In terms of mobile productivity, I’m sorry to have to report that the Compaq Airlife 100 has a lot of holes. It does, however, prove that there’s a lot of potential in the ‘smart’ platforms. Long battery life (due to extremely low idle drain) and always-on/connected are features that, once you’ve experienced them, are hard to let go of. Android has potential too but there are 2 key things that need to be done. 1) The browser needs to be improved. The Airlife 100 is not up to doing any web-application work. 2) The marketplace needs to be put into place so that developers have a channel for productive and large-screen apps.  Once these two issues are fixed though, it’s only a matter of time before productive mobile computing moves to ‘smart’ platforms with advanced mobile operating systems.

Do you agree?

As a consumer device, the Airlife is also missing a few features. Better media support and management is badly needed for a start so with the costs running close to that of the iPad, I suspect the latter would be a better choice.

Great progress by HP and signs of real promise mean that smart books have a future for mobile computing / mobile productivity but it could be 2011 before we se a real netbook competitor.

I’ve reviewed the Airlife and published the article over at Carrypad.com

This article is updated from Jan 2010. See below for history.

The ecosystem around ARM, its designs and licensee products can be difficult to understand so I’ve been researching the current status and have summarized the important products, brands and technologies in the article below. You’ll find details on all the important keywords and technologies, links to all the important CPUs and platforms, a reading list and some ‘tip’s’ for CES2010 which starts this week. All the information is based on my own knowledge and research so if you spot any errors, please be sure to let us all know in the comments. I know there are some CPU designers and ARM partners reading this site so again, if there’s anything that needs changing or adding, please help us all by adding a comment below.

Overview of processor architectures in current ARM products

For the purposes of this article I’m ignoring anything other than ARM v7 architecture CPUs. In my opinion and experience the previous (ARMv6, ARMv5) designs don’t provide the processing power needed for the quality web experience expected in  MIDs. Note: Tegra (current version 2009) is an ARM11 multi-core CPU  implementation based on ARMv6 architecture. I expect Nvidia to move to ARMv7 in their next Tegra product.

ARM v7 is a CPU architecture, not a CPU.

ARM V7 is a processor architecture. It’s a design that belongs to ARM and it can be used to build CPUs that can process around 2 Dhrystone MIPS/Mhz. (Wikipedia – Dhrystone) That’s about 2000 DMIPs/Ghz which is not far from the processing power achieved by simple, non-hyperthreading Intel Atom cores also used in MIDs. DMIPs processor performance is not the only measurement of device speed but it’s a good starting point and is relevant to web rendering and web applications.

Processing power

In general, the architecture is being used to make CPUs and platforms running at between 600-1000Mhz (about 1200-2000 DMIPs) although there is one known implementation that has been tested at over 2Ghz. Power consumption per core is said to be around 300mw per 2000DMIPs using the latest manufacturing processes although this figure can vary greatly depending on implementation.

Remember that the CPU core takes only a small percentage of the power drain in a working device where the total in-use power budget including screen lighting, radios, audio, gpu, storage and DC components can span from 2W to 10W. (Texas instruments thinks that a 1W MID is possible though)

In comparison with the Intel Atom CPU the ARM v7 architecture can be used to make CPUs that consume about 1/3 – 1/5th of the power of an Intel Atom CPU for the same DMIPs computing power.

ARMv7 can also be used to make multi-core CPUs where up to 4 cores can be used to provide over 8000 DMIPS of computing power. (Assuming the software is built to handle multi-processing hardware)

(Further note: All these figures based on research, marketing figures, experience, testing and technical documents that I have read during this research.)

ARM does not manufacture CPUs.

The architecture created by ARM is used to do two things:

• The architecture is used by ARM themselves to make a complete processor implementation which may include other ARM property. The CPU implementation is then licensed out to third parties who can either mass produce the CPU or build and manufacture complete computing platforms including graphics, sound, power, memory, etc. One example is the Ti OMAP 3 and 4-series platforms.
• The architecture gets licensed out to third parties who make their own processors and platforms based on it. One example is the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform.

ARM have a number of processors that they’ve built using ARMv7 architecture and all fall under the ‘Cortex’ brand. There are real-time and highly embedded versions but the ‘A’ versions are the ones that interesting for general mobile computing tasks. ARM have three versions of the CPU. The A8 (currently in products), A9 (high end, multi-core capable due in products in 2010) and A5 (small, low-cost, due in products in late 2010) versions

Licensees.

When final products are completed by licensees you will often see them marketed under different brands. This is where it gets very confusing so I’ve listed most of the main players below along with notes and links to their various products and brands. Note that some ARM licensees are not made public and therefore no information is available.

ARM Cortex A8

ARM has 9 licencees. 8 are public.

Cortex A8 Product brief (PDF)

Licensee notes.

• Ti OMAP 3 platforms 34xx 35xx 36xx  using Cortex A8 CPU core up to 800Mhz. Used in Nokia N900, Archos 5 devices for example.
• Freescale iMX5 family of CPUs based on Cortex A8. Use in the Sharp Netwalker for example. iMX515 is focused at mobile internet and includes graphics co-processing.
• Samsung. S5PC100 application processor includes the Cortex A8 CPU core (E.g. Odroid)
• Samsung / Intrinsity – Hummingbird A very specific implementation of the Cortex Core using a tightly defined manufacturing process.
• Zii Labs ZMS08 Core of the ‘stem cell’ computing platform. (Q1 2010 volume shipment) 1Ghz implementation.
• Matsushita (Panasonic) Details unknown.
• PMC-Sierra (storage, switching, routing solutions) Details unknown.

Cortex A9 (Multi-core capable)

Cortex A9 Product information (PDF)

ARM has 9 licencees. 6 are public.

Licensee notes.

• Ti OMAP Dual-core 44xx platform. Full production expected 2H 2010.
• ST Electronics Cortex A8 licensee (set top boxes)
• St Ericsson – U8500 Dual Cortex A9/HSPA Modem platform. (Note Nokia and Symbian will be using this and it includes a Mali GPU and 1080p recording capability)
• Broadcom (ARM news. No products announced yet.)
• Nvidia Tegra 2 Dual-core
• NEC Electronics. No information available.
• Update: 28 Jan 2010. It appears that Apple may have licensed Cortex A9 for the iPad A4 CPU. (Source) Update: It’s ARMv7. Apples own implementation.

Cortex A9 MPCore Hard Macro – 2Ghz implementation of Cortex A9 using specific TSMC silicon manufacturing process.

Cortex A5

Cortex A5 is a multi-core, low cost ARM V7 implementation previously known as Sparrow.

Link to ARM information

No known implementations at present.

Other ARM v7 implementations:

• Qualcomm Snapdragon platform (QSD8x50) uses single core CPU (Scorpion) based on ARMv7 architecture.
• Qualcomm QSD8672 dual core platform at up to 1.5Ghz.
• Marvell Armada 500 / 510 platform (PDF product brief) Up to 1.2Ghz

Notes for CES 2010 (UPDATED)

Key platform announcements to watch out for at CES 2010. Expect demonstrator products planned for 2H 2010. (All Cortex A9)

• Nvidia Tegra 2 – Announced.
• Ti OMAP 44xx – No news.
• St Ericsson U8500 – Demonstrated by Movial on a set top box.

Expected in MIDs and smartbooks shipping in 1H 2010 on the following platforms. (Single core ARmv7 and Cortex A8 implementations.)

• Freescale iMX5
• Ti OMAP 3
• Qualcomm Snapdragon
• Nvidia Tegra
• Zii Labs ZMS08

Product rumors / expectations: CES 2010.

• Mobinova Elan / N910 on Nvidia Tegra
• Inventec Smartbook
• HP Compaq Airlife 100
• ICD Ultra on Tegra 2
• Google Nexus One smartphone on Snapdragon (Update: Launched)
• ASUS Eee Pad
• Qualcomm Snapdragon-based products
• Freescale netbook and MID
• Lennovo Skylight
• ARM talks about 20 manufacturers in Q1 2010.
• Notion Ink Tablet on Nvidia Tegra ‘T20’ (unknown Nvidia product)
• Archos Smartphone with 4” screen on Ti OMAP 3 platform
• Archos 7 HT and next-gen tablets in Summer 2010
• EviGroup Wallet
• C-Motech Mangrove Windows Mobile Tablet on Snapdragon
• Freescale smartbook tablet reference platform.
• Dell Streak rumor.
• Dell Looking Glass rumor
• MSI Tegra-powered dual-screen E-book
• Inbrics MID
• Smits 7″ Android MID

Further reading:

• Carrypad list of consumer internet devices.
• Wikipedia ARM Architecture
• ARM Tech conference: Techcon3 (and virtual classroom)
• ARM ‘Smart Mobile Devices’ blog.
• Bob Morris on the values of an ARM-based netbook.
• Katie Morgan – Roundup of ARM related news from Computex June 2009
• Texas Instruments – OMAP and MIDs Whitepaper. (PDF)
• Texas Instruments blog – Mobile Momentum.
• UMPCPortal articles mentioning ARM processors
• Independent blog: ARMDevices.net
• Independent blog: ARM News
• Independant blog: Carrypad (consumer products)
• Eric Shorn (VP ARM Processor Marketing) Blog.
• Twitter: ARM Community
• Twitter list: Alban Rampon ARM-Related.
• Podcast: MeetMobility

Update: ARM presentation at CES.

I had a chat with ARM at CES and they followed up by sending me a PDF. Here’s one slide from that PDF that is directly relevant here. It lists ‘candidate’ platforms for Mobile Computing. We listed all of these platforms above but it’s good to know what ARM sees at potential platforms.

Click to Enlarge.

Note to PR agencies for ARM ecosystem partners. Put one twitter/web address in the comments and we’ll add it to the further reading list.

If you find the information useful for your work, please consider a small donation to help us continue the work. UMPCPortal is independent and funded purely through donations and advertising revenue.  Many thanks

Updated: 14th Jan 2010

Updated: 18th Jan 2010 (added ARM slide)

Updated: 28 Jan 2010 (added possible Apple licensee (for A4 processor) information.

Updated: 12 May 2010 with more product information

Finally, after years of waiting and wishing, I can finally say that there are smartphones on the market that offer fast, high quality internet experiences and offer the web-focused user a converged product on which they can do tasks that, until now, required a true mobile computer. In this article I take a look at 6 of the best.

Read the full story

Location, Entertainment, Connectivity and Productivity. The four elements of a MID as proposed by Intel a few years ago (March 2007 although the label was ‘UMPC’ at that point. It changed to ‘MID’ a month later) It’s clear that it’s a winning combination because a lot of people appear to be moving in to cover the same ground.

With the Web and social networking being two of the biggest growth areas in mobile computing we’re now seeing smartphone manufacturers addressing the area and the rumoured HTC Leo is a prime example.

4.3” screen, 800×480 resolution and a high-end Snapdragon processor in a stylish pocketable format. Sounds like a MID to me!

With an efficient ARM platform battery life should be reasonable and with the Windows 6.5 OS there’s a lot of application options too but will the built-in browser or Opera 9.5 mobile be enough? Without flash there’s going to be a huge chunk of the internet missing too. How’s the speed going to be? Devices like this and the Toshiba TG01 will be good benchmarks to compare against Intel MIDs against in the coming months, especially those based on the voice-capable Moorestown platform due by the end of 2009.

Intel isn’t alone in the MID market now and as it moves to a smartphone-capable platform, the mitts will be off for an all-out competition. Consumers only stand to benefit as the best of technology is paraded before them. The market should receive a boost as a result of the competition too so it’s great to see that the MID category has the seal of approval from everyone!

HTC Leo news. Via.

The discussion of what is and isn’t a MID will continue forever but I guarantee that most people would say ‘yes’ to this being one. It’s a rumored device from HTC called ‘Leo’ I mentioned it briefly in a ‘MIDPhone’ post a few weeks ago but there’s now an image showing a candybar (or possible slider?) phone and some great MID-centric specs to consider.

Snapdragon MSM 8250 1Ghz

Display 4,3″ 480*800 capacitance touch-screen

512 ROM and 320 RAM

Camera 8mp with autofocus

Wi-Fi, A-GPS Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, support GSM/EDGE, HSDPA

3,5mm Jack

MicroSD Slot

G-Sensor, motion sensor and light sensor

Manilla (TouchFlo) 2.5

Quite a tasty line-up don’t you think? Apart from the OS. Manilla means Windows Mobile and although I don’t mind Windows Mobile, the OSK isn’t up to the quality of the Android or iPhone keyboards so I’d rather be using it with a slide-out keyboard.

Android on a Snapdragon platform with a 4.3” WVGA screen, high quality cam would probably satisfy my desires for 2009 and early 2010 but it looks like it isn’t to be just yet. It’s the Omnia Pro or the Nokia Rover on the top of my list right now.

Via Slashgear.

ZDnet posted some information about a rumored ‘Chassis 1’ specification for Windows 7 mobile phones yesterday and although it’s great to see, it looks like a list of the hardware that many of us in the UMPC and MID community have been been talking about for the last few years. It’s basically a list of currently available mobile technology and includes ARMV6+ processor, 800×480 multi-touch, 3MP cam, compass, accelerometer, light Sensor, high speed USB, BT2.1 and fast SSD. The other interesting spec is a screen size of 3.5” or more. 

ARMV6 is not exactly thrilling but the ‘+’ would indicate that Microsoft are going to build WM7 for the Cortex architecture meaning ARMv7 and high-end platforms like Snapdragon, Tegra and OMAP.

What we don’t know is what the software layer is going to be like and that’s arguably the most important element.

Completely screwing up any categorisation I ever used in the mobile computing space is the Wistron PurseBook (aka PBook and what we highlighted incorrectly as the ‘FirstBook’ last week.) Take a look at this video from Engadget and then consider some of the specs, especially the weight which comes in at an impressively light 800gm.

• Snapdragon Platform: 1Ghz ARM V7 CPU
• Hardware video decoding
• 3D-capable GPU
• Integrated 3G, Wifi, BT, GPS
• 11.1” screen (resolution unknown. Touch unknown)
• 800gm
• Linux OS (Thundersoft and Xandros possibilities)
• ‘Full size’ keyboard
• Optical Mouse
• $299-$499 estimated price range.
• 8hrs battery life
• Full specs and info.

The 11.1” screen size is quite misleading as it’s a super-wide aspect meaning it would be something like 1024×480 resolution, less pixels than many 8.9” netbooks. Update: ‘Kola’ spotted a pic (see comments) that shows the resolution as 1280×545. My guess on the size is about 280x150x25. [See comparison image below] The processor isn’t going to give you netbook browsing speeds either but it’s going to be way better than we’re seeing on smartphones. 8hrs battery life with instant or ‘always-on’ means you’ll save time when opening it just to make a quick check on email or a web page and it also means you could leave IM, Skype, Tweetdeck running all the time.

Specifications (unofficial) and links are in the database.

Size comparison:

Netbooknews.de have posted a video via (PDA.pl) from ARM that shows the Wistron Netbook, a thin, Sony Vaio-like netbook baed on the Quallcom Snapdragon CPU and running Linux. Jump to the action at 2:32

I really realy want to get my hands on a snapdragon-based device as soon as possible. I want to feed back to you all on the real-world browsing speed and capabilities.

Video: Qualcomm Konzepte auf dem MWC 2009 | Netbooknews.de – das Netbook Blog.

Note. ‘Firstbook’ is the name i’ve picked up from the video. It’s unconfirmed.

Update: Now confirmed as the ‘PurseBook.’ Article title changed.

Prepare for a bumpy ride in the MID/Smartphone space. A confusing one too because according to DigiTimes, one of the most successful smartphone designers is getting ready to launch Snapdragon-based phones. The target for launch is Q2 of 2009, later than the planned Toshiba TG01 which is also running Snapdragon.

The leaked roadmap from last month show’s two devices that would fit well with the Characteristics of the snapdragon platform.

 
HTC Ihoth and HTC Whitestone W. Images and info from jouwmobiel.nl

Also in the brief article, Digitimes states that HTC are designing with Atom. This is similar to news we had 10 months ago and could be anything from a phone to a next-gen HTC Shift.

Digitimes.

Another article has been posted about how Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform is ideal for low cost, long battery life, small form factor notebook PCs. We heard about this a few weeks ago but Brooke Crothers of CNet visited Qualcomm to hear more detail about what’s going on. The article gives me a chance to dive into the details and give some thought about what’s happening here in both technology and market terms. Is it significant or not?

First of all a little background about Qualcomm’s Snapdragon. Its a small-form-factor, mobile computing platform (think of it as a ready-to-use computer on a tiny motherboard a bit like the image you see below-right.) that includes a CPU core which is based on a licensed ARMv7 architecture. ARMV7 is the architecture used in the ARM A8 Cortex CPU design that you can now find in the new Archos devices, the Open Pandora and BeagleBoard (image below-right) projects. Snapdragon has been a four year, $350 million project. It’s not clear how many snapdragon versions there are but the one that CNet are talking about is the new dual-core QSD8672 capable of clock speeds up to 1.5Ghz. The platform also includes the following features: (Details from Qualcomm.)

• WWAN, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
• Seventh-generation gpsOne® engine for Standalone-GPS and Assisted-GPS modes, as well as gpsOneXTRA^TM Assistance 
• High definition video decode (720P)
• 3D graphics with up to 22M triangles/sec and 133M 3D pixels/sec
• High resolution XGA display support
• 12-megapixel camera
• Support for multiple video codecs
• Audio codecs: (AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, FR, EFR, HR, WB-AMR, G.729a, G.711 , AAC stereo encode)
• Support for Broadcast TV (MediaFLO^TM , DVB-H and ISDB-T)
• Fully tested, highly-integrated solution including baseband, software, RF, PMIC, Bluetooth, Broadcast & Wi-Fi

Looking at the article from CNet, these tech specs might be referring to a previous Snapdragon platform because the CNet article mentions 1080p video and an ATI graphics core.

As JKKMobile pointed out , one of the important things to note about this platform is its inability to run Windows desktop software meaning that it’s restricted to mainly Linux-based distributions or WindowsCE-based operating systems but lets take a look at a few other aspects of the platform first.

Performance

According to some references on the Internet that I’ve been able to cross-check, raw single-core CPU performance of the platform, an important factor in rendering browser-based pages and applications, is in the order of 2000 Dhrystone MIPS at 1Ghz. Obviously a dual-core version, clocked at 1.5Ghz means we’re in the region of 3000-5000 MIPS which means, if you take a look around for Dhrystone tests on the Atom N270 used in netbooks, its right in the same ballpark. The N270 appears to return about 4000 Dhrystone MIPS. These figures don’t indicate anything about the real-world performance but they do tell us that, given good memory and storage performance the results are good enough to run a basic desktop OS.

Power Efficiency

This is something I think we should be careful to remain realistic about. While ARM cores are extremely efficient and idle at extremely low levels, we’re at the point where CPU power usage on Atom and ARM-architecture CPUs aren’t a world apart from each other. When taken as a ratio of total system power drain, including screen, radios, DC-DC components and storage, the CPU is well under 50% of the equation. In 10" screen devices, it’s even less. 20% maybe. The major power advantage here is gained through on-board integration. Packing processing cores, communications silicon and memory tightly together, unifying the power-saving methodology across the board and writing efficient firmware is they key. Qualcomm have a lot of experience in that and I expect to see well-designed Snapdragon-based netbooks in 2009 to be running in the order of 5W  about half the power that an N270-based notebook will use. Due to the high level of integration, the boards will be smaller too. The solution gives designers the option to make the devices smaller or run with longer battery power. With more space for batteries, you could even see devices where thin Li-Poly take up most of the underside of the netbook and offer capacities that will allow you to leave your netbook on all day. An always-on netbook is a seriously interesting prospect!

Cost

It’s difficult to do a complete estimate on this but experience tells me that in quantities, the highly integrated Snapdragon platforms would be significantly cheaper than a full Atom-based motherboard build-out.

Markets

This could go two ways. Initially I would expect to see manufacturers use the new Snapdragon platform to make cheaper Linux-based netbooks that will go into some of the emerging markets in India and China. These markets are less sensitive to desktop OS types due to the shorter history of XP and Vista. We will see some low-cost and long-battery life versions coming to ‘our’ markets (I speak to 80% of readers when I say that; Americas, Europe, Japan) but without XP, the devices won’t get the traction and channels that the Intel-based devices will. There’s one thing that could change this though and I know for sure that people are working on this. High-quality consumer focused, easy-to-use, reliable, branded, thin operating systems. Operating systems that completely hide their roots and offer a slick UI, rich applications suite, content and branding. So far we haven’t seen anything but there are a few projects and companies out there that are working on this. The Open Handset Alliance work has potential. Moblin too. They will need a good company to ‘finish’ the product though and the branding will need to come from a big name in order to give it traction. It will need that all-important app-store too. The one OS that could really change the game though is WM7. I don’t really expect this to happen but if it is an OS that offers a large-screen experience and the opportunity to work with native document formats and in both a ‘business’ and ‘consumer’ mode, there’s no reason why it can’t be used as a netbook OS.

Back to that article now. (Sorry, I got carried away. I actually wanted to write a quick re-blog article!) CNet mentions a few companies working on solutions:

Companies including Acer, Asus, and Toshiba are planning devices based on Snapdragon, according to Qualcomm. Acer, for example, will initially introduce Qualcomm’s Gobi 3G modem into its devices, then gravitate to products based on Snapdragon.

Of course we need to take that with a pinch of salt considering the fact that there are already supposed to be 15 ultra mobile devices out there running on Snapdragon.

Qualcomm demonstrated a Snapdragon based netbook in London last week and gave us a few hints as to how netbook-style devices based on it might turn out. Silicon.com, who published images and information from the event, asks if it’s the next-gen netbook.

‘Alternative-gen’ is more like it in my opinion.

We probably won’t see many of these in the western world as we like our processing power (way) too much but I do expect these to be a success in 2009 and 2010 in other markets. Markets that haven’t really had the chance to use laptops and who’s main form of communication is a GSM phone could benefit from this.

We could see one or two ultra-light, ultra-thin devices here but for them to be a success, they are going to have to offer levels of portability, user interfaces and battery life that only a few companies are in the position to be able to achieve.

As for battery life, in normal Internet-connected scenarios, there won’t be much advantage as screens and radios take the lions-share of the battery. There’s a lot of talk about multi-day battery life but the people that talk about this fail to mention that it’s standby life. Once you start switching those transistors on and off to decode today’s intensive web pages, power drain rises into the same ballpark as ultra low power X86-based devices. Even Qualcomm themselves are being honest about this.

Snapdragon will enable mini laptop style devices – with screens of between nine and 12 inches – to run for between four to six hours without needing to be charged, according to a spokesman.

The last time I spoke to Texas Instruments, they were talking about similar figures too. The 3-4W total power drain range is about the limit of technology for 8-12″ screens in the short term.

Personally, I think the more interesting market, is the mobile Internet device market where 5″ screens enable the best balance between size, portability and quality for video, navigation and our old friend, the world wide web. It’s here, where screen power drain is much smaller, that the new ARM-based platforms could make a bigger impact. Those ARM-based devices were supposed to be in the market already but appear to have been delayed. According to word-of-mouth reports that i’m hearing though, devices are on their way. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple putting out a larger, more powerful iPod web and video-focused device on these architectures in 2009. ComputerWorld thinks so too. Unless Apple have something up their sleeve with PA-Semi

Despite Samsung reporting just a few weeks ago that a MID will come ‘sooner or later’ and there only being 11 days left in June, Aving are reporting that Qualcomm are saying (ahem, not exactly first hand news this is it!) that Samsung will release a MID in June 2008. The quoted specs included a 1Ghz ARMv7 which is going to be very fast indeed. ARMv7 is the ARM-licensed architecture used inside the Cortex-based processors which are said to be four times as fast as current ARM architectures for the same clockrate. If that’s right, this Samsung device could have something like 10 times the processing power of the Nokia N810. Of course, that’s just based on marketing talk but even if it’s half as good, this baby could really fly! The Qualcomm platform that will be used is known as ‘Snapgragon’ which includes the ARMv7 core, a 600Mhz DSP for A/V operations, support for high-end photography and a universal modem that will keep most anyone in the world confident that it’s going to work with their carrier. Here are some of the key features of Snapdragon:

• Universal Modem supporting all 2G and 3G mobile broadband standards (CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, Revisions B, A and 0; HSPA, WCDMA, GSM / GPRS / EDGE)
• High definition video decode (720P)
• 3D graphics with up to 22M triangles/sec and 133M 3D pixels/sec
• High resolution XGA display support
• 12-megapixel camera [support for.. - Ed]
• Support for multiple video codecs
• Audio codecs: (AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, FR, EFR, HR, WB-AMR, G.729a, G.711 , AAC stereo encode)
• Support for Broadcast TV (MediaFLOTM , DVB-H and ISDB-T)

No images of the device were shown in the Aving article which might indicate that the launch is yet to happen at WITS 2008. The images below show demonstrators presented by Qualcomm at CES in Jan. Maybe we’ll see one of them with the Samsung brand on it but it’s more likely that Samsung have kept their own ID under wraps.

Qualcomm ‘Anchorage’ demonstrators shown at CES. (Geek.com)

This image of the ‘Anchorage’ device from MSMobiles news

The big question is, what OS will we see on this device? Windows Mobile 6.1 is currently the most likely option but if you’re breaking into a new product category that sits close to your existing products you might want to be differentiating it somehow. Could this be the first Android device?

Qualcomm have already said that up to 15 Snapdragon-based devices would be released in 2008 and Samsung, along with HTC, have long been known as customers so maybe we really can expect something in the next week. Will ARM beat Intel to the MID market?

WorldITShow website. News from Aving.

Maybe I should have waited a few more weeks to write that article about how the smartphone platform is developing into a mobile computing platform. I said that it could be months before we see any sort of reality but today Qualcomm have demonstrated an Inventec OEM mini-laptop running on a Snapdragon ARM-core processor.

There aren’t any pics available at the moment but the notebook is said, in this article from PC World, to be "small and streamlined." Not surprising because Nvidia also showed their new Tegra platform sitting inside an EEE PC casing today and apparently the complete motherboard was just 45mm x 45mm.

The most interesting thing though are comments related to Windows Mobile 7.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 7, which is made for chips used in mobile phones, will be more laptop friendly than older versions of Windows Mobile, said Luis Pineda, senior vice president at Qualcomm, on the sidelines of a news conference in Taipei.

Windows Mobile 7 could be a key for the mobile phone industry in the future if they hope to take a bite out of the growing market for mini-notebooks such as the Eee PC that have 7-inch to 10-inch screens, weigh less than 1 kilogram and connect wirelessly to the Internet.

I have no problem with a netbook running Windows Mobile 7 as long as the applications are as rich as they are on the desktop. I’m sure many others will be happy too and if the device does the job, for the same price but returns a much better battery life[1] ARM-based devices are going to have a lot of advantages.

Qualcomm are expecting device to be available before the end of the year.

[1] While these ARM-based CPUs run at lower power requirements, the biggest power drains on netbooks are actually screen backlighting, storage and radio power. Advantages for ARM-based devices in 2008 could be significant, offering an estimated double, in-use battery life. Towards the end of 2009 though, Intel is expected to have the Moorestown platform available which will narrow the margin to very small levels.

Another Snapdragon-related report from Stacey at GigaOM who quotes Qualcomm as saying they have 15 device manufacturers lined up for Snapdragon-based devices that should be available in 2008.

That’s a lot. But not if Qualcomms or Stacey’s definition of a UMPC is different from mine. If we re-name the devices, mobile Internet smartphones and consider the prototypes shown at CES then I can believe it because in the smartphone world, every manufacturer has to play the Internet game in the top quartile of their product ranges. Anything less than a Cortex-based device is risking being under-powered for the heavyweight world of ‘real’ Internet.

I’m excited that the ARM-based devices are moving into the mobile Internet market. It means competition and learning. Take the best of everything in 2008/9 and 2010 is going to bring some absolute gems based on Cortex 9, Mobile-ITX and Moorestown.

In a week where we’ve been bombarded by news (or Pyrotechnics as Richard Brown of VIA, calls it) from the Intel IDF, it’s important to remember the other side of the fence. Over in smartphone, pmp and pocketPC land, things are happening just as quickly. The PR machine isn’t as big but the products could be just as capable.

GigaOm interviewed Qualcomm’s Dr. Sanjay Jha , COO and president of its CDMA technologies division last week and put a few interesting Ultra Mobile related questions his way.

Stacey Higginbbotham asked the following:

When will these [snapdragon-based] devices come out, and how does this compete with Intel’s Atom processors for ultra-mobile PCs?

Sanjay replies: Devices using Snapdragon will come out in the second half of this year, before or after Christmas. And I wouldn’t say we’re competing with Intel because we want to focus on a pocket-sized device that you can carry with you. Intel’s specifications for Atom are focused on a device with a 7-inch to 9-inch display.

I think Sanjay needs to do a little bit more research. 20 manufacturers are licensed (as ARM might say!) to produce MIDs and all should produce devices before Christmas. Nearly all of the devices will fall smack-bang into the pocket-sized market so Qualcomm, you DO have competition.

ARM-based MIDS will come and i’m sure we’ll see them with longer battery life and smaller designs than with Atom but will they be powerful enough to handle the a full browser and all the media that a user can throw at them?

GigaOm interview.

Via ElectronRun

Qualcomm are showing off a couple of mobile platforms at CES.  They aren’t UMPCs or even x86 devices but they’re certainly Mobile Internet targeted. On the lower image, the platform known as ‘Ancorage’ (Also shown above next to an iPhone) is running Windows Mobile.

Both this demonstrator and the ‘Fairbanks’ variant are running the ‘snapdragon’ platform which I wrote about recently. Its a Ghz-capable platform utilising the scorpion, Cortex A8 ARM architechture. HTC and Samsung have already shown interest in this and I personally think its going to be going head-to-head with Intel’s Menlow. Take a look at some MIDs that have been shown at CES. The target markets are exactly the same.

Gigabyte MID on Menlow platform.

Qualcomm are just showing these off as demonstrators of their mobile platform and it looks like they’re made by Inventec but the focus is clear – Mobile Internet!

Source: Geek.com. Thanks for the tip Stfu!

I really do hate using question marks at the end of titles. Its a sign of doubt and that’s not what a blogger should be presenting to the readers. However….this one really is a question mark and worth discussing.

As usual, its a two-liner in an article about more general ‘computing’ subjects. This time its from Forbes who have just run an article on Michael Dell’s return to Dell. Credit also to Gizmodo who have picked up on it in their blog.

Dell and Quanta are rumored to be cooking up a smart phone together, the first real production from Ron Garriques and company. It would likely include video, an MP3 player and Internet access and be unleashed on the world early next year. Officially, there’s no comment on this product.

Internet, video, audio. All sounds good. But then there’s the ‘smart phone’ part.

When you say ‘smart phone’, ‘video’, ‘mp3′ and ‘Internet’ you’re usually saying ’3 inch screen with style and pocketability’ and not only is that a tough market to succeed in now but if you want to talk about real Internet and advanced video for 2008 customers, you have to do some seriously advanced hardware and software engineering. The only way to get the right screen and thumboard size is to drop the keyboard behind the screen via a slider (N810 – I love that design!) or clamshell (Psion 5 – I love that design!), or have it as a touchscreen element as Apple have done. Then, you have to tackle the problem of the processor requirement by putting in a fast processor and/or developing extremely efficient code. Add an HSDPA modem, some storage, wifi, BT and the now obligatory GPS (my Wife is seriously getting into her HTC Trinity’s GPS) you have a big battery life, size and heat issue that really, no-one has solved yet. The N810 and iPhone are very close but they lack the final 3G component, some more software and that little bit of extra speed that is needed to make them ready for a 2008 customer.

Either Dell are looking at a new platform (Snapdragon, Menlow, Mobile-ITX?) some very specialist code (Android?) or they’ve basically thrown a few buzzwords together to get suckers like me to spread the word. I fear the later!