One of the big surprises of CES was the LG GW990 smartphone and based on progress I’m seeing with Moblin, the AppUp Store and what we’re hearing from Intel, we should expect to see those devices feeding in in Q3 this year. Moorestown is not only limited to smartphones though. There’s huge potential for ‘smart’ connected devices based around the tablet and larger slider form factors. Intel were showing a number of designs at CES and you’ll see them all in the video below.

As part of my work with the Intel Insiders I was given an Insiders view of the LG smartphone. More details on MIDMoves

Gallery of GW990 at the LG booth

Specifications confirmed:

• Intel Moorestown platform with HD 720p encoding and 1080p decoding.
• 5mp cam (single led flash)
• 1850mah (single cell I assume) battery
• A-GPS
• Compass
• HSDPA/HSUPA
• Q3 availability

Note the marketing: Multi-Tasking.

I had a stroke of luck this morning as I was waiting for Sascha from Netbooknews to do a video of an LG netbook today, I wandered across the booth to look at the smartphones and there it was. The LG GW990 built on Intel’s Moorestown platform. Intel’s first ever phone. (Announced back in Feb) The display included some specifications so I’ve listed those below.

Gallery of GW990 at the LG booth

At the Intel keynote a few hours later, the GW990 appeared again along with a note from Paul Otellini that not only LG are partnering on Moorestown but Nokia are too. I’ll just say that again. Nokia are partnering with Intel with the Moorestown platform. This is significant.

Finally, after the keynote, we managed to get hands on with a live demo. Here’s the video which, according to Intel, was the worlds first public demo.

We were all impressed with the UI transitions and smoothness of the Mobiln 2.1 for handhelds but questions remain about the web experience (we assume it will continue with a Mozilla based browser) and general usage in terms of phone, connectivity and a million other aspects but this is a fantastic first outing for an Intel smartphone.

Specifications confirmed:

• Intel Moorestown platform with HD 720p encoding and 1080p decoding.
• 5mp cam (ingle led flash)
• 1850mah (single cell I assume) battery
• A-GPS
• Compass
• HSDPA/HSUPA
• Q3 availability

Unconfirmed:

• 1024×480 resolution

My guess right now is that we will see a lot more of this, and other Moorestown devices, at MWC in Feb.

Note the marketing: Multi-Tasking.

I wasn’t expecting this at all. Here are some photo’s of the LG  GW990, Intel Moorestown-based smartphone.

Details so far:

• 5mp cam
• 1850mah (single cell I assume) battery
• HD Video capable
• A-GPS
• Compass
• HSDPA/HSUPA

Unfortunately this is behind glass.

The Intel keynote is in a few hours. It would be crazy if Intel didn’t show it off.

Update. This article is incorrect.

As CPU and chipset power consumption becomes less and less in phone and MID designs, the power drains of the displays, radio, peripherals and storage technology become more and more significant. One of the biggest issues, display backlighting, has been something that many people have been working on for a long time. In current high-brightness UMPCs and MIDs the screens can take up to 50% of the total power of the devices, which is exactly the scenario you’re in when you’re mobile.

LG will be tackling this issue on their Moorestown phone in 2010 by using a reflective, bi-stable technology from Mirasol Displays, a subsiduary of Qualcomm. It’s complex and vastly different from current backlit screen technologies but I can summarise by saying that it takes a lot less power, provides much more effective outdoor brightness and, due to it’s transflective nature, is easier on the eye. The method used is known as Interferometric MODulation (IMOD.)

 
Mirasol IMOD Structure

There are some white papers and overviews on the Mirasol website which I have been through to try and get a feel for the power savings and although there aren’t any real figures given (obviously it depends on the size of the display) my gut feeling here is that in 3-5″ devices in bright room conditions, it could save 0.5 – 1W which will be extremely significant in the LG device which may only have a 2-3W profile.  If you want to get a feel for the technology, take a look at this PDF which alludes to newspaper reading quality in terms of contrast and reflectivity. There’s also a very good video presentation here which the problems of traditional backlit displays and the ‘on-time’ that I’ve been highlighting recently.

It appears that current Mirasol products are currently quite small in size and obviously the technology is going to be more expensive so we might see this used as a secondary or external display (as in the two screen Nokia E90 design) but with 12-18 months to go before the product needs to be ready, Mirasol may be able to get a full 800×480 screen out.

Source

Mirasol website.

Highlighting Intel’s ultimate goal for Atom, the growing importance of a high-speed web experience on a smartphone and possibly Intel’s concern about the speed of development of ARM-based smartphones is this Mobile World Congress announcement that LG and Intel are going to work together on a voice-enabled MID. The first smartphone to be based on what is effectively a PC architecture is expected in 2010.

No details of the device are available at the moment but you can be sure that LG will already have prototype designs built around the Atom core (on the Lincroft ’system on chip’) and the Langwell I/O hub. Expect a high-end, big-screen design that, like the recently announced Toshibe LG01, could redefine the size and capability of those leading edge voice communicators called smartphones!

The announcement also re-confirms timescales for Moorestown and Moblin2 for MIDs and LG is expected to be one of the first OEMs out of the door with Moorestown in 2010.

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Sascha from EeePCNews.de recently put up an unboxing of LG’s first attempt at a netbook, the LG X110 [Portal page]. It seemed as though the X110 got lost for a little while, probably because of its cookie-cutter netbook specs released in the face of more exciting hardware, but according to our Portal popularity graph, there has been some growing interest.

This is the first unboxing I’ve seen of the X110, and it is a pretty basic unboxing at that. Although it definitely has generic netbook specs, I think this is one of the nicer models out there purely based on its design. I like the air vents on the left side, and the way that the netbook has some curvature to it, but is flat on the left and right sides. Have a look at the unboxing below.

[Electric Vagabond]