Based on excitement factor alone, here are the three UMPCs that are at the top of my personal watchlist. For me, they all represent UMPCs 2nd generation.

Samsung Q1 Ultra – 1024×600, 300nits screen is Wonderful. Perfect for the 7″ screen size. Good design and potentially good performance from both the CPU and battery puts it right at the top. Keyboard is a bit of an unknown but potentially useful. Price also unknown. [spec sheet]

KIDC-US702. This is the convertible UMPC that we’ve seen running Vista. Design-wise it looks fantastic and has all the elements I desire on my UMPC. Including a real mouse pointer on the bezel! By the time it comes out, the Celeron will seem very dated. Fingers crossed for a McCaslin platform refresh. [spec sheet]

UMPC-X. Or rather, the HTC Shift! If I knew more about the platform, battery life and price of this device it would be my #1 UMPC desire. The physicals are superb and if HTC got the keyboard right, there’s going to be a lot of happy reviewers and journalists. [spec sheet]

Here’s my Top 3 in a tunable comparison window.

Bubbling under – Intel’s T-swivel UMPC. Great design for a consumer UMPC. McCaslin platform will be good. 4.8″ screen optimal for 800×480. No word on weather this really is a device that will be launched on April 18th. its likely though. [Device info.]

In a word, superb. It was such a pleasure to be using all that modern technology could provide in a 4.5KG package. The Kohji performed perfectly, the S2 IS too and I didn’t charge anything all day. I was able to roam completely cable-less.

Not only have we got to wait until April 18th to find out what’s in the Q1 Ultra UMPC but there are huge question marks now about what’s in the lovely looking HTC Shift. It runs Vista, it runs Aero Glass apparently, its rumored to have a VIA processor inside, HTC is a company closely connected with VIA and yet even VIA’s UMD bloggers don’t know what’s really driving it. Bjorn Stromberg says:

About the only thing I can say is that Engadget seems to be spreading this rumor and I have no idea where they got their information. HTC isn’t releasing any information about which CPU they’ve chosen and as such, VIA is unable to talk about it at this time.

VIA don’t even seem to have a Vista capable solution that runs without Aero Glass yet. None of the VIA-based UMPCs are shipping with Vista and there has been no public word about it since CES back in Jan.

If HTC are going to release this UMPC in six months with VIA inside there’s a lot of  work to be done. It could be a new C8-M processor, it could be a new CoreFusion part, it could be an enhanced VN896 chipset. We just don’t know. VIA. Some info please? Are you really working on something or should we all concentrate on the Intel announcements on April 18th.

Intel have just published some more details about their ‘tick-tock’ CPU roadmap but there’s nothing in there about Ultra Mobile  devices. Again, the information is confusing. Intel say they have 6 Penryn family processors and a total of 15 products in development. I assume that’s 6 ‘families’ each with more than one processor specification.  The number 6 tallies with previous reports but  Intel had said that the sixth 45nm processor would be for UMPCs. In the new press release there’s no word about Ultra mobile CPU’s or platforms.

“The new UltraMobile CPU is in addition to the first five,” he said. “The first UltraMobile devices we’ll see in the latter part of the year.”

I guess that the new UMPC processor is going to be part of ‘Penryn’ but is still to be finalised and written into the official roadmap. As there is no single core processor listed in the Penryn range, maybe its going to be a single core ULV version of the notebook ‘mobile’ processor. As before, the timescale is 2008. At least that tallies with the previous reports.

On April 18th we should start to get details about the 2007 platform codenamed McCaslin. Up until now, rumors and suggestions about the specification of the CPU and GPU vary wildly.

It looks like VIA have another UMPC (VIA call them UMD’s) blogger out there. This time its an anonymous blog but has a slightly female and non-native English European feel to it. I’m guessing its Eliane Hoffman, a marketing dept. colleague of Bjorn Stromberg (UltraMobile Life)

The blog kicked off yesterday at the end of last year but was updated yesterday with a series of posts and an interesting promo video showing a branded Amtek T700. Its an old device but in the promo they mention the VX700 chipset. I thought the T700 had the VN800 so perhaps they’ve updated the motherboard? Maybe they’ve dropped the T770 mother board into it?

Its good to watch the insider blogs because you can read between the lines and get some nice tips about company strategy. Watch for info on that HTC UMD. Its got a VIA inside!

Ultra Mobile Devices blog.

Update: Another one to report today. Vikram Madan the development manager for incubating UMPCs at Microsoft has started a new blog.

Update: Specification page now available.

Hi-Res image of the HTC Shift is now available.

This proves that the image is of a real device. Why? Because you can see dirty finger marks on the mouse button!

The HTC Shift news of today came much earlier than expected. I was really expecting the first information to come out of Computex in June. But who’s worrying! Accelerated UMPC development seems to be the name of the game at the moment.

Of course it looks great. The specs could be wonderful (1.2Ghz CPU, good graphics capability, lots of radio connectivity and a good looking, workable keyboard design) but there’s one very significant question here. If HTC are showing a UMPC to the world, does it  mean that they’ve already talked to their channel partners and agreed deals to sell this through carriers? Could this be the first UMPC to be available in the high street for a subsidised price? Could this bring UMPC into the mainstream?

On the technical side, one question I can’t resolve in my mind is, how did HTC get aero running on a VIA platform. Either VIA have developed a new chipset/gpu, or they’re using an Intel GMA950 (or better.) Intel would rather go against the grain a bit (seeing as HTC is practically a sister company to VIA) but if VIA don’t have the capability and Aero is seen as significant then they might have taken the decision to go Intel (and perhaps keep Intel happy during the legal troubles that still exist?) Take a close look at the screen shot. I know its only a graphic but there’s an Intel icon in there! If you look to the right of that, the pen-flicks icon is there (meaning HID drivers.) Too good to be a mock up?

Click to enlarge.

Pricing thoughts? Well its got to sit above the Advantage. That’s for sure. The technology inside is  a lot  more expensive than the Advantage  too. And the sales volumes will be less (I assume) so lets put 30% on the price of the Advantage. That  gives us about 1200 Euros. I think that if you’re prepared to put 50 euros a month into a data tariff, this little sweetie will be yours for 600 Euro. ($800)

I can’t find any specs on the size yet but it looks like its going to be one of the smallest 7″ screened UMPCs seen yet (apart from perhaps the KIDC-US700.) We can see stereo speakers, the fingerprint reader, thumb pad (I hope its better than the one on the Medion. I much prefer  the mouse pointer but there could be physical size reasons why they went for a thumb pad.)

And what about the similarity with our very own UMPC-X! Its uncanny. One assumes that HTC had 4 or 5 designs on the table a month ago. I wonder if our work influenced them to choose this one!

Update: We’re tracking the latest info on the HTC Shift datasheet.

I’m out of the office right now (actually in the perfume dept of a local store) but thanks to a UMPC I can relay the info about a new HTC Windows Vista device that is surfacing.

This is the HTC Shift, due for Q3 and running vista no less. There’s talk of Vista aero capability but its not 100% clear.

More info at jkOnTheRun

Update:

Haven’t we seen this design somewhere else?