The E90 has been confirmed at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona today and RingNokia have quite a few posts on it already. There’s even a review available by My-Symbian.com who have all the details with good images and specifications. It’s quite an amazing device.

Click to enlarge.

If you’re considering a UMPC for browsing, multimedia, navigation and basic document editing, this is worth considering. If you want an HTC Athena, you might not after reading the details on this! Here are some of the highlights.

 
Press images from Nokia. Click to enlarge.

• 800px wide screen (over 220 DPI could be a strain for some people)
• WiFi, BT2.0, USB2.0
• “Superb Keyboard”
• TI OMAP2420 running at 330Mhz is the same as the N800.
• MPEG4 video playback performance of 2mbps. (amazing!)
• Micro SD card capability.
• A2DP supported.
• GPS Built in.
• 2.5mm audio jack.
• VGA 25 fps video recording.
• 3.2MP cam.
• Quick Office doc viewing and editing.
• HSDPA capability (3.6mbps Internet connectivity)
• Latest Series 60 software.
• 5 hour talk time. (no WiFi-on time available.)

The missing info you’re looking for is price and availability isn’t it. Well RingNokia seem to think it will have an unsubsidised price of 750-800 Euros which isn’t bad. Its subsidised price could be under 350 Euros which, to be honest is going to be very attractive to those considering UMPCs for basic browsing/video use. The only problem could be the high DPI.

Availability – 3rd quarter.

Via RingNokia.

Some of you might have landed on UMPCportal.com while reading Carrypad journal entries or gallery entries over the last week so I better give you an update on whats happening with the migration. Quick history: Carrypad bought Origamiportal.com along with the domain name UMPCportal.com. Everything from Origamiportal.com and Carrypad.com will migrate over under to the new domain name with completion planned in the early part of March. The migration to UMPCportal.com has started already with the move of all Carrypad journal entries to UMPCportal.com/journal. The Gallery has also migrated along […]

Kevin Tofel has just completed a well executed battery life test on the Q1 and Q1P (Pentium.) Remember that a few weeks ago he ran a similar test and got some interesting results which resulted in the assumption that Samsung might have updated the Q1P since its launch. Kevin proved that he had a brighter screen and better battery life results than other Q1P owners.

The results show a 25% difference under full-load conditions which equates to about 4W of drain difference. Its likely (although still not confirmed by Samsung which I find amazing) that the screen in the Q1P is a LED backlit unit now, just like the Q1B which has the VIA processor.

So is the Q1B still better for battery life? Unfortunately the same test scenario on a Q1B doesn’t work (the MaxBattery software crashes) so a direct comparison is not possible. However, there’s one result that was posted by Matt Propst on his blog that gives a clue. His test was a high-load test and he got 171 minutes battery life. (2hrs 51 Minutes.) My estimate would be that under similar conditions, the Q1B would reach 150 minutes.

• Q1 – 93 minutes
• Q1P – 116 minutes
• Q1B – 150 minutes (estimated)

But how about under ‘real’ conditions. Under real conditions the effect of the processor is reduced to a smaller percentage of overall drain. In this scenario the screen can take 50-75% of the drain. What I suspect you’ll see is that the Q1P and Q1B will be much closer. The Q1P giving about 3 hours and the Q1B about 3.3hrs. Summary:

• Q1b. Long battery life. No CF slot. Mono speaker. Weaker processor than Intel. (VIA C7) 40GB/512MB $899
• Q1P. Medium battery life. Stereo speakers CF Slot. Good performance processor.(Intel Pentium) 60/1024 $1249
• Q1. Short battery life. Stereo speakers. CF Slot. Better performance processor. (Intel Celeron) 40/512 $999

Prices from cdw.com

They’ve got some confidence that Sony lot. They walked into Europe 3 days ago with a bunch of UX UMPCs under their arm and stuck a price tag of €3000 on it. That’s $4000!!!

The UX1 is the flash drive version of the Sony UX and is of course fairly well loaded. 1GB RAM, Core Solo U1500 1.33MHz CPU and the all-important Aero-capable GMA950 GPU. It also has the 1024×600 4.5″ screen, the docking station, ships with Vista Business edition (what no Media Center?) and weighs only 600 grams. It is quite simply a marvel of PC engineering and probably deserves a spot in a few history books.

Lowest price we found was 2700 Euro online and you’re sure to see some gradual drops in price over time but its a hefty price to pay for something that has a screen with over 220 DPI. Most people start to have trouble at around the 200 mark so make sure you take your glasses when you go to check it out.

In true days-before-the-launch style, the fuzzy pics of the E90 have been leaked!

Engadget has the E90 images up and all we can say is that we’re going to hold judgment before the slightly better images leak in about 12 hours time (or so it always seems!)

Remember that the E90 is supposed to have the 800-wide screen, GPS and clam-shell keyboard design. More details here and here.

This is an interesting sales model for a navigation solution. Give away free navigation data (maps and routing) and permit well known brands to by positions on the maps. (e.g. McDonalds locations etc.) You’re probably thinking ‘Google’ at this point aren’t you. Well no its not them, its Nokia’s Gate5 organisation along with Tele Atlas and Navteq maps. Its targeted at mobile phones and the idea is that you download each map as required. The carrier will presumably get the benefit from data sales. Note too that the offering doesn’t include the critical component for live navigation. Turn-by-turn instructions is an extra that you have to rent. From three weeks to three years license rental is possible.

The service will be available for mobile phones and supports GPS receivers but the details of the platforms are, as yet, unknown. According to WindowForDevices Nokia plans to support “most of the major mobile OS platforms.” Presumably that doesn’t mean Windows XP and Vista so there’ll be nothing for UMPCs but its interesting to note that they plan to support Linux. Up until now there have been very few options for Linux. Is this something that we’ll see for the N800? It clashes head-on with Nokia’s existing Navigation software for the 770 and N800.

Smart2Go goes line on Feb 10th 2007 and will be available here

Mobits, the OEM for the new TabletKiosk rugged UMPC, the eo v7112XT and the Mo-Bits X15-5 and Mo-Bits X15-7 UMPCs (which are still planned to be launched as far as we know) have updated their website very subtly.

There’s a new hi-res JPG overview of the devices and you can see much more detail now on the Boos and Beacon UMPCs. We couldn’t find any specs but here are the images. The Beacon 5.6 looks like a convertible and at 5.6″ it would be about the smallest convertible full PC available beating even the Kohjinsha.  Its looks thick but remember that you’re looking at something the size of a VHS cassette there. The 7″ looks like the most stylish of the three and the BoBos looks like a real podger!

The Mobits website is here and i’ve left the original ‘snips’ on the gallery here.

Jerry Epplin has written a review of the N800 and the development architecture for Linux Devices and has some interesting thoughts. Its a nice article which takes a look from a few different angles.

On the hardware, he comes to the same conclusion that I’m coming too. The N800 is too small. The DPI on the screen is just too high for a consumer device. Either Nokia made a mistake (which I doubt) or they don’t want the device to creep out into consumer land at all and its still an experiment that needs to be kept within the confines of young geeks. In fact, I have a theory. The N800 isn’t a consumer device at all, its a device aimed at innovators. There’s no way that the consumer market is ready for such a device yet and Nokia are taking the opportunity to present a product to the educated innovators in order to see what happens, to learn about how web pads are used with mobile phones, to learn about open source development and to find out what applications get consumers interest levels up. Its a market research exercise and its one where everyone is happy.

I had already prepared some thoughts on this and now seems a good time to air them.