We first got wind of two Inkia ultra-mobile devices a month ago when we saw a few renderings and some specs but it seems that at least the 5” version has made it through a sample run and out to some bloggers. There’s an English hands-on write up at Shanzai.com
We’re looking at a fairly basic MID here with a 1.1Ghz Atom CPU, 16GB SSD, 1GB RAM and naturally, the ability to run Linux or Windows. The sample price is around $300 which indicates to me that an end-user XP-licensed price of somewhere around $400 should be expected. Note that there’s no 3G in this though. The battery size is 14wh which means it should, given reasonable engineering quality, run for about 3hrs with WiFi on. Weight is 350gm but size-wise it’s still not as slim as most of us would like it. What I really like about it is the optical mouse pointer and buttons. For lazy-man browsing, it’s a must-have!
The big issue here though is the total lack of hardware or software keyboard. Anyone wanting to buy and brand the device for distribution is going to have to think carefully about that. Without a very good on screen keyboard it’s going to struggle to tempt buyers. Maybe a call to the Dial-Key guys at Fortune Fountain is in order!
