We were lucky enough to get a few days with the Aava / Intel / Meego phone earlier this year and our tests with the handset UX showed that there was a lot of work to do. In a presentation at the MeeGo onference in Dublin today, we saw progress, a good working demo and future planning but still, there’s so much missing. Granted, these user-experiences are just baseline builds to show how the core features can be used but still, it seems to us there are some hooks that need to be added.

With no active icons support (showing number of unread emails for example) and a single homescreen with no widget support it means that product developers will have a lot of work to do to implement these features. On the other hand, the notifications subsystem looks good with support for multiple notification types triggering multiple different notification methods including notification lights, haptics and of course, dialog boxes. We didn’t see any dialog box handling mechanism though so we’re hoping this will be well controlled when it gets implemented.

The demo was done on a Moorestown based Aava Smartphone platform.

We’ve spent a week in San Francisco at one of the biggest developer shows of the year and haven’t posted a single article on Carrypad yet and that’s because most of what we saw was Windows-based. That, in our eyes, isn’t exactly the ideal solution for consumer-focused solutions we would be reporting on at Carrypad. The Dell Duo was cool but it’s Windows 7 on a netbook platform with a launcher. The ExoPC was cool but once again, it was a Windows 7 netbook without the keyboard. The Ocosmos OC1 was amazing but once again, its a Windows 7 device.

Only one item stood out for me in terms of consumer-focused solutions and I haven’t reported on it yet Its an Android tablet…on Intel.

More images in the gallery.

We don’t know too much about the device yet because the NFS NPad was being used as a demonstrator by another company but from what we see, Moorestown is going to enable far far better consumer-focused solutions than the N450 and N550 solutions we’ve been seeing running Windows. It was thin and very light (comparable to the Archos 101 which runs on an ARM Cortex core) and surprisingly, running Android. A quick look around the net tells us that the NPad also appeared at Computex and has also been spotted running Red Flag’s MeeGo-based Linux distribution. This is a sign of what might happen when MeeGo meets Moorestown so if you’re not worried about Windows but still want a powerful tablet, this could be worth waiting for.

I hope you’ve already read the ‘warning’ article I posted last week because unfortunately, the Aava phone isn’t something we can review or draw any conclusions from. It’s a developer platform, a demonstrator and a showcase item. It’s using beta hardware and pre-Alpha software too so if you’re expecting something shiny at this stage, I’m sorry that this article will probably disappoint you. If you see others drawing conclusions based on their (or this) hands-on, you should also treat them as inconclusive. It’s just too early to tell.

At best, I can highlight the platform for potential ISVs, OEMs, competitors, integrators, carriers and Linux distributors and maybe mention something about the direction of the handheld UX (user experience) for MeeGo but both hardware and software are likely to change drastically before launch in Q4. It would be great for our traffic and links if we were to trumpet a breakthrough in processing power and UI but I’m sorry, you’re going have to wait until we see real products before that happens. I know, I’ll never be a real journalist ;-)

I want to thank Intel Europe before going any further though. (You can follow their Atom-related work on Twitter) They’ve been open about their work with the platform and respect to them for giving early-stage prototypes out to a blogger. There’s always a big risk in doing that. We remain in good contact with the Intel teams and will do further testing in due course.

So on to the ‘product’ then. Using the Intel Moorestown platform, the Aava phone at least highlights how small a ‘PC’ can be. It’s a truly pocketable size and comes with all that you would expect from a smartphone; Capacitive screen, camera, stereo speakers, Micro-SD and Micro USB and a 5.5Wh battery. We would have liked to have got into the command-line to check out some more hardware and battery usage information but in the limited time we had, it wasn’t possible. What we did do though was check out the pre-Alpha (developers) build of MeeGo 1.1 It’s the first time we’ve been able to touch the UI and to get an idea of the look and feel and although it doesn’t bring anything dramatically new in terms of layout, it builds on intuitive swipes and taps to make a UI that was simple to understand. A home-screen where presumably you’ll find widgets, presents a small launcher bar for some favorite apps and the application list itself. This second-layer application pane is similar to Android and forces the user, in many cases, to have to unlock, open the application pane, find the application and then launch it which is one layer of UI deeper than you’ll find on the iPhone. It makes way for an active homescreen though. We weren’t able to experience notifications on this version of MeeGo.

Full Aava / MeeGo gallery available here.

Not much is working on this build and most applications are placeholders but we got to check out the dialer application (phone stack didn’t appear to be functional), some settings (WiFi was working) and the Firefox Mobile browser which has potential to be a very high quality browser if startup and page view times can be improved. The recent build for Maemo includes some really advanced features which weren’t working on this MeeGo build.

There was one test we were able to do and that was the popular Javascript processing test Sunspider. With careful consideration of browser software, it’s possible to get a feel for the CPU processing power available and the results were quite amazing. In comparison with an Android 1.6 phone running a 1Ghz Snapdragon platform we were seeing results 5x as fast and indicative of a netbook processor rather than a current ARM-core smartphone processor. It makes sense of course as the phone is, in theory, running Atom at up to 1.5Ghz. There’s clearly potential for some good multitasking. There’s also potential to drain that battery faster than on any ARM-based smartphone. It’s a case of being able to get things done quickly if the OS and user is well controlled and this is something that the MeeGo developers will have to think carefully about. Should they turn off the ‘Turbo’ features if the battery reaches a certain level? Should applications be throttled or scheduled when the device is locked perhaps?

You’ll see all the details in the video below and this additional article about the Javascript test but there’s one more thing we can gleen from our time with the device and that’s timescales for products. MeeGo is in very early stage development and it wouldn’t be wildly wrong to estimate that it won’t be ready for another year or more especially considering the amount of catch-up that the platform is having to do. The App-store will need to be loaded too and that will take money, and time. MeeGo 1.1 will be released in October but that doesn’t mean that products will be ready. In October, the core and UI will be ready for 3rd parties to finalise into their own products which means internal testing, field testing, approval and certification can only be started once the final builds are incorporated into whatever variants OEMs are working on. The first smartphone products won’t be out of the door in 2010 although we might see some non-3G tablets and MIDs reach the some markets for Christmas if they don’t have to go through GSM/UMTS approval. For a mature and complete MeeGo-based phone product, we need to look to Q2 2011 in my opinion. Nokia, given their existing Maemo application base and developer-focused N900 community, are in a good position to be one of the first.

I was a bit surprised by the reaction to my post and tweets about the Aava Intel/Moorestown/MeeGo phone this afternoon. Engadget and Wired picked it up and did a sensible job of reporting that it’s a prototype but there are a lot of people out there that might not understand what this hardware and software really is.

The issue is that the Aava phone is actually a reference design and development platform and it is unlikely to be a phone you’ll ever be able to buy. It’s likely to have had some financial and engineering input from Intel and will have already been distributed to some major customers in order for them to asses the platform.

As far as I understand it, the Aava phone was made to stimulate mobile phone hardware manufacturers and to help developers get on with the top-priority job of building  class-leading mobile operating systems, applications and user interfaces, namely MeeGo, Android and the related user interface ‘experiences’  and overlays.

So on to the ‘experience’ I have in my hands here. At the most, i’ll be able to show you the look and feel of the user interface, give you an idea of how Fennec, the built-in browser, performs on the Moorestown platform, show you around the Aava hardware (good for those thinking of paying the probable $1K – $2K for the development kit) I don’t expect the software stack to include any closed-source video codecs and for that matter, no commercial software that’s not part of the core MeeGo build and there’s no-way i’ll be able to get a feel for battery life as we don’t know how well the current software couples with the dedicated power control chip.

The Aava phone represents a true moment in computing history and i’m honored to be able to report on it but let’s not forget, this isn’t anything like retail-quality hardware or software yet.  MeeGo 1.1 is due for release in October so you can imagine the timescales for products and it’s already known that Intel expects tablets to be released with MeeGo before phones are.

Hardware and software build kindly loaned by Intel Germany and largely enabled through my participation in the ‘Intel Insider’ program.

MeeGo Phone Browser (Aava Proto)

Originally uploaded by umpcportal.com

Just a quick post because I need to get away for an appointment this afternoon. For the next 48 hours i’ll have the Intel Moorestown-based Aava prototype phone. It’s a development platform running MeeGo core and an alpha-quality UI so don’t expect miracles here but I can see that at least Wifi and the browser are working so there’s at least something to demo. Stay tuned for a video look at the user interface, a few apps and maybe a look at the device from the command line. All coming up over the next 48 hours.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone is unfamiliar with the largest massively multiplayer role playing game (MMORPG, for short) in the world – World of Warcraft, but for those of you who are not… well I just described it. World of Warcraft is certainly not the most graphically demanding computer game, but I’d still be impressed to see it running at 30 FPS on a Moorestown device. Sadly, the demo given by Intel showed the game running at something like 5 FPS… which is low enough to render the game virtually unplayable. With a few interface add-ons, you’d likely be running closer to 1 FPS!

Still, it isn’t like World of Warcraft was written for this platform; it was written for full fledged computers. The video from Netbooknews.com also shows some other graphical applications running on the demo device:

In a press conference today, Intel presented their processor range for ultrathin laptops. Naturally, many of us want to know if the processors will reach down into the tablet space so I put the question forward to Mooly Eden (right.) It was given a surprising answer. Intel will disclose a special tablet solution at Computex.

Here’s the question and Mooly’s answer as an audio file.

Click to play the audio segment.

I can only assume that Mooly is talking about something in the ‘Atom’ family of processors. This could be Moorestown, Moorestown-W or perhaps, something completely new. We’ll find out next week.

Although we’ve been hearing bits and pieces about Android on Intel’s Moorestown platform over the last few months we’ve never really had it in writing from Intel. Today we have.

Almost hidden in the latter part of a Fact-Sheet (PDF)on the Moorestown / Z6xx launch today, Intel has this to say.

“As a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), Intel has worked with Google over the past few years and is providing support for the Android platform at launch. The performance characteristics of the Intel Atom processor Z6xx Series are reflected across Android implementations making it a compelling platform for a range of handheld devices. inch

Support for Moblin/MeeGo is also mentioned. Windows isn’t.

This changes the game somewhat in my opinion.

Firstly, Intel now has a non-Windows platform. Politically, that’s huge. This is probably the first Intel computing platform since Windows launched, that doesn’t support Windows!

Secondly, Intel have just pulled in support for one of the most interesting and developed ‘smart’ computing platforms there is. There’s no longer any need to convince customers that MeeGo is going to be great because the trust will already be there. What a set of brands Intel, Google, Android. You wonder what the long-term aim is for MeeGo now. How long will they continue with MeeGo if Android on Intel becomes successful.

Moorestown and Android could really be a killer combination and it already scales to netbook-like performance to enable some very interesting tablet, MID and ‘smart’ book devices. 1M iPads proves that this new market is ripe.

This could also explain why Google haven’t yet opened the marketplace for tablets and other large-format handheld devices.

Here’s a video we took of Android running on Moorestown recently.

Intel press release.