Other high-end smartphones.
Samsung Omnia Pro. My current long term test phone, the Samsung Omnia Pro is serving me well and with the 800Mhz ARM11 processor offers a taste of faster web browsing on a smartphone. Camera features are good and the Samsung Touch Wiz overlay software hides most of the Windows Mobile 6.1 ugliness and extends the capabilities through some additional functionality and applications. The OLED screen is bright but only 3.5 inch in size. Looking forward to a free WM6.5 upgrade. Street price has just dropped below 400 Euros and the device is available in many European countries.
HTC Touch Pro 2. Another good ARM11-based device with an excellent keyboard and slide/tilt screen. HTC’s TouchFlo overlay software does a good job at tidying and extending the WM6.1 user interface. The screen is 3.6 inch. As with the Omnia Pro, the TP2 has hit a street price of 499 Euros. The Touch Pro 2 runs on a 528Mhz ARM 11 platform.
Acer Tempo M900. Again, running a mid-range 533Mhz ARM11 platform the M900 isn’t a high-end choice. A missing 3.5mm headphone jack and 188gm weight might cause media fans to think twice too. A 3.8 inch screen and big battery do help though. The big advantage of the M900 is the price. At under 240 Euro, this is an interesting entry-point.
Samsung Omnia II. A ‘pad’ version of the Omnia Pro with the same core build and operating system but without the keyboard. Pricing around the 450 Euros mark at the moment.
Sony Experia X2. 528Mhz ARM11 CPU running Windows Mobile 6.5. Small 3.2 inch screen. Not available yet.
Side-by-side comparison table.
The 6 devices listed above can be viewed here in a side-by-side interactive comparison table.
List of all smartphones in the UMPCPortal database.
General MID usage notes.
While this new category of phones goes some way to meet the requirements of the mobile web user, there are compromises made in order to reach the sizing and battery life requirements of a 24/7 phone.
Weight
Compared to smartphones, most of these devices are relatively heavy. They are also relatively large. As a dedicated, converged MIDPhone, these devices could be too large for many.
Processing Power
The new Cortex A8 core does a lot to address the poor web-based performance of previous offerings but it only just brushes up against the low end of Intel-based MIDs like the Viliv S5 and UMID M1/M2 that offer twice the processing power and much large operating RAM sizes for vastly superior multitasking capabilities.
Screen size
While a user interface can be tailored to suit both eye and finger, a high resolution on a screen smaller than 4.8 inch means that web-based fonts appear extremely small. Most people will find they have to zoom the text (and lose effective screen space) to be able to read it. For comfortable non-zoom web activities a 4.8 inch screen is much better. The same applies to ebook reading, navigation and table-top video viewing.
Battery life.
With faster processors comes more capability. With more capability comes more usage and with more usage comes shorter battery life. All of the solutions shown above will only work for occasional usage scnearios. For extended mobile web/internet work, the small battery capcities on these devices will often mean that your ‘phone’ unusable before the day is out. Dedicated MIDs offer a way to focus on web-based activities without having to reduce the battery life on your phone.
Storage, expansion, peripherals.
If you’re interested in extending your MID using extended keyboards, disk storage, an external monitor, web cam or anything else that you might be used to with a ultra mobile PC or X86-based MID, these MIDPhone solutions will, in general, be a problem.
Do dedicated MIDs still have a market?
If you’ve read the section above you’ll see that there are many reasons why you might not want to use a combined voice phone and MID in a single device. Screen size, battery life, connectivity and expandability and the expanding navigation, ebook, pnd, web and gaming market mean that the market for dedicated MIDs will remain. If you’re happy with a small feature or smartphone but want a better web experience, look towards a device like the Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet as a (very good) entry point into the dedicated MID market. With the 8GB Android version selling for 240 Euro and running on an 800Mhz ARM Cortex platform you get some of the speed and pocketability of the MIDPhones in a bigger, more comfortable handheld sizing.
What MIDPhone is at the top of your list?
If you’re considering buying any of the devices listed here, let us all know which one and why in the comments below.
New article: 6 WVGA Smartphones that Push The Mobile Web Envelope. http://bit.ly/2QFPPm
RT @chippy: New article: 6 WVGA Smartphones that Push The Mobile Web Envelope. http://bit.ly/2QFPPm
Groan, still can't use any of these. RT @chippy New article: 6 WVGA Smartphones that Push The Mobile Web Envelope http://bit.ly/2QFPPm
RT @chippy: New article: 6 WVGA Smartphones that Push The Mobile Web Envelope. http://bit.ly/2QFPPm
Good summary and all the reasons why not to buy them ;)
The problem is that many consumers (situation in Europe) are comparing these devices to smartphones, they are not aware of a MID market. For them neither processing power nor software availability is important. They also think that a netbook is a notebook but smaller, but this is a whole another problem.
What is important for them is “bling” factor of a touchscreen in a phone/multimedia device. These MIDphones are competing with iPhone.
And real geeks are still playing with their n810 from Nokia. And what are n810 competitors? ;)
You mean they are comparing them to dumbphones aka featurephones if quote: “For them neither processing power nor software availability is important.”
Consumer market is not composed out of geeks, remember that we are only 0.001% of smarphone consumers out there.
Yes, you’re right, my mistake.
Consumer generally wants – phone+PMP+camera+sometimes web, qwerty and real OS are obsolete.
MIDphones – neither MID, neither smartphone, cons of both :)
Processing power that could not be fully used cause of form factor and software environment – not a real MID (but with Android and Maemo it is surely better than with Symbian). Limited battery life for a phone. These devices are also not really for geeks but overbuilt for a massive consumer. Not much sense for either group – only marketing forces.
Masybe I’m a geek, but for a price of one of these I can buy Archos 5 and a decent phone – and I’d be happier (even more with a BT keyboard) :)
Only HD2
Web browsing is one of the basic functions of a MID. Even some months earlier, iPhone was the most fast and convenient when used as web browsre inspite it’s not a WVGA MID.
Today, i think only HD2 can be a competitor because of multitouch capasitive creen, so i thinkong of byuing only it
iPhone and Samsung OmniaHD – are both based on Cortex. Inspite they are not WVGA, both are worth mentioning here
As the article was about WVGA phones, they didn’t quite make the article!
Of course Chippy, that’s your right to define borders. But its too formally. The subject of the article is _mobile web_ and iPhone is still one of the best for fast web browsing; and there is a little difference between WVGA and OmniaHD 640*360 screen
I’m not for placing all Cortex phones here. I think Blackberry has too small screen
Sorry Squirrel but have to disagree about the OmniaHD with 640*360. Older websites are aimed at an 800 width resolution. But PPI is important too, which is the prime reason I am interested in the HD2 more than the Omnia2.
im still not sure what a midphone is. the iphone 3gs should be considered a midphone. is it excluded because it doesn’t multitask?
No, it is excluded because it isn’t WVGA.
I agree you need to have a line somewhere. Personally I think anything less than WVGA is useless for browsing the web. I have a phone which is 3 years old. I could browser it then using mobile IE. But it is hard work and I hated doing it and was only for emergencies.
With the new, higher resolution (and quicker) phones that are coming out, they start to be usable by consumers and not just geeks. When the iPhone becomes WVGA I would consider buying it, but not before then.
“anything less than WVGA is useless for browsing the web”
Vakeros, next statement is “much more” true: “iPhone is the best MIDPhone for web-browsing” – because its fast and has multitouch and 800*480 is only the third requirement for good web-experience
Interesting ordering. We might have to agree to disagree. For me 800×480 is the minimum res. for web-browsing. I don’t care about speed, if I am having to move around or zoom in and out. This is where size of the screen also becomes important, and PPI should be taken into account. The higher the res. the bigger the screen needs to be (at least if you see things at native resolution.) There is an argument for having higher res. and just bump up the dpi to 125%. The disadvantages of a bigger screen is size (obviously) and battery life.
I don’t make many phone calls. I don’t receive many phone calls and I wouldn’t have a phone on me at all if it didn’t also have the Pocket PC feature set.
Also HD2 compared with iPhone 3GS – I expect they will be of similiar speeds (if HD2 isn’t faster), it also has multitouch (which I don’t care about – I would probably prefer resistive, especially as the icons can now be large enough to be operated with your finger properly).
Netbooks based on Tegra 2 (Cortex based) have already been demoed http://armnews.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/tegra-2-netbook-unveiled/
So till these make it in devices by April 2010, I think I need to hold off any purchases… Simply because as you’ve pointed out, with more functionality, comes a more dire need for better battery life… These devices offer near-laptop fucntionality, and are always in your pocket…
Also, for web browsing, it’s important to have smooth flash rendering, which again Tegra seems to offer with hardware accelerated flash… So yes while all these devices currently available are a great step forward, it’s difficult to make a purchase when the next evolutionary step towards near perfect handheld browsing is a few months away…
I want smth 4,8″ on Tegra 2 :-)
Where is OMNIA 2??
Don’t forget that Dell Streak!
http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/10/dell-streak-5-inch-3g-android-mid-with-3g/
Dell Steak is just an idea, isn’t it?
When will it come? Is it based on Cortex or Moorestown?
Chippy, where did you see “Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet 8GB version selling for 240 Euro”? I cannot find it anywere (not in Archos.com nor in Amazon.de)
There’s a pulldown menu here.
If only the droid had a HSDPA version. . . .maybe soon? But the HTC HD2 looks like the best choice right now….well except the price. I haven’t used a WVGA smartphone with 3.5″ or larger screen size but most users say web browsing is unbearable on such displays. One issue (as pointed out by rustle) is how the processing power in certain devices are curbed because of their form factor or a missing piece of hardware. It’ll be unthinkable at this stage to make a snapdragon device with a VGA screen…..why would anyone do that?!
The Dell Streak does look very promising though, not just because it looks like its 5″ screen wouldn’t offer anything less than WVGA but because it’s styled like a smartphone and I can imagine holding one up to my ear….I’ll probably look like a nerd but definitely not as nerdy as a square-ish OQO 02 or S5 glued to my cheeks (same 5″-ish screen).
I wouldn’t even bring the SE Xperia X1, X2 and HTC Touch Diamond 2 into this cuz the sub-3.5″ screens just ….. one thumb and there’s barely 40% of the screen left :-)