Ocosmos Announces Two Oak Trail UMPCs Running Windows 7

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!