OQO MID on Nvidia platform? Please let it be true.

Posted on 02 June 2008, Last updated on 11 November 2019 by

Something is up here. Something exciting perhaps. Either someone had a bit too much love for OQO’s ID when they hashed together a design for Nvidia’s computex webpage or OQO are indeed going to use their industrial design skills to release an ARM-based MID. Oh the mind boggles. Android? Windows Mobile 7?

oqonvidia
Click to enlarge. That’s definitely an OQO with an Nvidia logo on it!

Source

The OQO ultra mobile PC design is one of the best there is. Beautiful engineering. Near perfect keyboard. I’d be extremely happy to see OQO screw up all definitions of a ultra mobile PC and release this as a MID.

I’ll be trying to confirm a yay or neh in the next 30 minutes.

Update: Nvidia seem to be showcasing quite a lot of other peoples designs!

Update2: ARM issued a press release saying that Nvidia Tegra is ARM11MPCore (up to 4 cores.) Could be interesting in a handheld for browsing, audio and telephony.

23 Comments For This Post

  1. Tk4killa says:

    Is that 1080p HD I see …
    This got me excited

  2. Tal says:

    Hey Chippy …. give me a break to work some :)
    And indeed this sounds great. Hope its a “yay”.
    I would hope Ubuntu Mobile before Android. Why are you so excited of Android over Ubuntu Mobile BTW?

  3. chippy says:

    I’m excited at the prospect of a cheaper OQO design and longer battery life. If it runs a decent browser, this could be the device i’ve been looking for for my own use. My ‘Carrypad’

    Steve.

  4. Tal says:

    Thanks. How is it better than the Gigabyte m528 in your opinion besides price?

  5. cjgunit says:

    looks great, but this is not so good news for those people(read:me) who were hoping the next oqo would be isaiah based.

  6. solnyshok says:

    Hey, Chippy
    as Nvidia points out, it will probably be wince (WM7 will be based in WinCE6). Hopefully it will run WinMo apps though :)

  7. chippy says:

    Why am I excited?
    Battery life. I’d expect the OQO’s 16wh small battery to run a high-end arm platform for at least 6 hours in-use.
    Industrial design. OQO has the best keyboard and desireable quality.
    Price. If this is a MID and if this ARM-based, they have to be looking at sub-$500 right?
    Software. This is an unknown but lets assume that the browser will be desktop quality. In that case i’m very interested.
    See my carrypad ideal device specs from 2006. It matches perfectly.
    http://www.umpcportal.com/2007/09/940/
    It better have 3G in it though!

    Steve.

  8. Will says:

    This would blow the HTC Advantage out of the water but I doubt OQO would release a product that looks exactly the same but runs WM6/7 instead of Vista/XP.

    Plus the nVidia page confirms that the Tegra SoC have an ARM11 CPU.. so meh.

  9. Hanzo says:

    Wow~~It’s definitly the most excited news so far, especially when I saw the Tegra device on the YouTube. Can’t wait to see the actual New OQO in the real world!

  10. chippy says:

    @will. Yes, the ARM11 part worries me a little too!

  11. Mike Cane says:

    Not excited. Don’t forget the latest OQO uses a hard touchscreen and the stylus is optional! No Opera Safari-like browsing with that!

    Plus, it’s too early to get excited about anything that won’t be available *this month*.

    I’m still unconvinced that MIDs will sell. iPod Touch, yes. MIDs, no.

    (I also doubt this comment will be let through by Akismet! Let’s see…)

  12. chippy says:

    COngratulations Mike. You comments seem to be free to roam the capital.

  13. Jonathan Greene says:

    I would love the OQO form factor but it needs to run for more than 2 hours …

  14. Kornel says:

    They must be up to something, I dont think oqo qould let them use their device front and center on their page. That is a pretty bad photoshop job tho…oqo looks flattened.

  15. Tal says:

    Chippy, once this show is over would you be willing to summarize the MID domain for us please? I will definitely follow your lead as to which one to purchase.

  16. Tal says:

    And I still can’t find anywhere a decent comparison between the windows mobile and the Ubuntu mobile. OS should be an important factor. I can see how XP is superior but I have a bad feeling about the MS mobile thingy.

  17. Fixup says:

    While smartphones like iphone will still have a huge market, a MID like N810 but with 3G built-in will definitely have its own market. A MID oqo is the perfect answer.

  18. Al says:

    To me the OQO’s advantage is it running full windows; making a low end version seems useless to me. Rather than changing the OS what they need to do is design a model around a touch type keyboard. That is why there are not many OQO owners as how do you use full windows with your thumbs? most won’t and that is why it’ a geek toy rather than being a popular computer.

  19. icura says:

    ARM11 is actually quite capable. Not like the Cortex-A8 but still, far better than the standard issue ARM9 found in most smart phones.

    With 800MHz, a good GPU and MP it’s miles ahead of the current Nokia devices.

  20. chippy says:

    @Al I know you think that a PSION5 is touch-type but really, touch-type means something else to most people and it starts at 17mm key pitch!

  21. Will says:

    Al, I think if you’re looking for a touch-typeable device, you should be looking at 7″+ devices. Even the EeePC’s keyboard is too cramped by many people’s standards. For devices with 5″ screens or smaller, I think the only way to go is with a thumbboard.

    icura, the current high-end Nokia devices are already using ARM11 chips. The Nokia N810 for example is using the OMAP2420 with an ARM11 core at 400MHz. Going to 800MHz is a significant jump but based on the browser tests Chippy ran a week ago, it won’t be fast enough.

    The 600MHz OMAP3 has approximately the same processing power as the AMD Geode LX900 but should be 50% faster than the 800MHz Tegra. The Everun is slow enough… imagine it with a 50% slower CPU!

  22. Smiley says:

    “I know you think that a PSION5 is touch-type but really, touch-type means something else to most people and it starts at 17mm key pitch!”

    Sorry, but that is missing the point. A 14mm key pitch keyboard is a perfectly valid input device when you are in a library or meeting and have to enter a lot of data for an hour or two. Try doing that with a thumb-board.

    17mm key pith is what you want when you’re using the same keyboard for 8 hours a day, which is not exactly the use case of a handheld device.

    Psion proved it was possible to shoehorn such keyboard into a PDA form factor *a decade ago*, which makes it all the more maddening when you see there’s zero alternative available today. On the other hand, they also proved it was very easy to botch that same design (cf the Psion Revo).

  23. Vakeros says:

    I have to agree with Al and Smiley.
    When will people get it! You won’t get a “full” keyboard in any UMPC. This is because of those important letters ‘UM’. However, you can have a keyboard which you CAN type with, which isn’t a thumbboard. Put your fingers together, next to a ruler and you will see that unless you have humoungous digits it will fit within 16cm. This is with keys that have 15mm key pitch. These dimension will allow a 4:3 aspect screen at 5.4″

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