When I read Lukes request for mobile developer help I was impressed. This is Chippys Customer Challenge 2011 #3

I recently went to a local development meetup, and found myself content to use my phone during a ‘Hack Night’ to remotely access my desktop at home to type, and then browse using the phone’s browser. My goal would be to try to find a device that is ultra portable, but that would be a little more easy to do some of my regular development tasks on. It seems like there are a lot of options out there that might fit the bill, but I don’t know if people are really doing much development on more mobile devices rather than just laptops or netbooks.

It takes some patience, good eyes and even a little courage to mobile development work over a remote desktop solution on such a small screen. Luke is now looking for a solution that he can also use as a portable web server. I’m assuming that he also wants to do local development work too. It makes sense as relying on multiple network connections and ISPs to get to your work machine is a little wobbly! CPU and screen requirements can be quite high for software development but there might be a balance that can be done between local input and remote processing.

Luke mentioned Ubuntu which immediately cuts out a whole section of UMPCs from the toplist. Z-series Atom devices have never been well supported by Linux distributions although I know there are some workarounds with Ubuntu. Maybe it’s even baked-in by now. Can anyone comment on that?

Here’s what I’m thinking would suit Luke:

5-7” screen on X86 architecture at under 800gm. At least two USB ports and a VGA port. Local storage requirements relatively low. Touchscreen not really required. Tablet format OK with an external USB or BT keyboard.

The 5-7” category X86 category is non-existent right now and for value-for money, could you really beat something like the 900gm Asus Eee PC X101 with Meego for 170 Euro? It makes decisions really really hard.  Mobility is the driver here though so where do we go with this? The good old, possibly beast UMPC ever, Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium. If you can find it, go for it Luke!

Other options you might consider are some of the newer, lightweight tablets. The AMD-based MSI Windpad 110 or Iconia Tab W500 for example. 10”, yes, but well under 1KG.

Also keep an eye on new Oaktrail models running Meego. That might happen in the fourth quarter and would indicate a stable status for Linux on the Z-series CPUs. It’s a Fedora-based solution but I’m sure the GPU support will find it’s way over to other distro’s soon.

Luke is not the only one looking at ultra-mobile Linux. I know a few other people that are struggling with this too. If you wait until the end of September we should have some more information on the dual-core Cedar-Trail devices. Tablets based on these should be lighter and smaller than the Pine-Trail equivalents like the Gigabyte S1080, a N570-based device at 900gm for about 550 Euro here. Having said that, Oaktrail devices like the Viewpad 10 Pro, Lenovo Ideapad P1 and Fujitsu Q550 (which I see in Germany for just over 600 Euro now) are worth looking at if weight and battery life is more important. With both of these solutions though you’re looking at Power-VR graphics. I worry about Linux support for that.

There’s one other device you might consider. The Toshiba Libretto W100. Is the dual-screen device based on a dual-core U5400 CPU. It’s got standard Intel graphics and should work well as a web server and even for compiling due to its relatively powerful CPU. It can be noisy, warm and, lets be honest, very short on battery life (2hrs) but it’s actually the only ‘current’, small-form-factor UMPC on the market that isn’t running a Z-series CPU. Price: Around 700 Euros with UMTS (I’m looking at a European price here.) I wouldn’t mind one of these myself for a bit of mobile 480p video editing and hotel work.

As for older devices, the previously mentioned Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium is the one to keep an eye out for.  It’s still holding it’s own thanks to some fantastic engineering from Samsung. There are a few VIA-C7-based devices out there too. They’re cheap and not too powerful (think low-end single-core Atom) and can be a little on the warm side but at least Linux support would be easy.

My choice? If I just wanted a lightweight Linux device for light duties, I’d probably be looking at the Asus Eee PC X101. 920gm, basic specs, small SSD storage and an unbeatable price of 169 Euro here in Europe.

Anyone out there already doing mobile development work on Linux with a UMPC? Let’s hear your opinion.

Sascha Pallenberg (from Netbooknews.com and our Meet:Mobility podcast) was pulled to one side by Amy Barton at the Intel Developer Forum to talk about the Intel Atom Developer Program and you can see the result in the video embedded below.

One take-away I got form this. 30 million iPhones exist but a similar number of netbooks have been sold. The developer program and app-store isn’t just for Moblin, it’s for Windows too so there’s a massive opportunity out there.

[see relevant article on MIDMoves about the IADP competition.]

The iPhone and Android devices were the obvious leaders at the well-organised and very informative Mobile Dev Camp in Amsterdam this week but it was very interesting to throw the MIDs and UMPCs in to get feedback from ‘mobile’ software developers. When developers talk ‘mobile’ they are invariably talking about mobile phones but when I put the 4-segment diagram up on the board (right), there were a lot of questions and lot of interaction.  For most, it brought home the fact that ‘mobile’ goes way beyond the phone.

I also presented the MIDs and UMPCs for them to get some hands on and to explain the major differences and it was interesting to see which devices people were interested in. At the end of the day, as with the demo work I did with MIDMoves in SXSW, the UMID MBook won the most praise. As people gravitated towards it, I asked ‘Why.’

The two most important elements of the hardware that made it a winner amongst the UMPCs and MID devices, based on the feedback and questions I got were:

• Keyboard
• Pocket-size

Battery life was a secondary question, as was price. People assumed it had Wifi and BT of course but were more interested when I talked about 3G. Its interesting to note that the keyboard piqued so much interest touch at a time when on-screen keyboards are considered acceptable by many.

So if that’s a hardware template that interests mobile software developers, what operating systems and APIs interest them? Clearly, Windows XP is not in the top 5 of mobile device operating systems (sidenote, it seems that most mobile software developers don’t really consider anything outside their own ‘top three’) so I asked developers what the most important elements of software are.

• Developers want a platform (or are stimulated by a platform) that allows them to utilise existing or easily-available skillsets – Java for Android, Objective C for iPhone for example.
• Developers will balance the cost of development (ease of API, cost of developers, stability of poatform) with perceived customer base / earning potential.
• Developers are creative people that don’t enjoy being bound by rules so an API that allows or even stimulates creativeness by exposing hardware and features is a big advantage. New hardware with new or advanced features, stimulates developers.

Clearly it’s not only developers that make the decision as the process of creating and selling software needs to be a controlled business process but it does appear to me that in the mobile world where a team of two can create a compelling app or service in a very short time, the developer has a big say in what platform(s) is used.

A healthy development community is critical to any platform and as the rules of mobile software development change, as time-to-market and cost-to-market reduce, there’s one thing that’s clearer to me than it ever was. A desktop operating system may allow one to use a device without any restrictions on software but the NEW mobile-focused software, the social networking and location-based services, the easy-to-use photo publishing services, the mobile gaming software, the internet-connected personal information management software, the live video and image publishing services and whatever comes next in the mobile world, will appear on these developer-friendly platforms first. That’s where the buzz is and so if MID manufacturers want to seed their new devices in the new world of mobile apps, they will need to be using a mobile and dev-friendly operating system.

My research into the world of mobile software development and mobile operating systems is teaching me a lot about different ways MIDs could position themselves but there’s a lot more to learn. Feedback from you mobile devs out there is more than welcome.