The N82 arrived. Oh my oh my. The spec list was impressive enough. Then I open the box and find an a/v cable - its got video-out capability. Then I dive into the UI, its fast. Then I dive into the browser, its like the E90, fairly slow but way better than my S40 browser. Then I rotate the device, the screen follows. Then I go into the map application, give it permission to use A-GPS and the damn think locks in about 10 seconds. I'm sitting at my desk for goodness sake. That's not supposed to happen.

Nokia, please put the N82 inside an N810 casing. It will be my Carrypad.

Now to try the cam.......

Oh no. Give me a break. That's far too good.

Noooo. N-Gage goodness.

Tested the GPS again and it locked in 10 seconds in the middle of my house.

Snakes. Awesome!

Oh YES, even the IMAP email client is fast  to Gmail. That beats the N810 with no problem.

UPnP shows my server....plays music....sounds OK on speakers (better than most UMPCs)

Streaming radio via TwonkyMedia server (UPnP again)......taking some time to start.......Nope. That doesn't work. I bet it will stream direct from the media player so no need for streaming via a UPnP server.

DivX videos from media server. Nope. Thats not working.

Radio...works.

Podcast download app. Nice. Easy access to directories. Supports video podcasts. Just subscribed to Rocketboom. Just like that. Its updating over Wifi.

Video player has a YouTube application. Doesnt seem to work at the moment though.

So far, i'm rather impressed. I'll write up something a little more structured after I've got totally familiar with it but for the price, its amazing!

Headset doesn't fit in my ears. That damn annoying but the sound quality is terrible anyway. I hope that's the headset and not the device.....yup...its the headset...phew.

Testing USB connection. Works. Will even act as a media device. Copying files to the device very slow. Could be a cheap SD card. Should be 5 times as fast as what I'm seeing though.

Playback quality of MP3 on my Koss Titaniums is sooooo nice.

OK. I'm going to have to leave it there. Maybe i'll make a phone call with it now!!!

It's not the most exciting video but its about all I can find at the moment (I'm on a constant lookout for info on the Mylo 2!) There's a series of unboxing videos in sfitzjva's channel in YouTube. The Sony Mylo 2 is shipping now though so expect to see some good reviews coming out in the next week.

I'm tracking links and good reviews as I find them and putting them in the product database. They will all appear on the Sony Mylo 2 info page so keep checking back (Or track the RSS feed.)

Its time to move up a notch with my smartphone. I've been using a Nokia 6280 3G feature-phone for the last two years and it's been fantastic but now that the back has fallen off and the front is cracked its time to buy a new one.

The requirements list went something like this:

• Small
• HSDPA
• 3MP+ digital camera with decent optics
• Video recording (VGA @ 30fps)
• Series 60
• GPS

So after I read a few N82 reviews, there seemed to be no question that it was for me. The 5mp camera, direct-to-mpeg4 video, xenon flash, auto screen-rotate, 3.5mm headphone socket and FM radio (old skool I know!) had me sold so I ordered one that should be here tomorrow.

Now I read that it's got integrated WiFi too. Holy crap! WiFi will be good at home as I'll use my SIP account for cheap calls to the UK and I can stream music from my uPnP server. (Yes, the N82 supports uPnP too!)

I can hardly believe i've paid just 450 Euro for all this tech gadgetry. (Without a contract) Expect some full-on moblogging action (sans my normal Canon S2IS camera) later this week as I'm off to the hills for a few days away with the family. You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to the 5 hours train journey!!!

Next step - find a nice fat HSDPA data contract. T-Mobile Germany is at the top of the list at the moment due to their good coverage and inclusion of a big hotspot network. When I've done that then i'll be able to hook-up any UMPC or notebook via USB for full productivity at 3.6mbps speeds in nearly any town location or via Bluetooth for lower speeds almost anywhere.

We're getting to the point where smartphones are powerful enough to do any tasks given a users time, patience and the flexibility to learn a new operating system. Maybe the addition of a RedFly keyboard and screen is going to provide many people with as much as they need while on the move. Another chunk of uniqueness taken away from the UMPC market? I don't know yet but I'm going to have a jolly good go at finding out.

Chippy.

I've retro-fitted my TV with a new Internet, streaming media, uPnP-capable, portable device solution. Its not Apple TV or anything big and cumbersome like that, its the device that didn't make the MID grade. The Archos 605 Wifi . I've entered a new world of uPnP and online TV on demand. My productivity has gone through the floor. Its great!

I bought the 605 WiFi last November to test its mobile Internet capabilities and it failed miserably. From a MID perspective it was slow, unsatisfying and only had WiFi. It has been in the cupboard-of-shame ever since.

Until last week that is, when my wife briefly mentioned getting a flat screen TV in the bedroom. Not being a big fan of the TV-in-the-bedroom concept I threw the idea away. Those wifey types are crafty though aren't they. Damn them! Only 24 hours later I was watching Cranky Geeks in my bed on a UMPC and the seed sprouted. Wouldn't it be nice to watch it on a flat screen TV on the wall in the bedroom.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

My wife should be in marketing. The subliminal type.

What if I could put a PVR up here and get all my videos and English TV [we live in Germany] and start syncing video podcasts into the server and... and, and, and. (You know how those thought-chains get out of hand right?)

At first I thought about MythTV but having done that project 4 years ago and having spent way too many hours on it I started looking for a simple solution. What I needed was a simple solution and that's where the 605 WiFi thought came in. I had done a successful impromptu test in the UK with High School Musical (oh how the kids loved me) and a 5-hour music mix on new years eve. The 605 had worked easily and flawlessly. I remembered that there was a DVR station add-on with SPdif and S-Video output and it was beginning to sound perfect. This wasn't going to be a HD setup but seeing as I didn't have any HD sources it would probably be fine.

Using the battery docking station I was able to rig it up on a test TV (the main TV in the living room) and start messing around. I fired-up a uPnP server (TwonkyMedia on my favorite distro, OpenSuse 10.3) in the cellar and BANG! there was everything. Working, with a nice UI, my SMB shares, Internet widgets and....wait a minute, there was YouTube in full-screen glory. Cranky Geeks too. The thing that suprised me the most though was that the browser was enjoyable. Using it on a TV like this puts the slow browser into perspective. The last time I had really looked at searchable info on a TV was while waiting for page 26 of 52 to come round on the Teletext road traffic site. Opera on the 605 Wifi is light-years ahead in comparison and this change of context made it incredibly impressive. After installing the Archos PC-based podcast sync software (it would have been nice to have this as an application on the 605 itself) I was soon catching up on old Diggnation and CrankyGeeks episodes. Awesome!

But now I have another problem. The Archos 605 Wifi is a better playback device than my Mini-ITX PVR that I built 4 years ago. It boots in 5 seconds (current PVR takes 3 minutes as it is diskless and boots over the network) it's silent and it supports uPnP which is so much easier than SMB or NFS shares. The best thing is that it's highly portable. I probably won't use it myself as a PMP but I know my daughter will love it in the car. I still need to add the DVR station accessory which gives the ability to use a remote control and do recordings but I plan to order that ASAP for even lazier on-sofa Internet action.

I think we can call that a success...

Oops! The wife. She wanted a new TV didn't she. I wanted Cranky Geeks in bed and my solution, the 605 Wifi, is now installed in the living room and I don't want to move it upstairs. Do I buy a second 605 Wifi or do I go for something else.

[Here comes the UMPC part.]

I was looking at the prices of the LCD and plasma TV panels and thinking - mmm. Expensive. And thinking... 'What about getting a simple PC panel and feeding it data through the VGA connector.' What about using the Everun and the docking station with a DVB-T module. Mmm. A tad under-powered for this applications. Looking at the WiBrain B1H sitting on my desk I remembered the DVD-capable docking station and the WiBrain's ability to stream well from the Internet....Bingo!

So that's where I am right now. The 605 is working well in the living room, i'm ordering the PVR station and am starting to work on the WiBrain. The WiBrain will be tested with a USB DVB-T stick and Sage TV. I'll use the VGA-out dongle for testing and when the docking station comes out, I'm going to connect the DVB-T sitck to that, add some powered speakers and connect permanently to a LCD monitor. If it works, the WiBrain B1H will be the smallest XP-based media center possible and a really tidy solution.

I'll be blogging about the WiBrain PVR project on UMPCPortal so stay tuned over there for progress reports and if you have any suggestions or ideas, please let me know.

Dan, aka Thoughtfix, got a an interview with Nokia when he was at CeBIT CES a few weeks ago and has written it up in his blog today. There's no breakthrough news in it but its a very good read.

One question I would have asked: "How do you feel about Intel developing and pushing X86-based Linux devices right into your target sector."

TabletBlog.com

I'm a little surprised to see the Readius product nearing 'availability so quickly. It has been demo'd before but this time, they're talking prices and timescales!

It's black and white, has the typical slow refresh rate of e-ink display, has GSM voice capability, mini SD card slot, MP3 playback capability and the software supports static page formats like RSS and e-books. It weighs 115gm and is based on an ARM11 processor at 400Mhz running a Linux kernel.

Will hit stores in mid-2008.

Reuters reports that it will cost as much as a high-end smartphone. Quite what that means is anyone's guess but don't expect it to be cheap!

Lets imagine this in the future.2009: faster refresh rate, better contrast? 2010: Thinner, refresh rate for video?  2011 Economies of scale reached for mass market B&W browsing and media? 2012 Colour. 2013 Touch? Touch! Wow, I can't imagine how they will manage to integrate a touch layer in this and keep it reliable!

It will be a while before we see this in the mass market but it will be an important one to watch over the coming years.

Polymer Vision will be at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in Feb so expect to see more news then.

Source: Reuters

If this isn't the biggest signal yet that the Internet is coming to a mobile device near you soon then I must have been reading the wrong 150 news feeds.

One of the biggest social networking sites, Facebook, is teaming up with one of the biggest mobile phone companies, Nokia, in a way that will bring Facebook to your hand wherever you are.  It looks like Nokia might even be interested in buying a piece of Facebook too!

Facebook isn't exactly the be all and end all of the Internet and in fact, being an old-school Internet user that dates from before even Archie existed, its not even a tiny fraction of my own Internet space (although I did actually register last month!) but for some now, and for many in the future, it could be the only Internet space they use. It's more Internet 2 than Internet 2!

In the future there will be a generation of kids that get their first taste of Internet freedom through their mobile phones and Facebook could be the only application they use. Why wait to fire-up a notebook or dedicated mobile Internet device when you can punch out a quick email before the bell rings for end of class!

This is very significant.

Original: Paidcontent. Via Guardian unlimited

A new viral marketing  campaign has surfaced for a product that appears to  suggest modular mobile  computing.

Best guess: A  Mini phone with display, cpu  and radios in a compact flash size package  (or  PCI-e?)  that docks into a range  of  lifestyle devices.

You can find the website here but note that you can find a big list of job openings here which indicates that this product might not  be ready for launch just  yet.

JKK has some  more thoughts on this over at JKKMobile.

The Pocketsurefer2 is probably one of the most mobile and most Internet focused devices there is. In fact, its the only thing it does and I've heard it said before that Pocketsurfer can download almost any web page in under 10 seconds which is pretty impressive seeing as most smartphones take, on average, double that time. Even some of the UMPCs can take longer than that.

Note that this is a visual-only Internet experience. There's no sound or video support and all traffic is routed through proxy servers which may cause problems with session management but for many people, that's not going to be of concern, especially at the UKP170 price which includes data for a year! Pocketables have written up a lot of detail on the device so it's worth going over there to read more about it but there's also a video too which demos the device in use.

I think I'll add this to the 'consumer Internet category in the database and try and get hold of a demo somehow. I'm sure it will be at CeBIT in March so I'll add it to my 'hit' list.

Source: Pocketables.

Just listening to the latest Engadget podcast with the guys that run Engadget. They get into an interesting discussion about where the Mylo 2 fits in and discuss the issue of who is actually going to buy one when the Nokia Internet Tablets and iPod Touch are available.

No mention of Intel MID's unfortunately. I don't think it will take long though until people include them in these sort of conversations though because Internet browsing is going to be so much more enjoyable in a Menlow-based device then on these mid-range ARM platforms.

Engadget Podcast. 110.

Its the old dongle problem again. Nice industrial design, good specs (WinCE might not be to everyone's tastes though) good looking UI and good screen size/resolution, but there's no built in comm's radio. No Wifi or Bluetooth means no Internet mobility unless you want to plug in an SDIO card which AFAIK isn't exactly a quick and easy option.

Specifications:

• 4.8" 800x480 screen
• VIdeo in (PVR function) and video out
• 55-key metal keypad
• SDIO slot
• USB
• WinCE 5.0 pro
• 30/60 GB HDD options
• Video codec support: MPEG, DivX, WMV 7/8/9, H.264

CrunchGear got some hands-on at CES and report a MSRP of $599

It’s a slick looking little machine that caught my eye quicker than a booth babe holding a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. - Crunchgear

As a mobile PVR it looks nice but it has to have at least some Wifi support before I start to get interested. Not a mobile Internet device.

Via Crunchgear.

Kaon Mobile website (click the 'inquiry' tab for access to a spec. PDF.)

Qualcomm are showing off a couple of mobile platforms at CES.  They aren't UMPCs or even x86 devices but they're certainly Mobile Internet targeted. On the lower image, the platform known as 'Ancorage' (Also shown above next to an iPhone) is running Windows Mobile.

Both this demonstrator and the 'Fairbanks' variant are running the 'snapdragon' platform which I wrote about recently. Its a Ghz-capable platform utilising the scorpion, Cortex A8 ARM architechture. HTC and Samsung have already shown interest in this and I personally think its going to be going head-to-head with Intel's Menlow. Take a look at some MIDs that have been shown at CES. The target markets are exactly the same.

Gigabyte MID on Menlow platform.

Qualcomm are just showing these off as demonstrators of their mobile platform and it looks like they're made by Inventec but the focus is clear - Mobile Internet!

Source: Geek.com. Thanks for the tip Stfu!

I think Engadget were expecting a similar let-down as with the original Mylo but they seem pretty impressed.

The browser is based on Netfront and they say it works but is 'pretty sluggish.'  They've got some more specs up too.

The screen is 3.5" which is going to be tough for those with anything less than perfect sight. Its priced at $300, has 1Gb of internal storage (no indications of any storage card slot)

At $300 it's not going head to head with the N810 but as I said before, it might be perfect for someone wanting music, video, IM, skype and browsing on the go.

The Gizmodo video is nice and shows YouTube running (seems to work OK but the page build speed is comparable with the N810 or other mid-range ARM-based devices.) and the camera which, unlike the Nokia tablets, has a decent UI and even basic editing software.

Take a look at the video here.

All in all I think its going to work well for 16-25 year olds that are hanging around in bars and cafe's with free Wifi hotspots. Without Bluetooth though there's no way to hook up a mobile phone and that's seriously limiting. It has the keyboard advantage over the iPod Touch making it more of a communicator than a media device, especially as it only has 1GB of storage. But...A hotspot-only communicator. Mmm. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen some more reviews and hands-on.

Engadget hands-on and specifications.

Jenn of Pocketables has spotted the new Sony Mylo2 and it looks like there's a big big Internet focus in the specifications. An 800x480 screen means desktop-style browsing (although the details of the browser aren't yet known. 'Enhanced browsing' doesn't exactly make it crystal clear what's going on underneath the hood!) and with Wifi and the slide-out keyboard it should keep the facebook fans very happy indeed.

Will it be a Nokia Tablet competitor? Yes! Will it be an iPod Touch competitor? Yes! Its not going to be a high end mobile Internet device but it might hit the mark for a whole lot of new Internet consumers.

Jenn is just about to go into the Sony press conference so keep an eye out for more news on her blog.

Pocketables