The elusive company is back with the Ocosmos OCS9 — Ocosmos has tantalized us with awesome ultra mobile PC concepts for years, but the devices have always turned to vaporware seemingly just prior to release. Well, it seems Ocosmos is at it again, but this time, we’re certain that they’ll actually be bringing a product to market, thanks to the folks at Dynamism.

Surprisingly, Ocosmos actually showed up at last month’s IDF, only after Chippy, Avram Piltch (of LaptopMag), and I chatted about how unlikely it would be! The Ocosmos OCS9 was on display as well as the Android powered “Smart O-bar” controller. Here’s our hands-on (unfortunately we lost the first 50 seconds of audio to technical difficulties!):

The Smart O-bar has a 3.5 inch 320 x 480 touchscreen as well as two hybrid D-pads (they move like a joy stick, but have individual directional buttons as well) and shoulder buttons. The Smart O-bar is designed to be complimentary to the Ocosmos OCS9, allowing you to connect it for keyboard input and for use as a game controller.

According to the company, the Ocosmos OCS9 is the world’s thinnest Windows Slate, and at 11.9mm, that might just be true. Here are the specs:

There’s also a few accessories available for the Ocosmos OCS9, including a nice looking dock, a keyboard folio, and even a bag. These will run $70 for the first two, and $90 for the latter. The Smart O-bar is optional as well and is offered for $140.

And the price for the Ocosmos OCS9? Actually, a rather reasonable $699. Dynamism is taking pre-orders for the unit and is giving an additional $50 off for those who order before November 18th, bringing the price to $649. They expect the unit to ship on the 30th of November. We’ll have one on hand for review in the coming weeks.

The Ocosmos OCS9 is launching in the US on November 30th thanks to Dynamism, and while it comes pre-isntalled with Windows 7, I’m eager to see how it will handle Windows 8. There is an optional dock available which looks pretty slick (it has some USB ports and HDMI-out), and could provide some interesting hybrid usage.

Windows 8 can easily go from your familiar Windows desktop to the touchscreen friendly Metro interface, making it useful even without a mouse and physical keyboard (one of my biggest gripes about Windows on slates).

We’ll have the Ocosmos OCS9 on hand for testing in the coming weeks, and the hybrid functionality that may be afforded by Windows 8 is of particular interest to me. With a dock/port replicator, you could have a full keyboard, mouse, and secondary monitor hooked up for your typical desktop use. The Intel Atom Z670 (Oak Trail) CPU, which runs at 1.GHz, doesn’t have quite the oomph that most of us would like for serious desktop work (photo/video processing, heavy 3D applications, etc), but it ought to get us by with more simple tasks like web browsing, music playback, and perhaps video playback.

The cool part, which is coming thanks to Windows 8, is the ability to pull the computer from the dock and go into Metro mode. This means that the Ocosmos OCS9 could work the desk and the couch shift. iOS or Android tablets have been filling the ‘coffee table device’ niche for the last few years, but users of these devices often have a productivity computer proper, whether it be a Windows or OSX powered desktop or laptop.

For those making use of tablets as coffee table devices, content has to be managed between the main computer and the tablet. The biggest advantage to hybrid computing may be keeping all of your content on one device and not having to manage it between a main productivity computer and the coffee table device.

Of course, even if the Ocosmos OCS9 has good battery life by Windows on X86 standards, it’ll still lag behind in run-time and standby when compared to the iPad and various Android tablets. This is a challenge for hybrid computing at the moment, but something that will hopefully improve as we move forward. Battery life is challenging, but assuming that these devices are staying primarily inside the home, it becomes less of an issue. If the user’s use-case involves out of the house usage, other solutions might make more sense (if we’re only considering present devices).

Windows 8 makes this desk to couch transition much easier thanks to Metro, which seems like Microsoft’s first legitimate attempt at making the Windows OS into a touch-optimized system. However, not unfamiliar to any of you who visit us at ultra mobile PC Portal, hybrid computing has been around for quite some time.

I’ve owned Sony’s VAIO UX180 UMPC for some 5 years now. The device has a portable form-factor and runs a desktop OS. Thanks to an included dock, I used the UX180 for years as a hybrid desktop/mobile device. At home (five years ago), the UX180 was powerful enough to accomplish my ‘desktop’ tasks. Through the dock, I hooked up a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers. When I left the house, I pulled the unit out of the dock and it went right into my pocket. All of my data was with me, no content management required. This was really great, but admittedly, it had gaps (like user-friendliness) that meant it wasn’t ready for the mainstream.

I’m looking forward to returning to a (hopefully even better) hybrid computing experience with devices like the Ococmos OCS9, but the battery-life:performance ratio is a continuous challenge which worries me. 1.5GHz from the Atom Z670 isn’t going to be tremendously faster than my UX180 which had a 1.2GHz Core Solo CPU. A few years ago I was forced to trade up from the UX180 to a laptop to efficiently accomplish my desktop productivity work. I’m afraid that the current crop of potential hybrid devices that will run Windows 8 won’t have the power to do serious productivity work as demanded by the majority of customers. Some people will be able to compromise slower work for the advantages of hybrid computing, but others won’t have that convenience and will hold off on considering a hybrid system until it becomes powerful enough for their work.

When I get my hands on the Ocosmos OCS9, I’ll be reporting here at Carrypad about how it works as a hybrid device. Stay tuned!

Chippy has done a lot of thinking about this topic which he calls “High Dynamic Range Computing”, and if you’re interested in the topic, I definitely encourage you to read his analysis on HDR computing from April over at ultra mobile PC Portal.

I’ve probably been most eager for CES this year to find out more about that sweet Ocosmos ultra mobile PC that Chippy got to fondle back in September at IDF. Today, Ocosmos has announced two Oak Trail UMPCs, but neither of them seem to be that wonderful slider prototype that we saw at IDF. According to Brad Linder from Liliputing, that slider device is aimed at the Korean market. Here in the US and in Europe, we’ll be greeted with decidedly less usable devices because, sadly, they lack physical keybaords. You can thank slate-mania (and for that matter, Apple) for that. And by thank, I mean despise.

Anyway, the OCS1 is a slate device with a 5 inch screen that appears to have two D-pads on the left and right of the screen. Ocosmos says that the D-pads are part of their OMOS Key Interface which is useful as a mouse and can be customized for character input. This will likely end up as D-pad style mouse like the one we generally disliked on the Viliv S5. Ocosmos claims that the OCS1 it will “revolutionize both gaming and business inch. Sure, I’ll believe that when I see it. Let’s get the specs out in advance before I start tearing apart their press release. Here’s the OCS1:

• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Intel Oak Trail CPU @ 1.5GHz
• 5 inch capacitive touchscreen at 1024×600
• 1GB of RAM, upgradable to 2GB
• Up to 64GB of SSD storage
• WiFi and Bluetooth
• 3.2MP rear camera, 1.3MP front camera
• MicroSD slot
• Right/Left shoulder keys for gaming
• Gyroscope/Accelerometer

The render above doesn’t accurately reflect the controller peripheral (see below)

They’re also announcing the OCS9 which is a 9 inch slate that includes a folio that holds an extra battery and a separate capacitive keyboard (which likely connects with Bluetooth). I’m sorry, but having a separate keyboard with capacitive instead of physical buttons, makes no sense. I would absolutely rather have physical buttons over capacitive in this situation. Does the capacitive screen on the device itself not already serve the same purpose? At least there’s also D-pads on the right and left of the separate keyboard so it can function as a controller. Here’s the specs for the OCS9:

• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Intel Oak Trail CPU @ 1.5GHz
• 9 inch capacitive multitouch display @ 1024×768
• Up to 64GB of SSD storage
• 3.2MP rear camera, 1.3MP front camera
• MicroSD slot
• Right/Left should keys for gaming
• Gyroscope/Accelerometer

Here’s a photo from Brad Linder showing what the controller really looks like (it definitely doesn’t have screens on it)

Ocosmos is positioning these devices as gaming machines, and really seems to believe that they’ll be able to handle high-end gaming. Now, I haven’t had my hands on the Oak Trail platform yet, but I’ll be very impressed if these devices are even remotely capable of playing some of the latest games. And here’s another line from the press release that I just can’t take seriously (referring to the OCS9): “users will find that 2D and 3D image editing is even faster than on a desktop PC inch.

If given the choice, I’d happily go with the form-factor that we saw back at IDF rather than this slate nonsense.

Chippy has already hit up the Ocosmos booth for a hands-on video, and he’ll be posting that up soon, stay tuned and here it is!

Thanks to nick95 in our forums we now have an official spec sheet on the Ocosmos OCS1 that we covered at IDF in September. The OCS1 was one of the first Oaktrail products we’d seen and definitely, a UMPC! [Tracking page includes links and videos]

5 inch Slider screen at 1024×768 looks useful but those controllers don’t include a mouse pointer which, especially on a Win 7 device with capacitive screen, is not going to help. Interestingly, Ocosmos are pitching this at carriers although to be honest, every UMPCs manufacturer’s secret aim was always to get a carrier as a channel.

If I remember my Oaktrail specs correctly, we’re looking at a 1.5Ghz or 1.9Ghz single-core CPU (I suspect the former) here and some interesting improvements over the older (no, let’s just call it ‘old’ now!) Menlow platform. 400Mhz GPU with HD decoding, 720p encoding, MP3 decoding hardware, improvements in memory speed and a more compact silicon layout. Overall battery life improvements are expected to be in the 20% range (that info comes to me from an ODM contact using the platform) with idle (screen-off, Wi-Fi connected) potentially even better.

The OCS1 is being pitched as a gaming device but I have a few problems with that. 1) Windows games often required the CDROM to be present. You’ll need ‘no-cd’ hacks. 2) The GPU is improved over Menlow but years behind the performance of a modern PC. You’ll need to choose games 3-5 years old although with AppUp starting to deliver some interesting games and game developer partnerships, it’s one to watch for games that will definitely fit the screen and processing capabilities.

When we spoke to Ocosmos at IDF they were talking about 10 hours battery life but let me tell you that even if they slap a 24wh battery pack on the back, 10hrs is still only going to be the idle, screen-off figure. I’m expecting a 10-15wh battery and an average in-use drain of about 5W giving about 3hrs of working, screen-on life over about 5hrs of ‘on’ time. If they manage to squeeze in a 24wh battery it will raise the price and weight somewhat but return an interesting 5-7hrs.

‘Target Launch’ is Q1 2011 which sounds interesting enough for a CES showing. We suspect that if they’ve got something working well by CES, it will be on the Intel booth. Between now and then we’ll try and get an direct update from Ocosmos.

Ocosmos website.

Ocosmos OC1 thread in the forums.

Photo via Ken Kaplan

Update: Video and specifications now avilable

JKK and I are meeting the Ocosmos guys at 4pm this afternoon but I just wanted to give you a heads-up on something that could appeal to many of you. Not only is this an interesting design for productivity, it’s also designed on Oaktrail. That means it’s not going to be in the market until late this year or early this year but it might be worth the wait because Oaktrail is going to bring you more battery life (expected average 20% in-use improvements) but also some higher clock-rates, potential standby or idle power savings, HD encoding and much cooler devices. Oaktrail is smaller too so we should see the improvement in size and space for battery capacity.