Akihabaranews have posted their 3-day review of the Fujitsu FMV-U8240 UMPC. They had a Windows XP version to test and overall they were pretty impressed. How can you fail to be impressed with such an amazing example of modern technology. The Fujitsu is a full PC! Not a cut-down operating system and low-end processor architecture, a real PC! (with twice the CPU clockrate as my mothers desktop PC!)
There are a couple of things that I would like to comment on. Firstly WMV HD playback. Akihabara says it was ‘impossible to play’ but I know for sure that the Q1 Ultra can handle WMV 720HD at around 6mbps bitrate. The Fujitsu will be able to handle that too as its basically the same engine underneath the hood. I guess they were throwing something pretty heavy at it. 1024HD perhaps? Or maybe the battery saving profile was set to force low-performance/long battery life.
Functionality over form is an important thing to highlight. While the Sony UX is all bells and whistles with an, admittedly, stylish design, the Fujitsu appears to be the functionality winner. I’m guessing the keyboard in approaching twice the speed of the Sony UX and that’s going to make a huge difference to usability.
Battery is 2:30 to 3:30 and not the 4 hours listed on the spec sheet. This is something I predicted and wrote about in detail here (showing the ‘trick’ that manufacturers use to make the battery life figure look better than it is under real use scenarios.)
Akihabaranews review is here. Fujitsu ultra mobile PC specification page here.
There are still some outstanding questions though and I’m talking to Akihabara to try and get these answered.
- Soft Touch or Hard Touch screen?
- Battery capacity – V and Mah
- Keyboard quality (how many characters per minute compared to your normal typing speed.)
- Heat?
- Return from standby speed?
- Screen brightness? (outdoor? Comparison to another device?)
- How does it compare in usability to the Kohjinsha SA1? (Keyboard, speed, battery life)
- Is it really pocketable?
- How does the local price compare to, say, the top-end Q1 Ultra SSD?
- What do you think the target market of the device is?
Looking at some of the import prices (Dynamism and Geekstuff4u) you’re looking at a starting price of around $1700 which I estimate to be IRO $1400 as a locally distributed price. That positions it, pricing-wise, somewhere around the OQO, Sony UX and Q1 Ultra HSDPA mark. In terms of sizing and weight though, think more along the lines of the Raon Digital products, the Sony UX, OQO, Medion and Gigabyte products. (Here’s a comparison page showing those products with their sizes, weights and features.)
