with the Everun. Music, phone, Internet, navigation.

Nokia Maps2 beta is available at Nokia’s betalabs  site.