Review of the Mobilx HSDPA solution for Everun UMPCs

When the Everun was first revealed, way, way back in the early part of this year, there was a lot of buzz about HSDPA capability. Then, when the small print came out, we learned, and were quite disappointed, that it turned out to be an option. Even then, customers still thought it would be delivered with HSDPA and voice capability as one of the early hands-on-reviews showed a blogger sitting in his car phoning his wife (in a classic bit of video here!) We now know that it was left up to the resellers to offer, or not, HSDPA options.

Ever since my time with the Q1b HSDPA I’ve realised that UMPCs aren’t really mobile for me until they’ve got some form of always-available Internet connectivity and so when I saw the Mikey, a member of the forum, posting about his success I just had to go for it. The company offering the solution was Mobilx, a mobile solutions retailer in Hungary and when I spoke to them about getting one for myself and an Everun owner that was looking for the solution they very quickly responded and within 24 hours I had the solution on my desk. Now that’s the sort of response I like to see!! The product we’re looking at here is an HSDPA-capable data-only PCI-express mini card kit – Expedite EU870D.

As you can see, its a fairly boring looking bit of technology but what it enables is far from boring.

– Tri-band HSDPA/UMTS – 850**/1900/2100 MHz
– Quad-band EDGE/GPRS – 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
850, Band 5, includes 800, Band 6 – Japan.
– Wireless data at speeds up to 3.6 Mbps on the downlink and up to 384 Kbps on the uplink on HSDPA/UMTS networks.
– Embedded diversity (receive) antenna
– Supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista
– Offers the latest in I/O interconnect technology
– Field firmware upgradeable to 7.2mbps

In essence, it allows you to set up access to the Internet via cellular data service providers which means far far greater coverage, better security (compared to hotspots) and even on-the-move connectivity to the Internet.

The Everun was designed with cellular data in mind and already includes a SIM card slot on the device so the only thing to do is to install the module and an aerial. Normally, fitting an aerial would be very difficult but Mobilx have covered this by having a special aerial made that fits into a recess inside the Everun. All it requires is to unscrew the unit, separate two parts and then fit the aerial. I should mention at this point that this operation actually voids the warranty so if you want the HSDPA and haven’t yet bought the Everun, Mobilx provide an option to have the aerial and module fitted at source and this keeps the warranty valid. If you are feeling confident though, Mobilx provide diagrams and images to help you along.

Click images for full versions.

So how did I get along? Well, considering that the last time I tried to put HSDPA into the Everun I wasted 45 minutes trying to debug it when the radio was actually turned off, I did pretty well! The Everun comes apart fairly easily and after cutting out a small extra lug that doesn’t appear in the photos, the aerial slotted in nicely. The cable was rather thick and difficult to bend and unfortunately I broke the connector off the end of the aerial. Fortunately I had an old HSDPA aerial to hand and I re-soldered a new cable and connector on without problems. Mobilx tell me that they have already changed this and customers are now getting more flexible cable with their orders. Here’s a picture of the aerial in the underside of the casing.

The full set of images are in the UMPCPortal gallery.

After getting the aerial installed, the modem in the slot and putting everything back together, I loaded the software. Apparently you’re supposed to do this first but everything seemed to work OK for me. I popped the SIM card in, went in and out of standby (a little trick that gets the SIM card registered by the modem) and started the Novatel Mobilink software and saw the software register on my providers network. After a very simple operation to enter the APN (Access point) into the configuration I hit connect and I was in! It worked.

One thing that should be mentioned is that you shouldn’t expect smartphone-class reception. The position and size of the aerial isn’t optimal and that affects the signal strength. In my house, where I usually pick up 3 or 4 out of 5 bars of UMTS reception I am only getting one bar on the Everun. In some places in the house I actually lose reception altogether so its not perfect but outside the house I don’t seem to have any problem at all getting reception and I’ve even been getting download speeds of over 2mbps which is more than enough. Upload speeds are around the 350kbps mark in my area with 3.6mbps-capable Vodafone Germany.

While the Mobilink software does a good job of showing connectivity, signal strength, SMS management and even Wifi and Lan management, I have decided that its not really worth using. You see, behind the software lies a very simple modem interface that can be driven with Windows dial-up networking and in fact, when you look you can find the DUN configuration that the Novatel software has set up. All you have to do is use that DUN directly and you’re away. Its takes up far less memory and CPU power and is much quicker to use. If you need to use specific DUN configurations, Mobilx have written a how-to on this subject and its available here.

Its been about three weeks since I installed the solution now and its completely transformed the Everun into a new device. Previously I had been using UMTS (384/56) over Bluetooth but having auto-connect (IE7 has a configuration option that lets you configure an automatic modem connection when no LAN or Wifi connection is available and once set up, it works with all applications. See a the video in this article for a demo of that.) at such high speeds is a dream. Battery life seems to be good but if you’re streaming or uploading a lot, it can be more of a drain than WiFi. 4 hours surfing over HSDPA is a reality but don’t forget to make sure you have a good data plan. Its easy to forget that you’re not on your home network!

In my tests over the last few weeks I’ve been using it in all sorts of places. The best example was in a traffic jam. I was on my way to pick my wife up from the Airport and I got stuck in heavy traffic. After 5 minutes I realised I could actually check the traffic status on the net. Having done that and seen that the road was completely closed I was able to call the wife and pull off into the next supermarket car park for a coffee and an hours surfing before they opened the road up again! I’ve demo’d Internet on the device to friends in a bar. Checked email on a beach. Streamed MP3 to the car from my home server using Slimserver (Its nice to have access to my full collection,) downloaded software, uploaded photos, used Meebo to message and most importantly I’ve felt confident that if I’ve got the Everun with me, I’ve got the Internet with me.

Of course its not perfect. Coverage could be better and while I was in England I was restricted to port-80 (web) traffic only but that’s hardly a fault of the Everun or the modem. It would be nice if the antenna was a bit more sensitive. I’ve never seen the full five bars showing and I get the feeling sometimes that I’m on GPRS or UMTS when I could be connected at the HSDPA speeds but to be honest, if I’m just checking emails, UMTS speeds (384/56) are fine and that’s all I really need.

In the specifications listed above, it says that the modem is capable of being upgraded to 7.2mbps and during the time I’ve been writing this article I managed to get hold of the firmware upgrade from Mobilx. The upgrade went smoothly and I now have a 7.2mbps-capable modem. It could be a blessing in disguise that none of the cells in my area have been upgraded to 7.2mbps yet but I’ll be ready to do the speedtest when they are! 7.2Mbps should actually bring some significant upload speed improvements so i’ll be in the crazy situation that the least powerful and the smallest PC in the house actually has its own private broadband connection that’s faster than the one that all the other ‘big’ PCs in the house actually share! At least I’ve got a nice back-up HSDPA router now if my broadband connection goes down.

Is it worth the 260 Euro though? Well its a little difficult for me to say because Mobilx have been very nice and said that I can actually keep the test card I have but if they hadn’t have done that I would definitely be buying one. Its turned my Everun from a portable computer into a true mobile Internet computer and that, for someone like me who uses the Internet as part of his job, is a no-brainer. For casual Internet surfing it is a little expensive and it might be better to use a 3G mobile phone modem over Bluetooth but be aware, there’s a world of difference between the two methods in both ease-of-use and speed so if you try the built-in method just once, you’ll be wanting to buy it anyway! I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Mobilx for the HSDPA kit and all their help in setting it up. If you’re interested in more details or want to buy the card, its available for global shipping on the Mobilx website

For more info on the Raon Digital Everun click here.