The guys at UMPCFever have a sample of the Viliv S7 convertible UMPC  (Viliv call it a handtop) a few days before the Hong Kong launch and have started to post reports. It’s an engineering sample so don’t take everything as final.

Before we start, lets take a quick moment to think about what we’re looking at here. The S7 is, using current terms, a mobile-focused netbook. It’s an ultra mobile PC. Lightweight, good keyboard, long long battery life, desktop OS, solid state drive and multi-scenario layout.  In terms of efficiency this device is theoretically 40-50% more efficient than a netbook. Viliv are claiming 9 hours on a 34wh battery. If that’s true, this is a very special bit of engineering indeed. Whether that’s good enough to attract customers remains to be seen but I, for one, am very excited about the possibility of the Viliv S7 being the best all-round ultra mobile PC to-date. This is a device that will compete with the ‘all-round-capable Sony Vaio P and the ASUS T91.

Full specifications and links to videos and other articles here.

To give you an idea of the sizing, that battery is about the same capacity as a three-cell netbook battery!

UMPCFever have a good set of pics and have written in detail (English language post) so I advise to head over there for the full details and to view the video. Here’s a few things I’ve picked out though.

• Build quality is said to be ‘acceptable good.’ I would rate it slightly higher than that saying that the plastics are well fitted, good quality and attractively finished.
• The comment on the keyboard is that it’s the same size as that on an ASUS 701, the original netbook. I, and others, have said that the 701 keyboard size is as small as you can go and still be able to touch type. Those with bigger hands might find it a bit stressful but for most, given a little practice, you can reach 80%+ normal typing speed. I’ve tried the keyboard on the S7 quite a few times now and it’s really good for a device of this size. I would have no problem typing this blog post on it.
• No stylus. I rarely use the stylus on the X70 which has the same screen but it’s sometimes nice to have it for annotations and image work.

In the UMPCFever live battery life test posting (not completed as I write this) they are seeing about 10% drain for every hour of Battery Eater Pro testing. This is with radio’s off, but wow! Even if this reaches 8hours in the BEPro test, we’re looking at 5-7hours on-net usage time. That’s almost a full days work there!

As for the case lets just say it’s an accessory I won’t be taking into the coffee shop. The white finish of the device is going to be a problem for a lot of men too.

Here are a couple of pics snipped from the two videos that have been posted so far.

Questions outstanding…

• Voice? (Not expected)
• GPS? (Not expected)
• Multi-touch screen / pad? (Not expected)
• Auto rotate?
• US, EU Pricing and specifications.

Keep an eye on UMPCFever for more information and stay tuned here too. We’re also expecting a sample.

Your Opinion? Assuming that this isn’t going to be a cheap device (we’re expecting pricing around $600-$900 depending on specs) how do you think this will fit in? Is the Sony Vaio P a better buy? How about the T91? Here are all three in a side-by-side comparison. Clearly the average consumer is going to be more likely to buy a netbook but what about the pro-mobile set?

One more comparison photo…[from Lazion.com]

I’ve installed Windows 7 on the Clevo TN70M and it’s working very well. Auto screen rotation isn’t working yet but everything else seems to be. Even tablet features started working fully after I installed the touch drivers. I’ve tested the beta graphics drivers and it even enables Aero.  (But causes problems with Windows Media Player so I rolled back to the standard drivers.)

The fact that Windows 7 works is more significant than with many other devices because you can buy the TN70M without an operating system for just over 400 Euro. This makes the Clevo TN70 with its excellent touchscreen the cheapest tablet PC available today. The wide frame and palm resistance help too so although it’s not the ultimate handwriting pad, it’s a fantastic entry point. Even if you’re not into handwriting, there are some nice features in Windows 7 that help with finger navigation and mobility. I just wish that auto screen-rotate software was working. It hasnt been working under XP either so it is possible I have a faulty unit here.

There’s not much more to say at the moment because it’s early days. I want to upgrade the RAM to 2GB because although Win 7 seems much more gentle on hard drives than Vista, it’s not as gentle as XP is. A fast 32GB SSD would be a better option than the 60GB HDD in my opinion and would really help Win 7.

Optical pointer, webcam, mouse pointer, fingerprint reader, touch, brightness, volume, sleep, sd card, audio, BT, Wifi. Check! Everything working.

What a bargain this is turning into. I have a broken Q1 Ultra here. I wonder if the 1024×600 would swap into it! I’m tempted to buy this little budget baby just to try it out because that’s the only thing that would need changing in order to make this a very compelling little UMPC.

Hands-on first impression and video here.

When you read about the TN70 in the umpc and netbook community you’re likely to hear references to the T91 and the Sony Vaio P along with words like ‘ugly’ and ‘cheap.’ You probably won’t hear much mention of mobility but if you’re thinking about mobility, umpcs and tablet PCs I encourage you to pause for a moment and take a closer look because this bargain basement device (that I’m calling a UMPC) has surprised me by turning out to be well designed and very, very usable. If you think back to the Wibrain B1/i1 you’ll remember a similar story. It certainly didn’t look attractive and the reason was that Wibrain designed something to be usable rather than marketable. The same is true of the TN70. It’s a very usable and very good value device.

The TN70N has been supplied for review by Mobilx.

Our TN70N product page which includes links, images and videos.

Before I get my first impressions down though I have to do a comparison to Kohjinsha SA1. When I bought it 2.5 years ago it cost me over 1000 Euro, ran on the Geode LX500 CPU and served me well until I ran out of patience with the slow processor. The TN70M costs less than half and brings a swivel touchscreen, way over double the processing power, hd video decoding, a fingerprint reader, rotation sensor, optical mouse, web cam, expresscard/34 slot and a much much better keyboard. It even has the same, great battery life. If you’re buying pre-tax, you’ll pay just 337 Euros today. That’s without an operating system but if Windows 7 release candidate runs, (i’ll be testing that today) then why bother with the OS. 405 euro is the price including tax.  Seriously, if you’re thinking about a cheap netbook for mobile duties, stop! This Clevo is more mobile, more flexible, more usable than any netbook in almost all mobile scenarios except long-term desktop use.

Let’s put a few things in perspective though. It only has an 800×480 resolution screen so you’ll be experiencing dialog box problems. You’ll also hit problems with some software installs until you switch to a higher, non-native resolution. It’s also pretty ugly. A large screen frame houses useable controls but makes it look like a toy, especially in the white coloring.

In our 1hr live evaluation last night we discovered the following:

• The keyboard is good. Better than the Kohinsha SC3. Not as good as most netbook. It only has 1 shift key.
• The fingerprint reader works and the software captures password too.
• The mouse pointer on the frame is a very good optical type which gives you great control in two-handed or tablet mode.
• Has strong Wifi reception. (b/g modes)
• Appears to have about 5hrs battery life (although the battery indicator doesn’t show times)
• Has a soft touchscreen with a good level of palm rejection. The screen is matt but has a typical milky appearance in sunlight.
• Includes a rotation sensor (although the drive software appears to be broken on this model)
• Is as fast as any 1.3Ghz Menlow device for browsing. Sub 10-second average page load times.
• Includes a hard drive with a max throughput of 28MB/s
• Was silent for the whole 1hr testing session
• Has a removable back allowing RAM, HDD and PCI-express mini slot.
• Speakers are of acceptable quality.
• Microphone level seems low (tested with Skype)

Initial CrystalMark test result:

The graphics driver is extremely old and causes crashes on flash full-screen so i’ll leave you with some images and run down to the studio to install Windows 7. Wish me luck!

Check our product page for the latest info and links.

Charbax has posted a very good video of a working Archos 9. A couple of points to highlight are the optical mouse and the width which would create a heavy lever-effect when holding in one hand; a problem i experienced with Pepperpad 3 a few years ago. I’m also surprised that there is no HDMI output.

Via Archosfans and @charbax

I’m testing a Viliv X70 EX right now. It’s an impressive ultra mobile PC with a ‘traditional’ slate form factor designed around a 7 inch screen but with so many improvements over the 2006 Origami devices, you’d hardly believe it was in the same product category. Remember how we wanted SSD, 1024×600, SD card slot, GPS, Webcam, 5hr+ battery life, HD video decoding and a quality design? Well you’ve got it right here with the X70 EX. I’m testing the Premium Air model which has the 32GB SSD (it’s fast!) and a built in 3G modem. Read the full story

Update: Unboxed, stripped down and tested in over 2hrs of video….HERE.

Update: Unboxed, stripped down and tested in over 2hrs of video….HERE.

I’ve just got back from a spot of moblogging to find the Smart Q7 waiting for me. I wasn’t expecting it until tomorrow so it’s a nice surprise. I have a few appointments this afternoon but I’ll get an unboxing video done and try and be around for a LIVE SESSION with video, audio and Q&A at around 2030 CEST.

The Samsung Q1EX is due to head on to its next review appointment so it’s time for me to round-up my coverage of  it by giving you some performance test results and an overview. It should at least give a reference point for future VIA Nano-based products and an idea of where this device fits in. It’s a difficult device to position but when compared with peer devices, it offers improvements all round at a good value price.

Overall performance levels as measured by CrystalMark are in the netbook class which is good for a UMPC. I saw CPU results coming in at what I’d normally expect from a 1.3Ghz Atom Z-series CPU but similar clock-for-clock results when compared to, say, the older Pentium-M. It’s nearly twice as powerful as the VIA C7 at the same clock speed according to the results. The summary is shown below and the details can be seen here.

Read the full story

Ever since we outed the Samsung Q1EX I’ve had trouble positioning it. After an unboxing (see below) a 4-hour live Q&A session (1hr video below) I still cant see why Samsung created the Q1EX. It’s a fine tabletPC  but in the last 3 years they’ve learned a lot about the ultra mobile PC market and they know that Tablet PCs can be a hard sell. What made them go back to the no-keyboard form-factor?

From a TabletPC perspective, the Samsung is actually a very good all-rounder. I called it the ‘20% device’ in our live Ustream Q&A because that about sums up the improvements overall. 20% less weight, 20% less cost, 20% more GPU, 20% more battery life, 20% better looking!! All excellent incremental changes for the TabletPC market but there are silly things that appear to have been left out.

A 1.3mp cam on the rear means it’s no good for Skype video and not high enough quality for photography. The stylus slots into the lanyard which means you need to leave the lanyard attached, affecting the smooth looks of the device. The hard drive is neither fast (in comparison with some of the SSD’s we’re seeing now) nor does it have a very high capacity. The touchscreen doesnt run full tabletPC-compatible drivers meaning the input panel doesnt float and you get low sample-rate handwriting recognition. The organiser pack accessory bulks it out to a size that’s than most netbooks and finally, I managed to push the CPU/GPU combination so hard in a Cooliris test that I got the battery life meter down to 1.5hrs! It bounced back up to three when I stopped playing with Cooliris but it shows that the power envelope of the Q1EX is very very wide.

Full specifications and links in the product page.

On the positive side, the push/scroll wheel is the best implementation I’ve seen yet for an on-screen control panel. Changing brightness, volume, rotation is a breeze. The weight is down to one-handed usage levels meaning you can flip this one into portrait ‘reading’ mode. I was seeing over 4hrs battery life in this, no-radio, quiescent state. Also, the touchscreen has some palm rejection capability. For my ‘pinky on the screen’ left-handed writing method, it didn’t work but it’s clearly a lot better than other touchscreens for handwriting. In fact, one-handed portrait mode usage with a stylus is probably the #1 ‘feature’ over other UMPCs.

Considering that this is entering the market at $750, I would expect to see this discounted like many other devices have been over the last two years. In fact, I think this is very likely. It looks to me like this was a project by Samsung to put a new tablet out there for a specific market, a market-research exercise or even an industry request. Resellers have decided to price-up the device (still below all the other Samsung ultra mobile PC offerings) in order to get the most out of the early, mostly commercial, buyers but based on the fact that a VIA-based Samsung NC20 can sell for 75% of the price, there must be room for a sub $500 or even sub $400 price point. That would be pretty close to that CrunchPad that Techcrunch are working on.

What do you think? Is there a usage model that jumps out at you or is this simply targeted as a good quality, well-priced, TabletPC? Here’s the unboxing video…

For a more detailed look at the Q1EX, check out the Ustream recording below. (If the video is not showing below, go to the Ustream page. I’ve been seeing some problems with the UStream embedded videos today.)

Thanks to VIA Technologies for sending the Samsung  Q1EX over for a test.