I’ve been trying to use mobile operating systems for productive and full-computing scenarios for years and although things are getting better by the day, there are still major issues to be solved. Even the latest tailored hardware and software solutions are littered with unexpected restrictions, bugs, showstoppers and even costs. As I continue to test devices like the Acer Iconia Tab A500 and iPad I am making a list of functions that I can perform on a desktop operating system but not on a consumer or mobile operating system that you might find in a tablet. You’ll find an early ‘issues’ list here.  I’m largely talking about Android or IOS here.

The issues fall into 3 categories.

• Issues that are a result of hardware. This varies between platforms and is also sometimes dependant on drivers and software. E.g. Bluetooth support. Many of these issues are dropping away as ARM platforms evolve, some of these issues are because of the design requirements (battery, size, heat)
• Issues that are a result of operating restrictions. Operating systems will evolve but each evolution is taking 6 months to 1 year.
• Issues that are there simply because the third party software may not have been written yet.

The latter category is one we can ignore. If tablets or other devices based on mobile operating systems are successful, the software will come. Lets look at the other two categories though.

Hardware Issues

• Video editing software and hardware. While software may exist, the CPU, hardware encoders and possible GPU acceleration may not be in place. The only exception is the ipad2, iphone4 and Ios which use the capabilities of the A4 chip very well. It may be quite a while before generic cross-platform solutions appear.
• USB host support. In some cases the platform only supports USB client. This affect many devices people commonly use like webcams, printers, video capture cards and many other device you’ll find in the high-street PC store.
• Keyboards on tablets. Arguable that this isn’t neccesary if you’ve already chosen a tablet but we’ll leave it in the list for discussions sake.
• High-capacity storage. 100+GB support is often required by those dealing with media.
• Other interfaces such as serial (often used for control and data collection) pci-express. USB based solutions can solve this if the drivers are built into the operating system.
• Extendable GPUs through docking stations or modules
• General processing power (CPU)

Operating system issues

• Extended languages and keyboard support
• External screen capability. This includes extended desktop and multiple interface support. Also needed in the OS
• Drag and drop (of selected text, audio, image, file, video.)
• Bluetooth stack. Software is generally the issue here and it’s usually an operating system issue.
• Full web experience including mouse-over support. Some third party software may fix this is mouse or other pointer support is provided by the OS.
• Multi-user support with associated security mechanisms. Generally a core operating system issue.
• Extending device support through installable, pluggable drivers.
• Extended IP stack to support routing, multiple.interfaces and other IP features like file sharing protocols. This can be implemented in third party software.
• Multiple sound module support for live audio performances with pre-fade. This is also a hardware issue.

3rd party software

For discussions sake, i’ve included a few software issues here.

• Offline blogging tools. A third party software issue that will get solved in time. (I’m impressed with the progress of Blogsy on the iPad)
• Office suites. Third party issue although core format support, encryption, media handling, drag and drop / copy paste, synchronization support can be due to operating system. Again, IOS is probably leading the way here.
• Full feature browsers. (Mouse-over support in the OS could be needed here too)
• Software development tools. 3rd party issue that also requires keyboard, mouse and often, external / extended screen support too.

Having listed a bunch of items above, we have to now ask ourselves whether they are important and if they are, are they likely to be fixed. Certainly the web browser issues are serious, the CPU power issues are too where the operating system runs on an ARM design and you have to think carefully about multi-user and expansion through third party devices on USB. That’s a big market! Issues like IP stack, multiple audio modules and extended screen are less important. Third party software issues will solve themselves as devices move into different markets and the customer-based there becomes big enough to support the creation and support of the software. As for the hardware issues, don’t expect 500GB storage soon but do look for alternative storage solutions via local or remote wireless connections.

What about that keyboard though? Is it still an issue? For many operations, it’s a barrier. Tablets are popular now but is there still a desire for a keyboard. I’m sitting in front of a tablet writing this post now only because it’s got a full keyboard attached.

My gaps

I want a mobile video editing system with blogging client and full browser capabilities. The video encoding hardware on the iPad has shown breakthrough capabilities in iMovie for the price and size . Keyboard input is important though so I would want a robust keyboard solution. Offline blogging tools are required. Full browser too. The ipad2 + keyboard is getting very close to a usable solution for me but it still has showstoppers. Cabled internet for high-speed video upload, full browser with flash, mouse-over, side-by-side windows for drag and drop, external screen, ability to edit non-iPhone videos in iMovie. I’m still a huge proponent of the smartbook and hope that we see more work going into these because that’s where I see most of the gaps being filled for me. Windows 8 could be the stepping stone to an interesting smartbook / convertible / slider design. Like the TX100 perhaps!

Your Gaps

What are the ‘gaps’ that you see between a full computing solution and a consumer mobile OS solution.

Not only is the Viewpad 10pro one of the first Oaktrail-based (Intel Atom Z670) tablets to ship, it’s also the first with Bluestacks on it. Bluestacks is an ‘Android player’ that simulates an Android environment in order to run Android programs. Like Myriad Dalvic Turbo, it’s a system with a lot of unanswered questions. Sideloading, GPS, network usage, power, speed.

But first, let’s talk about the Viewpad 10pro. It was spotted as available in the USA by Liliputing yesterday and checks on the European side of the pond indicate that it’s already shipping in a few countries. 560 Euro gets you a 32GB, Win 7 HP version with 2GB of RAM and the aforementioned Bluestacks Android player in Germany. I’m also seeing it in the UK.

Viewsonic Viewpad 10 Pro in the product database.

With a weight of 800gm we’re getting into some interesting territory and if the battery is 36Wh as I’ve calculated, we should be looking at 5hrs life on this platform. Viewsonic claim ‘up to 8hrs’ which is possible I guess, in idle situations. The downside to the Oaktrail platform is performance. You’re looking at a 1.5Ghz CPU which is slower than the first-generation Atom netbooks. Graphics won’t be up to much either with a netbook-level performance again. If fast SSD and memory has been implemented then there’s some hope for a smooth Windows 7 experience but don’t expect too much. Browsing should be fairly quick compared to consumer tablets but don’t expect to do a/v editing work on this.

As for Android, it’s an interesting addition to the platform. The core system is known at hyperDroid, technically a hosted hypervisor which emulates the Android hardware environment and runs within Windows. As you can probably guess, there’s no way to shutdown or idle Windows while the hosted Android system is running so you won’t get any battery life advantages but with switching times in the 1-second range, you at least get the ability to run Android apps when you wish without having to go through a multi-boot process.

According to Bluestacks documentation (Bluestacks hyperDroid PDF, More here.), the file system is shared, networking is shared and simultaneous use also possible. As for emulating hardware like GPS, accelerometer and other hardware, that would be implementation independent and it’s the bit we’re going to have to wait for reviews on.

Performance in Bluestacks should be quite good so there’s some potential for gaming but do note that this is Android Open Source and not a Google Android build. That means you won’t be getting Gmail, Maps and all the other interesting Google apps. Having been through that before on a number of devices and had to deal with sideloading of apps, I wonder just how much use it will get over time.

We’re in touch with Viewsonic and are trying to arrange a review sample for an interesting live session. Stay tuned.

Update: In Europe there is going to be a follow-up model which will be better optimized for Bluestacks and a 2.3 build of Android. Please note that the current batch of Viewpad 10pro devices are optimised for Windows although they do include a Bluestacks build. The new model will start shipping in 2-4 weeks. We will be getting an early model early next week for testing.

Viewsonic Viewpad 10 Pro in the product database along with a list of comparable devices.

It’s clear that tablets are moving to the enterprise. The iPad has already infiltrated many markets (pilots are getting iPads to carry  manuals for example) and you’ll find them in many media companies. Android is moving that way too with Honeycomb leaning towards touch and mouse input methods. The operating systems are moving forward quickly (although there are still many limits) and the apps are following. What about the hardware though? Can you plug a keyboard and mouse into an Android tablet and get to work in a corporate fashion? Cisco seems to think so and on analyzing some more information and hands-on with the Cisco Cius, I’m liking what I see. This is a very flexible thin-client and mobile computing device that could show the way for true pro-mobile computing solutions of the future.

Android, Intel, Tablet are three words that many wouldn’t really expect to go together but it’s no secret that Intel have been working on Android for well over a year. They’ve been working on core items like power control and trying to dovetail the software with their new ultra-mobile platforms. The version of Atom inside the Cisco Cius is unique in that it can’t run Windows – another surprise from Intel. I also note that we’re seeing an non-Windows Intel tablet from a major brand here. Isn’t that what Intel wanted to do with MeeGo and Nokia?

Cisco Cius specifications, links, gallery available through our Cisco Cius information page.

Moving on, the tablet is only half of the product because the media dock is the really interesting bit. Docks are worth their weight in gold, especially when it’s one that’s a feature-rich as this.

• 3 USB ports

• 3.5-mm headset jack

• 10/100/1000-Gbps switch ports for wired connections and Power over Ethernet (PoE)

• Additional speaker for wideband hands-free communications

• DisplayPort^™ to connect to a larger display for an immersive video experience and for a virtualized desktop experience

• Two handset options: standard and slimline

So lets summarise that as  a quality docking station.

A bit more about the tablet software. It includes support for Cisco’s secure remote applications architecture. It’s thin-client for the big-boys basically and it integrates with cisco’s security, VPN and prioritisation support on their routers. A ‘VXI Endpoint’ is the Cisco term for this.

You’ve also got a Cisco marketplace with approved apps and a separate API and developer community. One assumes the IT people can remove access to the Google Market because that’s there too highlighting the fact that this is a fully approved X86 build of Android. Intel have done well to get past this point because it means a lot of value-add for their customers. One wonders if it could affect the value of Intels AppUp solution.  The Cisco store includes apps from Citrix, VMWare and Wyse for remote access solutions although these are available in the market. [I'm using Wyse Pocket Cloud Pro to test Android to Vista server remote desktop right now. It's nice to see Chrome on the Android screen.]

The Android build is only 2.2 unfortunately. Intel are working on Honeycomb but it’s not clear if Cisco will roll-out that upgrade for the Cius. I assume it would be a big software job.

Cisco Cius specifications, links, gallery available through our Cisco Cius information page.

Don’t forget that you’ve also got:

• HD video encoder hardware on the front facing cam. 720p 30fps should make for some great conferencing sessions. (Cisco WebEx is built-in)
• SIP support
• Removable battery

I’ve been looking around for reviews of the Cius and there isn’t much out there at the moment but the video below is worth a watch. It’s an honest overview from an owner who seems happy with the device overall but has a problem with battery life. Yes, you were wondering about that weren’t you. Intel, Tablets and battery life often don’t go together.

Take a look at the video below and you’ll hear a comment about the battery “draining like crazy.” It’s difficult to get a perspective on this comment so I asked the author. This is what he said:

 I have the most current firmware and I would say the standby time is around 5 hours. It would around 3 hours if I used it regularly.

If we were talking about a small battery here I’d say ‘OK’ but we’re not. The Cius packs a 19Wh battery in 520gm. Here’s what Cisco say about battery life.

• Removable 5200 mAh battery

• Battery estimated use times will be provided at a later date (battery is expected to last up to 8 hours for typical business use)

There’s quite a difference between 3hrs and 8hrs there. Given that this is a 2.2W TDP Morestown platform that should idle way down to sub 1w territory with Android, a screen-off, Wifi-on scenario should be returning at least 15 hours. With the screen on, add 1W. In-use, add another Watt and you should be at a minimum of 4hrs usage. I don’t understand what’s going wrong here. Maybe Intel have some work to do on the Android build still?

The video is worth watching because you’ll see smooth transitions across the board and you’ll see some apps demonstrated. I only wish we could have seen some benchmarks. Sunspider would be important as would Quadrant and a simple Benchmark Pi test.  Is the browser based on Chrome rather than the Android browser? [Update: It uses the standard Android browser.] Are there any other special features hidden in the system settings too?

Apart from the battery life issue which needs to be confirmed, there are two other issues. This is a Wifi-only device right now which is not good for mobility. 3G is expected later this year via Verizon in the U.S.A. Secondly, you’re looking at $750 for the tablet and (my) estimated street price of $400 for the dock. It sounds a bit heavy for a thin client based on Android (considering I can do the same on my Iconia Tab wifi for about $500) but don’t underestimate the value of a rich dock. Charging, USB, headset, display port, gigabit Ethernet and handset is a lot of flexibility there. As for the tablet itself, yes, $750 is a lot for the hardware but this isn’t just any old Android hardware, it’s a software bundle too.  The price is right in my opinion. This is a corporate solution so don’t forget, if you’re looking at 200 of these units, you’ll be getting a huge reduction on those prices. 30% at least.

What we need now is for someone to make a consumer version of the Cisco Cius. Drop the handset and the Cisco-specific software, fix that battery life issue, style it up a little and you could be looking at an interesting crossover Android device. Fingers crossed for a real browser on the Intel Honeycomb build. It’s on the Google TV build so why not on a tablet build?

Cisco Cius specifications, links, gallery available through our Cisco Cius information page.

I’ve had Honeycomb 3.1 on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 for a week now and as I did with the Compaq Airlife and Toshiba AC100 last year, looking for signs that a smartbook is finally happening. The signs are there, yes, but there’s still a long way to go.

Check out a similar A500 productivity test by Jerry at Carrypad

I predicted that 2011 would be the year we would finally see ARM/Android devices move into productivity scenarios and it looks like the ASUS Transformer has achieved that with many recommending it as one of the best Honeycomb tablets out there. With its weight and price though it loses two features that the Toshiba AC100 had going for it but we’re moving in the right direction with the core operating system and that’s more important than weight and price right now.

Let me talk about a few of those core features in relation to my testing on the A500.

Keyboard / mouse support

Not only does the full-size USB port on the A500 support a keyboard but it supports USB hubs, hard drives, USB sticks and mouse pointers. With the core operating system being keyboard and mouse ‘aware’, there’s a surprisingly smooth transition from desktop OS. Double-click to select a word works although there are clear limitations when it comes to drag and drop, especially between windows. It’s something I do a lot with text and images as a blogger. Importantly it seems to be stable and relaible too. Keyboard and mouse continues to be an important input and control mechanism for nearly everyone so let’s hope this gets improved.

Browser

That keyboard and mouse support extends to the browser too. The tab button switches to the next input field for example and you can scroll within a box without the whole screen scrolling with it but there are still critical issues. Input fields are hit-and-miss and my personal test of using the WordPress back-end, a complex web application, fails misserably. That’s an ExoPC in the image above with the A500 off to the side! Mouse-over functions aren’t working 100%, input fields are an issue and drop-down menus appear randomly in the WordPress back-end. Stability seems reasonable but you’re looking at a content consumption browser, not a full web experience. Firefox doesn’t do any better. Mouse-over still doesn’t seem to work and using the WordPress back-end I couldn’t even enter text or resize the Ajax input field.  I’m seeing similar brick walls in other complex web applications too.

The performance when browsing web-app pages is also noticeably slower than on a netbook, to the point where it becomes annoying.  Netbooks aren’t fast but in most cases, they’re acceptable. The wordpress back-end takes seconds longer on the A500 and tests patience. Sunspider is 150% as fast on a N450 single-core netbook than on the dual-core A500! (13ooms on ExoPC vs 2300ms on A500.) Genera processor power is still an issue on ARM devices. A 1.5Ghz dual-core or a 1Ghz quad core solution should be high on your list if you want to test productivity on devices like the A500 in the next round.

For those of you needing the full web experience, I can tell you now that you don’t need to read any further. Honeycomb is a fail in that respect.

Acer Iconia A500 information page. Includes links to reviews, gallery, articles, alternatives.

On the bright side, progress is being made and yes, many people don’t need web apps. Here are some of the improvements I’ve noticed,

• Rotating homescreen works in portrait mode. Small but welcome change.
• Re-sizeable widgets really help improve information flow on home screens. A major advantage and in my opinion, a real lock-in feature.
• Stability improvements help but I’m still seeing more app crashes on the A500 than I do on the Galaxy Tab 7. Windows 7 on a netbook is way, way better in comparison.
• English language support. A problem with the German version of the A500 I bought – it now has English language support. Not many people will have noticed this issue!
• USB support for hard drives, hubs, keyboard, mouse, USB drives works well.
• Browser now supports desktop user-agent for viewing full versions of websites.
• UI speed and smoothness improvements.
• Additional apps – Kobo reader, LumiRead, Zinio Reader, Movie Studio.
• In general, battery life on the A500 has always been very good along with the screen quality.

So we’re at a place where the experience is better than Toshiba AC100 but still a way away from productivity use. The browser and stability need to be improved along with a general improvement in speed and in applications which doesn’t seem to have happened in the last months. Honeycomb isn’t getting enough growth to spur developers to write Honeycomb applications yet and that’s a major worry because it is falling further behind the iPad and if it remains that way, there’s little incentive to write apps for it until Android 2.x and 3.x versions are merged in Ice Cream Sandwich.

One other thing – there’s that Movie Studio application. I’ll try and write a little more detail about it in another post because I’ve just edited a 720p video made on the Nokia N8 with it. It wasn’t a nice experience!

How long until it works?

For some, it works well enough today, for others, Android will never have the feature-set required because Honeycomb doesn’t aim to cover all niche scenarios. It’s a consumer, mass-market operating system designed to help Google make money through advertising in its applications. We musn’t forget that the core OS is actually free although there’s clearly quite an expense involved in getting it suited and booted for the consumer.

For many, Android is getting close. We are seeing adoption in productivity scenarios already and the more apps that appear, the less the browser is required and the less of an issue that browser becomes.

For me, Android is probably a year away from being production ready. I look to the iPad to see how the video software and hardware works well together, how stability is less of an issue and how quality, stable applications solve more and more requirements.  I’ll be looking to test Android on a smartbook or large format tablet in the next round which we should expect to be readily available in early 2012.

Now, does anyone want to buy my A500?

Another tablet in the mix! Multi-boot possibilities set this apart from the ARM-based tablets.

The E-king range of UMPCs, by the company that bought the rights to the extremely productive (but very ugly) Wibrain B1/i1 and the slider M5 UMPC will soon have a 10” tablet offering called the Talent T9. It’s built on Intel’s Oaktrail and is said to be ‘the thinnest’ in the world. Whatever, China! What we really need to see is the device in action.

Specifications look OK with 2GB RAM, an impressive 650gm weight, an IPS screen and 3G options and there’s a big play on the multi-OS options that a traditional PC platform brings. It’s worth watching closely because Intel are working on Meego and Android official builds for this platform. The multi-OS claim is probably more important than thickness.

Click here for our tracking page including specifications, gallery and news items.

As for price and availability, we’re hearing about a September availability with some possible hands-on in August but as always, expect that to change. Pricing is completely unknown at the moment.

The E-King Talent T9 goes up against a number of other 10” Oaktrail tablets including the Lenovo Ideapad P1, Viewsonic Viewpad 10 Pro and the Samsung Series 7 Slider which we could see launched at IFA in September.  Here’s a list of all Oaktrail tablets.

With respect to Meego and Android for Oaktrail, look forward to news of that from Intel’s developer forum, also in September.

Update: We’ve had confirmation from Simon Thomas at Think4Mobile that this is real. They’re expecting a sample very soon.

Source: Industry contact and zol.com.cn

Go into our product database, select Tablet Devices (Windows), click the weight and screen size column headers and you’ll get a list showing the lightest 10” Windows Tablet. The only device that comes in at under 800gm is the Viliv X10 which, as we now know, isn’t going to happen. The Lenovo Ideapad P1will be dropping into that list very shortly as one of the lightest Windows Tablets there is. It’s a trend that’s happening more and more now that Oaktrail is here. The great thing is that battery life is going up at the same time and this one even has a digitiser layer. We broke news about the P1 when it was being referred to as the Ideapad Slate back at CES. Lets take a closer look.

Full gallery here.

Full specifications and news tracking  here.

The Ideapad P1 will go head-to-head with devices like the HP Slate 500 and Fujitsu Q550 as alternative dual-input slates but I have a feeling the P1 will get quite a lot of attention based on the name.

The 1.5Ghz Oaktrail platform is certainly not going to be a powerful one. Unzipping large packages will be a chore as will any serious multitasking but the battery life should compensate for that with something like a 6W average drain. Expect the P1 to last for 6hrs with Wifi on. The digitiser layer, 3G options, 2GB RAM options, 32GB or 64GB SSD storage, Windows 7 OS options, a docking port and a high-resolution 1280×800 screen mean this is likely to be interesting to many of our audience here.

The other interesting thing is the possibility of Meego and Android for the Ideapad P1. Lenovo have good relationship with the Intel marketing groups. The Ideapad S10 3T was used as a reference netbook for Meego development so there’s a good chance that the Ideapad P1 will get picked up as a reference Oaktrail device for Meego and Android and that could mean even longer battery life and a good reason to think about a 7” version. In fact, reading through the presentation PDF (Available here), it also looks like Lenovo might be offering an app-store. This could be Intel AppUp-based which leans further towards an Intel relationship and increases the chances of Lenovo exploring a Meego build. Yes, it’s a tenuous link but one we need to keep an eye on. Meego-based Chromepad anyone? Multi-boot on this tablet could give the user an important choice.

The Lenovo Ideapad P1 is, unfortunately, targeted for Q4 which means we’ll probably see it at IDF and IFA shows in September with availability in October or November. It’s a shame it’s taking this long to bring it to market as for those that see more than Engadgets fasion-focused eyes, this is an interesting option.

It’s a crossover point when Intel demonstrate a mobile operating system that grew on ARM devices, on their i86 platform and that’s what happened yesterday.

I played around with an image from the Intel pressroom and here’s the Medfield tablet running Honeycomb. Looks like 7” to me and designed for Android 2.x rather than 3.x (See buttons.)

Interestingly, most of the PR around Medfield talks about tablets and not smartphones. I wonder if the smartphone focus will come later in the year? IDF perhaps.

Original image is here.

In around 2hrs, Doug Davies, head of the tablet and netbook division will be holding a session where we expect to hear more about Medfield, Cedar Trail, Android, Meego and more. We’ll bring you that news as soon as we can.

Why is Honeycomb on Intel interesting? See this article.

While not too surprising in terms of content, this leaked press release, a few hours ahead of Intel’s Computex Keynote, highlights a big shift towards ultra mobile and Atom-based solutions.

Key points of the press release are the accelerating Atom program, a Medfield tablet running Honeycomb, Ultrabooks, Cedar Trail and 10 tablets based on Oaktrail. We suspect these tablets will be included in the demo but we’re interested in the missing items!

Update: The tablets shown on the Intel booth are from: Fujitsu, Lenovo, Motion, MSI, Open Peak, Toshiba, Viliv, and WeTab and ODM customers – BYD, Clevo, Compal, CZC, ECS, Foxconn, Inventec, Lengda, Malata, Pegatron, Quanta, Topstar and Wistron. Not all of these are running the Oaktrail platform.

We’re in contact with a few teams on the ground at Computex and will bring you their news, images and videos later.

Intel’s Maloney Talks Mobile Growth, Industry Opportunities at Computex
New Roadmaps Across Intel® Core™ and Atom™ Processor Families to Usher in Next Wave of Laptops and Connected Mobile Devices
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
Intel defines new category of mainstream thin and light mobile computers, called Ultrabook™.
Intel aims to shift 40 percent of consumer laptops to the Ultrabook™ by end of 2012.
Separately, Intel is accelerating the Atom™ processor roadmap to a one-process-generation per year cadence to enable a wider range of optimized solutions for multiple market segments.
Intel highlighted its next-generation, fanless netbook platform, codenamed “Cedar Trail,” a range of new Atom processor-based tablets available today, and a “Medfield” tablet reference design for sub-9mm designs, weighing less than 1.5 pounds and supporting a choice of operating systems.
COMPUTEX, Taipei, May 31, 2011 – Intel Corporation Executive Vice President Sean Maloney today said that by the end of 2012, 40 percent of the consumer laptop market segment will encompass an emerging new breed of no-compromise computers, called “Ultrabook™,” which will increasingly combine best-in-class performance, improved responsiveness and security in thin, elegant form factors.
During the opening keynote speech at Computex, one of the world’s largest technology trade shows, Maloney provided further details on the significant changes Intel is making to the Intel® CoreTM processor roadmap to enable this new category. He also reiterated Intel’s push to accelerate the pace of innovation for Intel® AtomTM processor-based system-on-chips (SoCs) for netbooks, smartphones, tablets, and other companion devices.
“Computing is taking many forms,” said Maloney. “Technology innovation is a catalyst, and we believe the changes Intel is making to its roadmaps, together with strong industry collaboration, will bring about an exciting change in personal computing over the next few years.”
The “Ultrabook™”
Intel’s vision is to enable a new user experience by accelerating a new class of mobile computers. These computers will marry the performance and capabilities of today’s laptops with tablet-like features and deliver a highly responsive and secure experience, in a thin, light and elegant design. The Ultrabook™ will be shaped by Moore’s Law and silicon technology in the same way they have shaped the traditional PC for the past 40 years.
Maloney described three key phases in the company’s strategy to accelerate this vision, which begins to unfold today with the company’s latest 2nd Generation Intel® CoreTM processors. This family of products will enable thin, light and beautiful designs that are less than 20mm (0.8 inch) thick, and mainstream price points under US$1,000. Systems based on these chips will be available for the 2011 winter holiday shopping season and include the UX21, ASUS* Ultrabook™. ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih joined Maloney on stage to showcase the company’s new ultra-thin laptop based on the latest 2nd Generation Intel Core processor.
“At ASUS, we are very much aligned with Intel’s vision of Ultrabook™,” said Shih. “Our customers are demanding an uncompromised computing experience in a lightweight, highly portable design that responds to their needs quickly. Transforming the PC into an ultra thin, ultra responsive device will change the way people interact with their PC.”
Building on the latest 2nd Generation Intel Core technology, Maloney outlined the next generation Intel processor family codenamed “Ivy Bridge,” which is scheduled for availability in systems in the first half of 2012. Laptops based on “Ivy Bridge” will bring improved power efficiency, smart visual performance, increased responsiveness and enhanced security. “Ivy Bridge” is the first high-volume chip based on Intel’s 22 nanometer (nm) manufacturing technology that uses a revolutionary 3-D transistor design called Tri-Gate announced in May. Maloney also highlighted complementary USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt™ technologies which are part of Intel’s ongoing work to drive the PC platform forward.
Following “Ivy Bridge,” planned 2013 products codenamed “Haswell” are the third step toward achieving the Ultrabook™ and reinventing the capabilities of the laptop in ultra thin and light, responsive and more secure designs. With “Haswell,” Intel will change the mainstream laptop thermal design point by reducing the microprocessor power to half of today’s design point.
Accelerating the Intel® Atom™ Processor Roadmap
Maloney highlighted key milestones and additional details on upcoming generations of Intel Atom processor-based platforms for tablets, netbooks and smartphones. The Atom processor will outpace Moore’s Law, accelerating from 32nm through 22nm to 14nm within 3 successive years. Having a cadence of a new-process-generation every year will result in significant reduction in transistor leakage, lower active power and an increase of transistor density to enable more powerful smartphones, tablets, and netbooks with more features and longer battery life.
Reaching its 100 million-unit milestone this month, Intel is preparing its next-generation netbook platform, codenamed “Cedar Trail.” “Cedar Trail” is the first netbook platform based on Intel’s 32nm technology, and will enable ultra-thin, fanless designs with new capabilities such as Intel® Rapid Start technology which provides fast resume, Intel® Smart Connect Technology which enables an always updated experience even during standby, Intel® Wireless Display and PC Synch, which let users wirelessly update and synchronize documents, content and media across multiple devices. In addition, the new platform is expected to enable more than 10 hours of battery life and weeks of standby. “Cedar Trail” will support leading operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows*, Google Chrome* and MeeGo*.
In addition, Maloney showcased more than 10 tablets, running on three different operating systems, that are available today based on the Intel Atom processor Z670. The platform already has more than 35 design wins since its launch in April, with several convertibles, sliders and other innovative designs on shelves now and more coming through the rest of the year.
Maloney also discussed “Medfield,” Intel’s first purpose-built 32nm platform for smartphones and tablets. “Medfield” has been optimized for both low power and high performance and will deliver long use-time, rich media and gaming, and advanced imaging capabilities. To illustrate this point in tablets, Intel showcased a “Medfield” design running Google Android* 3.0 (“Honeycomb”) for the first time. In production later this year, the platform will enable sub-9mm designs that weigh less than 1.5 pounds for tablet designs in market the first half of 2012. It will support a range of operating systems including Android and MeeGo.
According to Maloney, “The work Intel is doing with the Intel® Atom™ processor roadmap, coupled with the significant changes we are making to our Intel® Core™ processor roadmaps, will continue to enhance Intel’s ability to deliver complete hardware solutions with a choice of software platforms across a full spectrum of computing — from back-end servers that power the cloud to the billions of devices that access the cloud.”
The Cloud’s Rapid Expansion
More people and devices connecting to the Internet will lead to unprecedented growth in cloud-based services for storage, synchronization and entertainment, according to Maloney, and Intel is poised to grow with it. He said that one new Intel-based server is needed for roughly every additional 600 new smartphones or 122 new tablets connecting to the Internet. He also reiterated the company’s “Cloud 2015″ vision of a world of interoperable “federated” clouds that allow enterprises to share data securely across public and private clouds; “automated” networks that allow the movement of workloads between servers in the data center for better utilization and energy efficiency, and “device-aware” clouds that know what types of applications, commands and processing.
In closing, Maloney stressed the critical role of the Taiwan IT industry in the next transformation of computing. He called for collective innovations that will lead the industry into the next era as computing takes many new forms and becomes ever more pervasive and affordable. “The Taiwan IT industry will be instrumental in realizing this vision,” said Maloney.
More information about today’s announcements is available at www.intel.com/newsroom/computex/index.htm
About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.
Intel, Intel Core, Atom, the Intel logo and Ultrabook are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. * Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

With rumors of Android / Oaktrail tablets flying around, you might wonder why? Intel based tablets aren’t exactly renowned for their long battery life and the open-source Android versions we’ve seen so far are a lot different to the Google-enhanced Android tablets we know from the ARM world but these two issues can change and this week at Computex we should have the first chance to confirm this.

Firstly, Intel and Google should be able to work together on approved Android builds that include Google applications and the very important market. Why? Intel is obviously big enough to have a say in the matter and they should be able to present big-brand customers to Google too. They’re also founding members of the Open Handset Alliance so they’ve contributed for a number of years now. Expect on-stage demos to include Google applications or at least a promise of Google applications. [Update: Confirmed now]

Secondly, Oaktrail, Intel’s new platform, is different. It contains power-saving features that Windows just can’t control. An Intel Android build specifically optimised for Oaktrail could enable some quite impressive idle figures. By utilising all the available power-saving features, it could be possible to present a device that falls in the same battery life range as an ARM device. That should surprise quite a few people. Given some of the processing power advantages too, you should see performance that pushes Honeycomb performance ahead of some of its rivals.

I’m not saying that the Intel / Oaktrail / Honeycomb tablets  will be better than ARM-based tablets in any significant manner but the fact that they hit similar battery life, weight, size and performance figures should cause people to sit up and take note. Even more so, If manufacturers show multi-boot Windows capability or even virtualised operating systems running concurrently, you could be looking at a very special unique selling point.

Watch out for Viewsonic, Acer, ASUS and Lenovo at Computex.

HTCs Flyer is one of the first Android Tablets we’ve seen that could find a place in some new niches; Namely, pen input. From the outset I need to make it clear that the HTC Flyer isn’t a professional handwriting recognition product. There is no on-the-fly character recognition. There’s also a disconnect between the digitiser layer, the HTC pen-enabled apps and the rest of the finger-controllable tablet.

What is interesting though is the way HTC have enabled 4 apps that could be perfect for many people.

• There’s a note-taking application which spans standard test, pen-based text and ‘scribbles’ image and audio that is backed by the excellent Evernote service.
• There’s a PDF application which allows you to highlight and annotate over PDF files and save in the PDF format. This is one of the easiest ways to sign a PDF that I’ve ever seen!
• Thirdly, and this one impressed me more than all the other pen-enabled apps, there’s a book-reading application that allows pen-based selection, highlighting, annotation and note-making. It’s powerful and I can see this helping students to study.
• Finally, you can annotate images in the gallery.

HTC obviously have an API suite for ‘pen’ on Android so I hope to see more pen-enabled apps soon. Enjoy the video.

Tonight, May 18th at 2100 CEST (Berlin) we’re holding a live review at Carrypad.com/live Join us for chat and get your questions answered.

If you measure the power used by a netbook PC when it’s in standby, a frozen unusable state, it uses around 500mW of power.  Leaving a netbook on with WiFi connected in an idle state with the screen blanked, maybe with an email program polling occasionally, you’ll see about 10 times the power usage. In PC terms, 5W is impressive but if you go to the smartphone world and take a look at the figures there, there’s a huge huge gap that needs to be tackled. As smartphones become tablets, become smartbooks, there’s a threat that ‘always-on’ becomes ‘must-have’ and that X86-based devices will struggle to compete in casual computing scenarios.

Smartphones are designed from the ground-up around the concept of ‘always-on. From the moment a smartphone is conceived, every element of the design has to be checked for power consumption which is why a smartphone can sit connected to the GSM telephone network drawing power consumption levels lower than 50mw. That’s 1/10th of the power consumption taken by a good netbook when it’s in a frozen state. Impressive.

But what happens when you connect a smartphone to the internet ? You can use cellular data services to achieve a good rate of connectivity by switching on UMTS for example. Switching to WiFi on a typical smartphone brings faster connectivity and, in a lot of cases, lower power that can be done on cellular networks. A smartphone can run a multitasking operating system and remain connected to internet and voice networks in well under 500mw of power, the same as it takes a netbook to sleep.  In fact, the best smartphones are running in this configuration for over 24hrs on a 5Wh battery which is an amazing 100mw of power usage. Turn on some background internet activities and it will jump to an average 200mw!

What happens if you take an ARM platform that’s in the same processing power category as a low-end netbook. Put it in a 10” screen form factor and do the same test? Actually, it’s the same as a smartphone. The only difference between a high-end smartphone and a smartbook with a 10” screenand a huge battery is the screen itself and when that is off, there’s practically no difference at all.

To prove this, I took one of the most powerful mobile computing platforms in a large 10” form factor device with 32GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and integrated WiFi. The device has a 23wh battery (about half that of ‘6-cell’ netbooks. The device is the Acer Iconia Tab A500 Android tablet which runs honeycomb. I connected to the Wifi (at 54mbps) and left the device connected with the screen off while it did it’s stuff in the background. Marketplace checks, email checks, Twitter checks and even some GPS usage by Google Maps. A weather service was running, the volume was set to silent and Bluetooth was turned off.

Over a 48  hour period with a few screen-on moments for checking progress (and a 10 minute in-use period as my daughter grabbed it to use a paint program)  I measured 46% fall in battery usage of which 5% was due to screen-on time. Take away the screen-on figure and you have 209mw of power usage.  The Acer Iconia Tab is nothing more than a smartphone inside!

‘Always-on, Always Connected’ will be a ‘Must-have.’

Always-on tests are interesting because it’s a hands-off test that people think only applies to idle smartphones.  In fact, it applies to many computing scenarios. With location, polling, sync, presence, alarms, push updates and of course, cellular voice and messaging becoming the norm in the hand, they will also have appeal on the desk. Not having to wait 5 seconds for a machine to start-up, another 5 seconds for a Wi-Fi connection and another 10 seconds for tweets, emails and other features to catch up is annoying.  There’s also a bunch of other screen-off, connected activities that are interesting. Servers for example. By that, I mean computers and gadgets that serve information to the Internet. This doesn’t just cover web servers. Think about internet-connected weather stations and web cameras, in-car data storage and notification systems. Then there are the devices that just don’t need big screens; Connected musical instruments. Digital cameras with 3G. Internet Radios. Low-power internet connectivity is important for these devices.

Related: Social Netbooks and ARM’s Lock-In Netbook Opportunity.

Summary

The point here is not to highlight that ARM is better than X86, it’s to highlight the gap. This gap is currently a huge advantage for ARM-based platform designers.

• The first point is, if manufacturers using X86/PC architecture don’t get products to market with active standby soon, with the help of Intel (the only X86 player trying to tackle this problem) customers will have a chance to experience, and may not turn back from, ARM-based always-on products.
• The second point is that this is a screen-off gap. Current screen technology is killing ARMs advantage in the ‘in-use’ scenario where screens are larger than 7”. It reduces the ARM advantage from 20x in idle to about 4x with a 10” screen being backlit. When the devices CPU is being actively used, the advantage drops even lower to around 2x. [Acer Iconia Tab – 4W. Samsung NC210 – 8W)
• Finally, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is a good example of low-power internet connectivity. It’s likely that other devices in this ARM tablet segment hit the same figures.

Keep an eye on high-end ARM-based platforms over the next year or two. Honeycomb and iOS are leading the way into the professional space with their software and application ecoystems and you might find that this always-on advantage starts to lock people in soon.

As I was researching new ways to manage documents on my Galaxy Tab yesterday I stumbled across a Google Docs application which I hadn’t seen before. It turns out it was released yesterday!

As someone who uses Google applications heavily, both on the desktop and on my mobile devices, I was of course interested to see how far it extends into the realms of true productivity. It turns out that it is no match for the real deal in a real browser with a real mouse and keyboard but it does offer a couple of very useful features.

The Google Docs application shouldn’t be considered anything more than a text and number editing application. The lack of ability to edit spreadsheet equations or presentation documents had me reaching for Thinkfree this morning when I attempted to update my family cashflow  spreadsheet on the Galaxy Tab. What it does do is provide an efficient way to access documents in Google Docs (when you have an internet connection) and to create a new document or upload documents from your device via the Android sharing subsystem.

You can print via Google Cloud Print too which is a nice feature although it’s annoying that you can’t download a copy of a document through the application. Sharing and renaming is possible but it’s not possible to delete files. The application supports multiple Google accounts.

Pinch to zoom worked smoothly on the Galaxy Tab and I was able to input notes easily. What a shame you can’t publish to a blog from the application. Some tie-in with Blogger would have been useful for some.

I tried uploading an mp3 file but it wasn’t permitted. PDF files work and I was able to upload an 8MB file so file sizes are generous. Displaying that 8MB PDF was a basic experience. With no ‘go-to’ page feature and a slow page change time its impossible to view sections of a large PDF.

Finally, there’s a potentially useful OCR feature in the ability to take a picture of a document and upload it for word recognition.

Uploading a jpg file from the gallery resulted in automatic conversion to a document. There appears to be a setting that allows this conversion process to be turned off but on my Google account this option was greyed out. This feature can be useful for preparing an image for OCR before sending by using cropping and contrast settings. A magazine article I took an image of was not recognised properly due to it having two columns. By cropping the article around the columns I was able to get a readable version of the image in seconds after the file was uploaded. Good light levels and a steady hand will help!

In effect, Google Docs for Android is a one-way file upload, edit and viewing channel that requires an internet connection at all times. That’s not too flexible in my opinion, but better than nothing. The OCR function is going to be very useful to some people.

Core Tablet Issues

Trying to edit a document on a touchscreen highlights a major shortfall with tablets – roll-over detection. On Windows, there’s the concept of hover. Its either implemented through the mouse stopping over an element or via a digistiser that detects a pen physically hovering above, but not touching, an element. It’s something we’re all so used to seeing and using to activate help text or menus that when it is not there, it becomes a real issue. Designing applications that don’t use mouse-over is one way round the problem but when you consider right-click, lassooing sections of text, drag and drop and other features that are used in document creation, it becomes difficult to see how any tablet without hover or mouse-over detection could become truly productive, especially when you consider the amount of online, web-based applications that use mouse-over to trigger menus. That includes Googles own online applications.

One of the most efficient handheld tablets I ever had for creation was the Wibrain b1. I still have it. Not only does it run a full OS with a full browser, it has a huge mouse pad under one thumb and mouse buttons under the other. It also implements a split physical keyboard. It’s close to being the ugliest mobile device ever but it works like a charm.

My point is that if tablets want to be serious all-round become productive devices they need to consider more input methods. In fact, they need to become clamshells or sliders again. It is possible to make a 5 or 7″ slider with a keyboard, mouse control and full operating system but fashion and price is getting in the way. Just give me a little optical mouse with virtual mouse buttons. That would be a good start.

For the time being, document editing, true document editing including spreadsheets and presentations, on-the-go is really only something you can do efficiently with a UMPC. Windows, mouse, keyboard. Tablets just don’t cut it, unless all you’re doing is entering alphanumerics. . .

Posted from WordPress for Android with the Galaxy Tab

iWorks for the iPad has been around for abit a year now and in that time I haven’t really seen anything on Android that has really approached a professional office package.

Although I have doubts that Quickoffice Pro HD is half as rich and feature-packed as options available for Windows and full Linux operating systems, it’s important. It’s important because it indicates that investment is being made.

It will take two more things to push Android into the productivity space. Time, and proven sales figures – which could take even more time!

The X-Over is something we’re watching very carefully on UMPCPortal.

Via. http://www.mobiletechreview.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Board=news&Number=40309

Posted from WordPress for Android with the Galaxy Tab

Meet:Mobility Podcast 63 is now available.

JKK (JKKMobile), Chippy (Carrypad) and special guest Al Sutton (Funky Android) talk in depth about Honeycomb and some of the tablet and netbook news from the last 2 weeks including Fusion, WebOS and Galaxy Tab 2

Listen, subscribe and download at MeetMobility here.

This is not the first time we’ve discussed the crossover between pro/productive/full-os mobility and the continuing threat/opportunities offered by mobile operating systems.

See: Mobile Changover – What’s Your Plan? for more from June 2010.

CES 2011 was an absolute whirlwind of crossover products and after a week of note-taking, I’ve put together a report. Following the crossover theme, I’ve published it over at Carrypad!

Report: Mobile Computing at CES 2011 – The X-Over Year

Don’t forget, Meet:Mobility Podcast 62 covers a lot of this ground too and includes perspectives from JKKMobile and Netbooknews.

.NET, Adobe AIR (Flex, action script), C++ and C are already supported as development platforms for Intel’s AppUp and we’ve already seen people porting their existing air apps over. I’m sure that we’re going to see similar activity, along with fresh development work following the new announcement that a Java SDK has now been added to AppUp. That should please the 9 million Java developers! [ref]

Remember, AppUp is the application ecosystem (develop, monetize, storefront) for Intel netbooks and future MeeGo products on the Intel platforms so in terms of potential it’s building quickly. It’s also key in a significant, possibly critical, part of Intel’s strategy to move into handheld devices, cars and TVs along with MeeGo. It’s no surprise that a lot of work is going into it.

From the announcement:

Continuing the port of choice approach for AppUp, the AppUp developer program has now added a Java SDK, extending the value of the program to millions of Java developers. With the addition of this SDK the program now supports Java, .NET, Adobe AIR, C++ & C development environments. Java developers can download the SDK and start submitting applications to AppUp today. Adding Java as development language for AppUp provides more choice for developers and allows for the benefits of Java to be used to get apps distributed and monetized to consumers.

So are there any developers feeling left out now?

More importantly, are there any developers itching to get involved when Android, Chrome, Symbian and iOS offer a rather significant advantage in terms of installed user base and monetization opportunities?

I spoke to Java consultant Niall Lynch [Agent: Version1] about the opportunity…

This is good news, and will leverage the skills of the large Java developer community who would be keen to develop on any new platform available. It opens up huge opportunities for developers to consider new types of devices when developing applications. Obviously Android application developers should jump at this development. It’s also good news to see that companies as large as Intel believe in Java as there appears to be a lack of direction from various quarters about the future of Java.

Android devs, is there an easy porting opportunity here?

Converged devices mean more functionality and, unfortunately for me, the need for much longer reviews! I’ve been working hard on the Galaxy Tab over the last few weeks and over at Carrypad I have just posted Part 2 of the full review where I cover things that some of you ‘mo-pros’ out there will be interested in. Browser details, office and PIM applications and the rest of the included Samsung software suite. It’s fair to say that Samsung have added a lot of good stuff to the user experience in terms of usability and functionality and it shows the way forward for Android tablets. Unfortunately, not many developers are taking 1024×600 into consideration so much of the software out there still works with small-screen layouts.

You’re getting a lot for your money though and at this stage I can say that if you’re not dependant on Windows software you should take a close look at the Tab. I’m finding it’s fitting in well between a smartphone (even a basic one) and a netbook in my 3-device strategy.

Part 1 of the full Galaxy Tab review is here. (Overview, hardware, features)

Part 2 of the full Galaxy Tab review is here. (Applications)

Part 3 will be published later this week

We’re discussing the Galaxy Tab in the forum here.