After Computex in Taiwan, a speaking gig in Barcelona, a casual weekend away in Holland and four days with my mother I’ve forgotten what my desk looks like. I’m even sitting on a train to Hannover as I write this! During the last weeks I’ve also built up reliance on an unnecessarily large stable of mobile devices and it’s frustrating me more than ever because we are deep in a changeover phase where nothing is ready. Obviously I haven’t bought all of the devices above (*1) so if I was a ‘real’ person I probably wouldn’t be in this mess but it’s an interesting exercise to see how certain devices have unique features, how the changeover is progressing and how I’m struggling to converge down to fewer devices right now.

In a way, it was easier two years ago. I had an underpowered smartphone with a poor OS and slow web experience and I complimented that with a  ultra mobile PC that was built for the job but today we’ve got an overlap where smartphones offer performance and an enjoyable, always-on quick-hit access to information, location and information from the internet and ones social circle. They provide an Internet experience with features that the desktop can’t provide [See article: The Full Internet Experience of 2010.]  Despite that, these expensive ‘do it all’ superphones still cant offer a full Internet experience, a productivity application suite and rarely last a full day on one battery.

On the other end of the scale we have netbooks that last all day but seem to be getting bigger, heavier and just don’t seem to perform as fast as the XP-based netbooks of 2008 and 2009.

In the middle of all this we have a rush on consumer focused tablets that don’t offer anything unique or productive for someone that just wants to get things done. It’s a three-pronged tease!

Why can’t I converge on just two or three devices?

There are some good netbooks out there but I haven’t found one as fast and with the excellent 3G reception of my modified Gigabyte Touchnote. The Viliv S10 provides 8 hour of battery life in a smaller, lighter form factor but if it’s slower to access applications, files and process images, I’m not interested. And yet, here I am, typing on the S10 because of the battery life.

There are some good smartphones out there but I haven’t found one that provides a full internet experience and still provides all-day battery life with good voice, contacts, SMS and MMS capabilities. Carrying a spare battery, all-day, every day is a no-no. And yet, here I am with the X10 in my breast pocket checking the world cup scores every few minutes.

At least I haven’t got an iPad too!

MeeGo offers me some hope. A full internet experience and an app store but it’s something needs to mature until at least late 2011 and in fact for it to function fast enough to be productive it will need a high-end dual-core ARM or Intel Moorestown platform that will not be able to provide all-day battery life in a smartphone form-factor.

I had thought that the Dell Streak might fit in well as my mobile internet device but that’s not working out. The Android browser works well for the sites commonly used by people testing and reviewing but in the long-term you’ find that it hits brick walls time and time again. In the last week I’ve had problems with my WordPress back-end, MobileMe galleries and even a captive login page for an open Wifi network that I couldn’t use. Having 95% of the Internet working is just not good enough. Android is developing well too but I’m not expecting a full browser in 2010 so splitting the voice and the internet functions on to two devices is still going to be the only option in order to preserve battery life for always-important voice, pim, alarm and sms functions and to guarantee the full internet experience I need for my work.

And then I have my personal cameraphone conundrum which leaves me with one smartphone to choose from.

My cameraphone conundrum

What a joke this is becoming. After 2.5 years with my Nokia N82 I still carry it everywhere and the only reason is the camera and flash (and to a certain extent, downloadable Nokia Maps which provide me cheap offline navigation and turn-by-turn.) There are devices with better camera sensors and optics that don’t have the flash or have a poor build or user interface and there are phones out there with better camera software and sharing features but are a complete let down when the sun goes down. (The Xperia X10 for example.) I did get a little excited at the Motorola XT720 which seems to be the first Android phone to offer 8MP with a Xenon flash but having analyzed some images on Flickr from early owners in Singapore, I don’t see that it will beat the N82. The iPhone 4 is also exciting but even though the sensor is reported to be high-quality, it will still need a flash and a LED lamp just doesn’t cut it. It leaves the Nokia N8 but I’ll be honest, it wont replace the N82 for ease of one-handed use and won’t offer the application suite and Google integration of Android that gives me proven advantages and efficiencies. The XT720 does look like the best option right now and I’ll be happy to swap out my X10 for one when it’s available. I need stability in my phone and I’ll be thankful for an Android device that can perform as well as the N82 in the camera department.

Summary.

The mobile device market for road-warriors and pro’s is a messy minefield that’s going through a big change and it looks to be staying that way until 2011. Android’s version of the Internet has roadblocks and Windows 7 netbooks are slower than Windows XP netbooks. New mobile operating systems are starting to develop.

My Plan:

Personally, I need to make some choices, slim down and wait until 2011 for the next move. at least in terms of phone/MID and this is how I plan to sit out the wait…

• Dell Streak Tested Out due to lack of FIE.
• Viliv S10 Tested Out due to slower performance compared to my Gigabyte Netbook. I will suffer with the extended battery on the Gigabyte until something much better comes along. Am prepared to wait until 2011 and the next generation netbook platform (Cedar Trail)
• UMID BZ In (possibly to be replaced with a long-term loan of the Viliv N5) as my handheld FIE device.
• Mifi In (for conferences, expos, meetings)
• X10 + N82 In but consider replacing with XT720 as my only mobile camera/smartphone.

What’s your mobile pro plan?

Have smartphones met your expectations?

Are they causing you battery life problems?

Are you satisfied with Windows 7 on a netbook?

Are you still looking for ultra-convergence?

(*1) UMID BZ on long-term loan by UMID. Viliv S10 on long-term loan from Viliv. Dell Streak a shared-purchase with JKKMobile.

I know there are a lot of designers, manufacturers and resellers that read UMPCPortal so this one is for you. Potential Windows 7 Slate customers should also read this. In fact, as a reviewer, I’m learning from this White Paper too!

Windows 7 Engineering Guidance for Slate PCs.

Windows for Devices have reproduced an extremely useful white paper by Microsoft that gives detailed information about what Windows 7 can bring to slate PCs (note Microsoft aren’t using the ‘Tablet PC’ term!) and how designers should think about everything from ergonomics and electronics. Windows 7 is one of the only operating systems that provides the Full Internet Experience with a productivity focus and a touch-enabled user interface. It may not be the sexiest but as of today, nothing can touch it for desktop-style productivity.

There are some obvious tips that are useful for designer and buyer…

• “Provide 2 gigabytes of memory on CPU-constrained and GPU-constrained systems. inch [which applies to Menlow, Pine Trail and Oak Trail designs in my opinion – Chippy]
• “Slate PCs should use solid-state drives (SSDs) to enable lower power consumption and high reliability in a mobile environment. SSDs also have greater performance than most traditional platter drives. inch
• Battery life should exceed 4 hours under normal operating conditions.

…and some not-so-obvious tips…

• To get a Windows 7 hardware logo on a device bigger than 10.2 inch you need to support DirectX 10
• Ensure handgrip regions are designed away from heat dispersion and venting.
• Biometric logon — Consider including a fingerprint reader for improved ease of access for logon and security scenarios.

The document is rich with advanced tips and inks and is also a recommended read for anyone considering buying a WIndows 7 ‘slate’. Clearly, with Microsoft pushing Windows 7 into this area, with OakTrail offering a super low-power platform and the general slate/pad/tablet wave of interest we’re seeing at the moment, there will be an increased number of offerings in the late 2010 and 2011 timeframe.

Additional information can be found in my article: Things to Consider when Designing or Buying a Tablet-Style Device

Windows for Devices WIndows 7 Engineering Guidance for Slate PCs

I wanted to live with the Acer 1825 PT for a couple of weeks before I posted a review because using it for a couple of days isn’t a good test of any device. Its been a great work horse but not without its faults. If you haven’t already, check out my unboxing video.

Hardware

Overall the look of and feel of the Acer is good, its very compact and not too heavy, although at 1.72 kg (3.79 lbs) it does begin to feel weighty when using it one handed. The screen is bright and crisp and the 1366 x 768 resolution is perfect for the 11.6 inch screen size, touch input is accurate on the capacitive touch display and you rarely find yourself having to press multiple times when trying to hit on screen buttons like the classic close program. One of the major downsides to the screen is its highly reflective, probably more so than any other device I have used or owned. This is a major point, when using the screen in a well lit room like an office or for example a hospital waiting room, the viewing angle is tiny, this often means the angle you are holding it at is a strain. I’ve lived with this problem for two weeks and have learnt to deal with it but if you spend a lot of time in well lit places then you must take this into consideration, even more so if you plan to use this device in tablet mode often.

One of the other advantages of an 11.6 inch device is the keyboard, the Acer 1825 PT has a full size short press keyboard which is perfect for typing on. In no time at all, my words per minute speed was up to the same level as it would be when using a full sized desktop keyboard which is a huge boost to productivity. There is some flex in the keyboard which does leave a feeling of low quality but it certainly doesn’t effect typing speed.

There are two additional hardware buttons on the Acer, a ‘P’ button the screen bezel and a Acer Backup Manager button above the keyboard. The ‘P’ button has three actions, CTRL + ALT + DEL, print screen or a customisable program launcher. It lacks a screen brightness function which given how reflective the screen is, should have been included.

Another issue I have come across during everyday use of the Acer is the screen hinge. The hinge itself feels pretty solid and robust but it isn’t stiff enough, when you pick up  the device in laptop mode the screen almost falls back to the flat position and you have to be weary when moving the Acer about because of this. The screen can also only be twisted in one direction which isn’t uncommon for convertibles, although is a learning curve.

Performance

The Acer 1825 PT’s performance has been excellent, the Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 is clocked at 1.3GHz which when coupled with 4GB of RAM means Windows 7 steams along. I have done some serious multitasking on this device, Chrome with several tabs open, Windows Live Writer, photo editing, Outlook 2010, Evernote, Skype, Live Messenger all open concurrently and with no noticeable slow down or reduction in performance. For a convertible of this size its mightily impressive when it comes to productivity. Cold boot times for Windows are nice and quick and your looking around a 30 second wait for the device to boot into the operating system.

Video playback has also been excellent, YouTube HD isn’t at all an issue as you would expect from the Intel 4500MHD graphics unit. As a further test I had the film 2012, both in 720p and 1080p encoded in the matroska format. On the Acer’s display the 720p version played without a hitch with no noticeable frame’s dropped. When outputting 1080p to a 40 inch LCD via the HDMI port, video became choppy and the audio lost synchronisation, however 720p video playing at the TV’s native resolution of 1920 x 1080 worked perfectly and looked great. With Xvid, WMV and H.264 file formats and encoding, video playback at both 720p was near on perfect. This is down to the 4500MHD GPU which can share up to 1695MB’s  of the system RAM.

Battery life has excellent and not far off Acer’s figure of 8 hours. I have regularly achieved 7 hours with 40% screen brightness and WiFi turned on when web browsing or writing. This figure drops significantly under certain circumstances, one of which is video playback. Running the 720p version of the film 2012 on a loop the Acer managed a measly 3 hours and 50 minutes before going into hibernation, this has been true of any situation that utilises the graphics controller on the device, including flash video playback. The other strange circumstance I have suffered with the Acer is sleep. If you sleep the device the battery life time is significantly reduced in less than a 12 hour period, I found that if I used the devices for several sessions in a day with a one to two hour intervals of sleep in between sessions the battery would be reduced to 5 hours. I’m really not sure what is draining the battery when the Acer is asleep but by using hibernation this problem is resolved. The obvious issue with hibernation is the 10 seconds for Windows to resume which hinders productivity.

Software

There is an unfortunate amount of crapware that comes preloaded on the Acer, this took a good 30 minutes to remove the unnecessary software. Acer include a whole host of  software with the 1825, including crystal eye webcam software to enhance video calling through Skype and Live Messenger and a backup manager linked to the hardware button I mentioned earlier. Also included is the Acer Touch Portal which has the Microsoft Touch Pack programs and Windows Media Player enclosed into a custom user interface, you can access it through a corner of the desktop which looks like a folded over page. Its a pretty poor attempt at a UI, it looks ugly with a front room type layout and lacks finesse. You can access the Microsoft Touch Pack programs separately through the start menu which makes the Touch Portal redundant. A 64 bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium is also included with full touch support including the Tablet Input Panel (TIP).

Touch Features

We have said before that Windows 7 isn’t built from the ground up to be finger touched, there are too many small buttons and scroll bars that require a precise input like a stylus or pen to operate. However, at the panels standard resolution I have found it actually very easy to operate and navigate around Windows with finger touch, the pixels per inch seems to be a good balance of resolution without making items too small to hit accurately.

I also wanted to demonstrate the screen with a capacitive stylus for ink input. I know many of you would be looking at the Acer 1825 PT as a device to ink on and I believe it is achievable. If you are happy to hold your wrist or palm on the bezel of the screen, then stylus input works without issue. I have ordered a capacitive stylus but it has not yet arrived, if and when it does I will do a demonstration video of ink input.

Conclusion

There is a lot to like about the Acer 1825 PT, its performance and video playback features are excellent, even the battery life is good and has been better than expected. Windows 7 performs very well on the dual core processor and the 300GB’s of storage means you shouldn’t have to worry about space. For me I’m still unsure if its going to have to be returned, the screen reflection is a big drawback and I have found constantly changing the position of it in tablet and laptop modes is a real pain.

If you have any questions then fire off below and I will do my best to answer them.

At Computex, Microsoft announced Windows Embedded Compact 7, the latest version of their Windows CE operating system. While Windows CE was generally used for less consumer friendly things in the past (ATMs, cars, automation systems, etcetera) it looks like Microsoft is trying to grab a little piece of the mobile operating system market which is currently being dominated by Android.

Windows Embedded Compact 7 (that’s a mouthful, let’s just call it WEC7) is not an out-of-the-box OS like Android. Instead, it’s more of a foundation for an OS that allows companies to create custom branded software experiences on a given device. Joanna Stern of Engadget has a video demonstrating what sort of interfaces that an OEM could build:

It’ll be interesting to see if any companies decide to create their own OS experience using WEC7 rather than just going with Android.

FIC are looking for customers for their 10 inch Tycoon tablet based on the netbook platform (N455 cpu)  and running Windows 7. I was a little disappointed with what looks like 2-3hrs battery life (running a netbook platform for more than 3 hours in a sub 1KG package is almost impossible) but the screen was fantastic. Touch, contrast, sharpness and color were better than I’ve seen for a long time. FIC expect to have this ready in Q3 but wouldn’t tell us if they had a customer yet. We suspect that it will get a lot of interest at Computex. FIC are looking to do a design based on Oak Trail for 2011.

This is an interesting one. The design looks slim, working and, well, almost complete! Intel’s reps tell us that it’s just a prototype and maybe this is something ASUS worked on before they decided on the 12 inch Eee Pad that we saw at the ASUS press conference but we like it and hope they pursue it on the Oak Trail platform in 2011. It looks like it’s currently on the Menlow platform.

It’s slim and interesting but don’t get too excited about the X10 with Windows because the Windows version a trial design by Viliv who are looking for someone else to manufacture it. While we were discussing the device though it was interesting to hear that Viliv are confident they can transition on Menlow, the Intel platform they are currently using, to Oak Trail in 2011. It brings hope that we’ll get a number of ‘refresh’ devices with lighter, slimmer designs and better battery life. Thanks to Viliv for the invitation to view these behind-the-scenes devices at Computex 2010.

Check out the Android version of this design here.

It there is one thing we know about JKK of JKKmobile, it’s his uncanny ability to cover huge amounts of distance at technology shows and exhibitions to produce first-look videos, by the bucket load so when he posts the following about Amtek prepping not 1 or 2 tablets but an incredible 5, we know we are in for a interesting Computex;

Firstly there is the iTablet Speed-Lite (AE03), packing a Nvidia Tegra 2 1Ghz, 1GB RAM, 2MP camera, 10.1 inch multi touch display and WiFi. Then there is the iTablet Ex-Lite II (AE04), wielding a Freescale 800MHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 2MP camera, 10.1 inch multi touch display and WiFi also. Both of these come with a choice of either WindowsCE 6.0R3/7.0, Android 2.0 or Linux and have options for bluetooth, 3G connectivity and GPS.

To add to these is the iTablet Lite (TZ10), sporting an Intel® Atom Menlow-XL Z530 1.6GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 10.1 inch multi touch display, 2MP camera, WiFi, 4200mAh battery, Windows 7 and a choice of either a 1.8 inch IDE HDD or a 64GB SSD.

Then the icing on the tablet cake in the form of T23A CULV tablet PC and the T23x CULV Series. All of which have Core 2 Duo 743 1.30GHz Intel Montevina Platform CPU’s, 2GB of RAM, 1.3MP cameras, 2.5 inch SATA HDD’s from 160GB to 320GB and coming with a choice of either a 12.1 inch XGA digitizer, touch or digitizer and touch screens.

If that doesn’t get your tablet juices going then head over to JKKmobile for the full specifications and pictures.