The E90 is most definitely a prime piece of technology. The 800-wide screen, GPS, media capability, hsdpa capability and the dual screens are very impressive features and make a great specification list. There are, however, very few people that have been able to try out the device. My Symbian have a nice review available and where extremely positive about it. The Register, on the other hand, were not impressed with the E90 and have lots to say about the keyboard.

Alas, unless you have very small fingers indeed, you’re going to be disappointed. So you’re really obliged to use your thumbs.

You can see on this video how small the keyboard is. We estimate it to be about 90mm wide which gives a keyboard itch of around 9mm.  This report is being typed on a Kohjinsha SA1 which has a key pitch of around 15mm. People with big fingers would definitely have a problem with a 15mm pitch so maybe The Register is right. They mention the PSION 5 as a better solution and sure enough, when you check the specifications for the PSION 5 you’ll find that the key pitch was 30% bigger at around 12.5mm

But is the keyboard on the E90 really meant to be for touch-typing? Probably not. Its a device that is designed to be used in two hands and therefore its keyboard is going to be used with thumbs. Unfortunately, The Register tried this too.

The reality is even worse, however. I found I made more mistakes typing on the E90 than I do on an E70 or an E61, which really are optimized for minimizing thumb input errors, particularly the E61, with its widely spaced keys. I made even more mistakes on the new communicator than on its true predecessor, the Nokia 9500. And nothing about the experience suggests I’m going to adapt to the device.

It looks like some further testing is needed on the E90 because if this report is true, it negates one of the main advantages of having the E90 in the first place.

After spending some time with the Raon Digital Vega recently, one of the smallest devices in the Ultra Mobile PC bracket, it was a huge leap over to the top-end of the market to a device with 400% more screen area and a 400% bigger ego! The Flybook V33i is an 8.9″ 1024×600 convertible laptop with cellular connectivity and a huge huge slice of style. Thanks to myflybook.de I’ve been able to test it out for four days and bring you the low-down. Is it all talk and no action?

The Pepper Pad 3 is your Google-life companion!

On one hand it provides a quick, mobile and easy way to use the Internet through a Firefox-based rich browser. It’s also a capable entertainment device. On the other hand its a complete Linux-based touchscreen PC and a real hackable gem of a mobile pc platform. With a great thumbboard! We have one or two issues with the style of the device, the limitations of the Pepper desktop and wonder whether the price is a little too high for basic users but in general, its a great way to enjoy the internet, browser-based applications, media and a super platform for further development. Read the full review of the Pepper Pad 3 here.

The DualCor cPc is a difficult device to understand. Part UMPC, part PocketPc. Its not going to be cheap and for the time-being, its only available without bluetooth, Wifi and cellular data access. However, there is no denying that this device is going to be one of the most advanced ultra ‘minature’ PC’s thats ever been launched.

Over the last four or five months I’ve been in regular contact with someone that works as a designer for Ultra Mobile PC’s. He’s a real UMPC fanatic and in his spare time he likes nothing more than to research, plan, test and play with UMPC ideas and designs. We have been distilling our ideas about the ultimate professional UMPC for a long time now and both of us have come to similar conclusions about what our ideal professional UMPC device should look like and what the specifications should be given the current technical constraints.

I had a semi-serious look at an ideal device a few months ago and also covered some ideas in a post about the Carrypad Office Companion. The ‘ideal device’ discussions ended up with a similar technical specifications although having been through the brainstorming process now, the Industrial Design was clearly one of the hardest and most critical points. What would the device look and feel like? We spent a few hours on the phone late one night and went through all the ID elements we’d talked about in the past – keyboard designs, screen sizes, frame button layout, keyboards and decided on what we thought was a good layout.

I was pretty surprised and excited to get these images in my mailbox the next morning. This is the 1st Draft of UMPC-X!

 
UMPC-X. Click to enlarge.

What do you think? Personally I love the two-position sliding screen. The thickness of the device is actually calculated from existing UMPC motherboards and designs so its not just a free-format CAD drawing either. You’re looking dimensions of about 190 x 110 x 25mm. We decided on a ‘real’ keyboard but the keyboard shown is just a a flat image for drafting purposes.  You’ll also note that there no web-cam on it and we even thought that we wouldn’t need a 3G modem or GPS unit. We carry 3G modems on our belts and have easy access to Bluetooth GPS modules. Building these in just raises cost.

Here is the rough technical spec that we set down as a target

• Latest Intel Ghz-class ULV processor.
• 1GB RAM
• Scroll wheel
• Docking station including PCI express slot. (for external graphics solutions.)
• 7″ 1024×600 LED-backlit screen.
• Slide-out keyboard
• Light touchscreen (handwriting input not important.)
• Mouse pointer and a selection of programmable frame buttons.
• 3 hours battery life.
• $1500 end-user cost

What should we add, take-away, refine?  Should there be a Web-Cam? GPS built in? HSDPA modem?  What interfaces would be needed? Let us know because you never know, this could turn into the first Carrypad Office Companion! We just need to find a few million Euros and then we can get it on the production line.

I’ve created a forum thread [url=http://www.origamiportal.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=987&start=0#forumpost3470]here.[/url] for discussion and financing offers ;-)

Over the last week we’ve been fortunate enough to have one of the first Microsoft Origami-based UMPC’s to arrive in Europe. Its an Easybook P7 from Paceblade, a VIA C7-M based device.

We’ve lived with the device and put it though some typical useage scenarios. Its certainly mobile and certainly very easy to use as it run a standard Microsoft Windows XP operating system with Tablet (touch screen) extensions.

There’s no hardware keyboard and only 800×480 pixels to play with it – is it really enough to be useful? Read on.

Its debatable isn’t it. Does the world really need any more images of the N800?

Click through to the N800 gallery.

Click for N800 data sheet.

Popular Science Magazine have announced a Nokia N800-focused competition. If you win, you get an article in Popular Science magazine.

Actually, we were looking for the ‘and take home an N800’ bit but its not there. Boo Hiss! Oh well, Getting onto the pages of Popular Science Magazine isn’t that bad is it. All you have to do is think of a compelling ‘anything’ for the Nokia N800. This covers service, application, script and hardware and we guess, must show off the features of the N800.

Here’s some ideas the we’ve come up with. Feel free to steal them and elaborate.

• Personal health and fitness integration (with a Polar watch or sensor for example) where the user can monitor and auto-upload activity, diet, heart rate and steps/movement/sport info to a central service that feeds back hints, tips, graphs and advise.
• Hard case with integrated thumboard.
• ‘WalkDeck’ Based on the StreetDeck idea where media, communication and navigation is integrated into one touch-screen interface.
• Digital camera control utility for taking images (can TWAIN do this?), auto downloading to the Nokia and Geotagging via the co-ordinates from a Bluetooth connected GPS unit and the auto-uploading to a server (Flickr etc.)

…and we like the digital camera control utility the most!