Video-meister JKKMobile has found this:

I love the look of the hand gestures and the tabs at the bottom of the screen. Better optimised for hand and stylus.

Midinux was supposed to have been released a few days ago but as yet, there are no reports of public availability.

Source: PCZou on YouTube

Up until today, the Kohjinsha SA1 held the UMPCPortal title of ‘Most efficient UMPC in the world.’ In fact I was quite confident in calling it the worlds most efficient PC. Full stop. What happened today to change that though? I saw this image of the OQO Model 02 battery…

Click to enlarge. Image via Tnkgrl.

I’m seeing a 16W/hr battery there. 3.7V x 4500mah = 16.65W/hr capacity right? That’s just over half the size of the battery on a Q1 Ultra and less than half the capacity of the battery on the Flipstart.

The VIA UMD platform is efficient, I know that, and until now its not really been used to its limits.but in this report from The Gadgeteer (great review) they talk about 2.5 hours real world usage with the 16W/hr battery. Excuse me, did you just say that the QOQ Model O2 consumes an average of 6.6 watts of power? That’s twice as efficient (half the power drain) of an Intel based Q1P, i7210 or even the first-gen VIA-based Amtek T700 and really quite amazing. As a cross-check, I’ve had a word with Kenrick who has also done extensive testing and reporting and he tells me that even with Wifi on, Bluetooth on and and full screen brightness he still gets 2 hours. He’s even managed to stretch it out to 2 hours 50 minutes with careful use of power saving features. Thats an average of less than 6W drain! These sort of drain rates are potentially lower than can be achieved using Intel’s UMP 2007 platform and shows what can be done with quality engineering. Today!

The OQO Model 02 is getting more and more attractive every day. Well done VIA and OQO. I love seeing quality engineering and you’ve just set a new benchmark. Why didn’t you mention this before? It should be part of your marketing.

As per normal, this is almost impossible to read using the available translation tools but there are one or two things to note from this Korean review of the Q1 Ultra by Lazion.com (Google translation link.) which looks like it was done at KIS – The Korean IT Show.

There’s some talk of 2.5 and 3 hours battery life in there along with some CPU performance tests. (CrystalMark 2004R2 score = 13112) and proof that it will be available with DMB and HSDPA in Korea. 

Part 3 of the review (The Summary) isn’t available yet. I’m hoping for a nice simple round-up. English would be nice too!

Someone over at OrigamiProject spotted that the manual for the Q1 Ultra is now online. Excellent work! Everything is coming together for the planned End of May launch but I’ve had a look through the manual and there’s not much that’s new in there. Here are a few things I spotted.

• Page 2 – Intel CPU is optional. [Will there be a VIA version like the Q1b?]
• Dedicated DialKeys button
• No mention of Wireless WAN in the manual.

On Samsung.de there’s a nice promotional video though. Worth watching (in German.YouTube version below.) They talk about the ‘lightest PC in the world’, a 3MP front facing camera (I didn’t realise that) and a keyboard that’s ‘not only for delicate ladies fingers.’

Specifications, images and links in the product database here.

Via Pocketables. Video via JKK.

According to Technorati’s statistics, the term ‘UMPC’ is getting more and more mentions in blog posts. On an average day they are seeing the term UMPC mentioned in over 50 blog posts across the world. OK. It doesn’t compare to the amount of times ‘notebook’ is mentioned (minimum 1000 posts per day) but look at the growth! The big peak on the right is Intel’s IDF. Only 6 months ago, we were seeing just 10-20 posts per day.

May will be an even bigger month for UMPCs. We have the ‘Vista on VIA’ UMPCs (OQO Model 02, Amtek T770, Medion UMPC), the launch of Midinux (RedFlag were supposed to be launching it yesterday. Where is it? I want to test it out!) and one of the devices many people are waiting for, the tasty Samsung Q1 Ultra should be available. In 4 weeks, VIA will hold their Technical Forum in Taipei so expect so see another huge peak then. Somewhere in the middle of all that we expect see news from Fujitsu and possibly the other Intel UMPC partners. I don’t think anyone can deny that ‘commentary’ is growing but is it negative or positive? 

As you might have read on Monday, I took the bike, a UMPC, a GPS tracker and my camera out with me to see how I could best provide a good Google Maps photo overview of my track and the photos I took along the way. What I ended up with was more than satisfying and even better, the process used to get there was nice and simple. In fact for me, this is such a significant process that I decided to detail it as much as I could. There are already demos and web pages about it but I don’t think any of them used a UMPC while on the road…

This is interesting. I’ve just had confirmation the the Amtek T770 – Via-based UMPC with Vista – is now shipping and there’s a rumor going round now that that OQO is having problems with Vista on VIA. Medion appear to be ready to ship Vista on VIA too so what’s up with OQO? Could there still be driver issues?

Put this news in the TBC folder and keep an eye on the source of the news at OQO Talk. [News via jkOnTheRun.]

Update: It was false. OQO is on track just as the other Vista on VIA UMPCs are. (Thanks Rob – GottaBeMobile)

On the day that I finally decided that Microsoft Autoroute/Streets and Trips 2007 has very little extra value (as a standalone product its actually amazing value) on a UMPC, it looks like the VIAArena team (John and Fiona) are testing Laptop 10 on an Amtek T700. I think (I’m not sure) its a Co-Pilot product. I recently tried to test Co-Pilot myself but I’m having trouble with the trial disks I was sent.

It looks better than Autoroute that’s for sure. Keep tuned to VIAArenas site for info which I assume will be coming up in a post over the next days. Their YouTube channel is here. Its also worth noting that they just took delivery of an OQO Model 02. I assume they will be publishing a report on that too.