I remember back to the forming of the Open Handset Alliance back in Nov 2007 when the ‘Open Platform for Mobile Devices’ was announced. Intel were a founding member and it was unclear what silicon platform Android was going to use. I think the term Google used at the time was ‘processor independent.’ Soon after that, the thought of running Android in Intel faded away but Intel has remained a member. Recently I’ve been hearing more and more news about Android on X86 and in news out today from IDF in Beijing, it’s been confirmed.

It looks like this is all stemming from the news that Google and Intel are getting together to offer Google TV  [news was published by NYTimes on 17th March.]. Yes, Intel is involved with another project to build software for TV’s (MeeGo) but there’s no way that Intel are going to say ‘no’ if Google are interested in the platform.

The likely platform is ‘Sodaville’ which is aimed at media delivery through an Atom CPU and a GMA500 graphics and video processor in a highly integrated, low-cost and power-efficient package.  The platform is very similar to that used in MIDs, UMPCs and embedded applications. It’s also likely to be very similar to the upcoming platform for smartphones, Moorestown. (More on that tomorrow.)

In Beijing today, the story took another step forward when Rene James, GM of Intel’s software and services group, confirmed that Android was indeed running on Atom and was also running on the Smartphone platform. That’s Moorestown. Apparently, customers are interested.

No real surprises there to be honest. Android ‘running’ on an X86 platform is hardly groundbreaking news but it does highlight that Moorestown will not just be a MeeGo-only platform. Indeed, Windows, Chrome OS, OSX, Linux builds, Android and MeeGo would all work. It’s just a matter of getting the people (money) together to make it happen.

As I mentioned in the MeeGo article today –

Stay very closely tuned to the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit which starts tomorrow and runs for three days. Intel, Nokia and Google are all there.

Maybe we’ll hear more very soon!

It seems like ‘Pad’ Fever has hit Berlin today as WePad ride on the wave with their WePad product. Sascha from (Netbooknews, Meet:Mobility) was there and we’ve been tracking news coming out of the press conference.

Note: Our tracking page for the WePad is here.

Updating as the conference happens…..

Adobe partnership. Flash and AIR will be available.

Joint venture between 4titoo und Neofonie.

Siemens, Intel and Adobe partners.

Chippy: ExpoPC will use the same hardware. Pegtron we believe.

The WePad will support full HD playback. [Sounds like there’s a Broadcom HD decoder in play here.]

WePad fact sheet (PDF)

Chippy: We’re waiting for price, battery life, availability…….

Stern Magazine (an important German magazine) will be available on the WePad.

Chippy: Looks like a DE-Only focus right now.

Pricing: ‘Only’ 300 Euro. Chippy: Details of that unknown at present. Is it subsidised? Update: Wrong info from random tweet! See official pricing below.

Image of WePad GUI: (Via @sascha_p)

Chippy: No mention of Google Marketplace yet.

Chippy: List of comparable devices (from UMPCPortal database)

WePad 16GB: 449 Euro. (again, no indication if this is subsidised or unsubsidised.)

“449 Euro with 16 GB internal Flash, WiFi. WePad 3G with Full HD chip for 1080p external video, GPS, 32 GB internal 569 Euro inch Via Tabletprofi

Wepad preorder 27.4., soft launch in July, mass availability in August. Via Tabletprofi twitter.

VIa (@sascha_p)

OFFICIAL PRICING FROM WEPAD:

• WePad 449 € with 16 GB, WiFi (expandable to 48GB with an SD card)

• WePad 3G 569€ 32 GB (expandable with 32 GB SD Karte) with WiFi, GPS, Full HD 1080p

WePad Roadshow will be in May.

Chippy: Outstanding: International availability, Marketplace, battery life, carrier deals?

Chippy: Initial thoughts on pricing: 569 Euro is good for a 3G-enabled device at 800gm. Battery life still could be a showstopper. I’ll be interested to see how ExoPC respond.

Chippy: Word coming in that it runs full Linux build but can run Android apps. Sounds like a Dalvik runtime is included. Dalvik Turbo perhaps?

Chippy: Still no word about battery capacity. Usually an indicator that it’s not good!

Note: Our tracking page for the WePad is here. (Specs, links, updates.)

Chippy: Still waiting for news about Google Marketplace. IMO it’s not happening. 3rd party app store? AppUp? If this is an intel partnership. Is it Moblin/MeeGo? If so, it could have AppUp store.

WePad Facebook page. Official information (mostly German)

AppStore is called the ‘WePad Meta-Store’ Includes native, Java, Adobe, Android apps.

Chippy: Latest WePad spec sheet is quoting ‘around’ 6hrs battery life. (=70% = 4hrs online based on usual marketing BS!)

Chippy: Based on latest info, I’m guessing the OS is based on Canonical Ubuntu with their Dalvik Runtime engine. 2nd choice: Moblin core. Not sure where the app store is coming from.

WePad are planning telecoms and media partnerships.

WePad live Pic:

Via @touchmemobile

First Video from press conference.

Via MorgenPostTV

All press photos now in gallery…

Chippy Opinion: If you ask me, they chose the wrong platform to deliver what is effectively an ereader. They are playing a dangerous game by riding on the iPad wave too. 800gm is, like on the iPad at 680gm, heavy. Too heavy. Battery life will be 4 hours online in my estimate. International availability is unknown. There are question marks about Android on the X86 Linux build and if there’s no ‘point of sale’ marketplace, what incentive does any developer have to write apps for it? I can’t imagine this having a true Google Marketplace. Not without voice, haptics, 3G anyway. Note: Google were not mentioned as a partner. Final word for today: Competing devices from experienced Android/Smartphone manufacturers will stream-roll this within 12 months.

That wraps it up for now. I’ve been on the phone with Sascha who was at the conference. Stay tuned to Netbooknews.com (and .de) for his video.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Google is working on a tablet but even so, I can’t contain my enthusiasm for this news. Why? Because it’s Google and Android together in the MID/Pad/CID/Tablet space and that means that they’re actively thinking about getting Android, their apps AND THE MARKETPLACE on to other platforms. Marketplace is critical for seeding development and further interest in the sector.

There has been a lot of talk about ChromeOS being the choice for pads, MIDs and smart-books but I don’t see it happening that way. Chrome doesn’t have any of the excitement that a dynamic, finger-friendly UI, location-enabled OS with app-store brings. Chrome is for the table-top. Android is the mobile OS and that fits like a glove on a handheld device.

The news comes from the NYTimes (via Laptopmag) and highlights a number of interesting consumer internet device developments. The best of which is:

Google, for example, has been working with several hardware manufacturers to push its Android software, which was originally designed for mobile phones and is a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone operating system. The company also hopes to make its own apps marketplace available for new slate-like devices.

The article goes on to mention Dell, Acer, Microsoft, Nokia and Lenovo along with a device from HP known as the ‘half pint’ a device measuring 6 inch diagonally. I like that thought. Check out the full article and the Laptopmag blog for more.

It was already known that Archos would bet the farm on a new range of Android Tablets this summer and so we’ve been anxiously awaiting the first leaks. And here they are.

Archos Lounge (translation) are reporting (source: ITNews) that the Archos 8 Family will be available by the end of summer. The range will run from 3 inch to 10 inch, will be Cortex A8-based (Ti OMAP as with the current Archos 5 Internet Tablet) and will……oh I so want to just copy the whole article from Archos Lounge but the wouldn’t be fair on them. Hop over there, check it out and let us know what you think here.

Did someone say Multitouch=Capacitive? The big outstanding question for me has to be Do they have Android 2.x with Google Apps?

Engadget have looked into a pre-ordering delay on the Enso zenPad (a version of a device from a company called Smits) and have found some strange goings on. If you’ve ordered the zenPad, check out the article at Engadget. If you haven’t ordered the zenPad, we advise to wait until things are cleared up.

Source: Engadget

We’ve acquired an an official PDF which confirms specification details for the ICD Gemini 11.6 inch Android Tablet. Engadget outed the details a few days ago so now we know the specs are real, we’ve added them all to our product database. Many seem to have missed the fact that the Tegra 2 powered device will be vastly more powerful than the iPad. 2-3 times more processing power (it’s a dual-core optimised Cortex CPU as opposed to the single-core version in the iPad) which means super-fast web rendering times and/or problem-free multitasking. Also missed is the fact that Google Marketplace is an ‘option’ on the device. That means ICD haven’t sealed the deal with Google yet and probably need the weight of a carrier agreement behind them before that can be sorted out. It’s a significant issue because without it, the device isn’t half as interesting.

Full specifications are now in our database along with images that we’ve picked up. Those are also shown below.

The confirmed specifications come just as Stuff, a UK publication, reports on their hands-on session (Via NdevilTV) with the device. They seem very happy…

The Gemini’s built-in stereo speakers sound superb much better than iPad’s single, tinny tweeter…

Web browsing is even smoother than the Nexus One blisteringly fast page renders, smooth scrolling, speedy rotation and full Flash support.

It all bodes well for basic specs but time, price and that Google app-suite and marketplace are all as yet, unknown.

ICD Ultra Alternatives: Click for a list of similar devices.

I enjoyed spending time with the Mobinnova Beam at CES this year and after a demo and discussion with ARM’s Bob Morris, I walked away impressed although a little worried about the OS. My main worry was that no-one would be able to relate to the unknown user interface. How could anybody get a feel for what the device can do without some form of knowledge about the OS? Would you buy a computing device without any knowledge of the OS? It appears that others feel the same way; the Beam has just re-surfaced running open-source Android.

Laptopmag got to spend some time with the latest version of the Nvidia Tegra-based device and reports that that hardware is unchanged. That’s a good thing because at 840gm, it’s a great lightweight and super-thin device. With Android, this puts the Beam into a similar position with the Compaq AirLife 100 and that’s one that could really challenge the netbook market with it’s always-on, always-connected, location-aware, app-enabled dynamic operating system known for an application ecosystem that is right up there at the top of the tree. Well it would be if the final reseller of this device was able to get the Google Marketplace on it. Mobinnova are “including games that leverage the Tegra chip’s multimedia prowess and that it is working on its own app store inch like many others but that Marketplace issue is turning out to be a big stumbling block. I heard from another reseller today who is in the same difficult position of trying to get Google apps onto open-source Android to turn it into a ‘real’ Android device.

The Mobinnova Beam is predicted to arrive in the July-Sept 2010 timeframe.

If you didn’t catch the news yesterday, Sprint has announced a new phone called the Evo which is getting everyone excited. At least those that have huge pockets are getting excited because the Evo is the same size as the HTC HD2 and that’s HUGE! I tested the HTC HD2 out a while back and just a few seconds with it told me it could never be an all day phone for most people. I had the same experience with the TG01. It turns out that many of you think a 4.3 inch phone is OK though. 50-60% of you to be more exact. I’m not sure how many of you have actually tried using such a big phone but I’ll admit there are plenty of people out there that would use this as a ‘pro phone’ for the daytime which keeping a smaller, more practical phone for social use.

Availability and cost will be the next issue because clearly this is a flagship phone. Not only for Sprint but for WiMax too because 4G and 3G are included in this phone. Not only that; check out the spec list known so far…

• 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU
• 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording capability and HDMI out
• 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera
• Google Android 2.1
• Wi-Max, EVDO, Wi-Fi and a mobile hotspot utility to share mobile broadband with up to eight devices over Wi-Fi
• 4.3 inch multitouch capacitive display at 800 x 480 resolution.

(Via JKOntheRun)

That’s pretty much the most highly specified phone in the world right now so you can imagine what the unsubsidised price is going to be! I guess buyers are looking at a $100 per month contract here and as for the phone, I find it hard to believe it would be less than $400 in subsidised form. That’s close to $3000 total cost of ownership over 24 months.

There are three other major questions too:

• Wimax battery life (Evo only has a 5.5wh battery) / Coverage / Speed
• U.S. / Sprint Only
• Summer availability (could be up to September 6 months away)

There’s also no keyboard which might put off pro users.

Choice is great and its also great to see Android smartphones reaching up into ‘2nd-device’ and MID territory so we’ll be watching to see if all the excitement translates to purchases or if people back-off based on price, new competitors or the size issue.