Its a one-liner but its enough for me. HP Taiwan is "planning to launch several UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) products in the first half of next year."  [Digitimes]

The question is, what do they mean by ‘UMPC’? Will it be a device coming from the ‘pc’ camp or will it be a new PocketPC-style device. I’d like to see one of each to be honest!

The short article also quotes Dennis Chen, personal systems group general manager at HP Taiwan as saying that touchscreen technology will become mainstream with some appearing on home desktop PCs. Again, its good. The more touchscreens, the better in my opinion!

Im just having some fun this Saturday evening. HSDPA performs very well. Not only in the speed test (result below) but the antenna seems very good too.

That’s about the maximum you’ll see on a 3.6Mbps HSDPA link.

Video below…

A lot of questions are coming in now on the HTC Shift. Thanks. Nice to see so many people interested. I’m actually tracking questions on this forum thread and pulling them out into an FAQ so please continue to ask even the simplest questions.

Since doing the unboxing and live session, I’ve been testing, videoing, doing a new photo-set and breaking the HTC Shift. Yes, no-one tests like Chippy tests! I appear to have messed up SnapVue and have lost the home screen leaving it pretty much useless (although email is still running in the background and giving me notifications which is pretty much all it does anyway!)

[more after the jump]

ARS Technica had me a little worried about the keyboard input on the N810. I think the form factor is near-perfect for a MID (bar 2 cm on the screen diagonal) but a ‘mushy keyboard’ is not what’s needed.

Nice to see that Nokia have included the car mount in the retail pack though. If you think about UMPCs, those accessories run to $80 or more but how about this….”the free mapping software is disappointingly limited” They don’t say why it’s limited. Is it mapping detail, speed or what? I need to know more!

Here’s what Ryan Paul, the reviewer, says about the keyboard: “I was extremely frustrated with it at first, but after a day of typing I’ve gotten used to it and my accuracy has improved considerably.” I think this is a common issue with UMPCs. All the keyboards have a different size, a different feel and a different layout. It takes a lot of time to get used to one. Weeks in most cases. Take the OQO and Everun as examples. The OQO keyboard was frustrating to use for nearly a week but then it turned out to be one of the best thumbing keyboards I’ve ever used! The Everun keyboard is confusing but once you get used to shortcuts, its also fast.

More images and chit-chat over at ARS Technica. Looking forward to the full review and looking forward to getting an N810 myself in a few weeks.

That is the first and last time I sign an NDA. And now I’ve got an invite to a London bar for cocktails and a UMPC related launch that I can’t make or talk about. Things just can’t be more frustrating than that!

I don’t think I’ll be overstepping the mark by saying that its an EU-focused event and that it’s going to push OQO even higher up the ranks of mobile computing.  You’ll have to wait for details though. Sorry! In the meantime, take a look at the detailed OQO E2 review.

Thanks for the tips everyone.

JKKMobile highlighted this story yesterday while I was deep in the world of the HTC Shift. It hints that Intel might put some control on the price of MIDs (their ‘ecosystem’ is starting to sound like a little dictatorship – which might not be a bad thing!) It also shows that OEMs are looking for carrier subsidy deals. This, of course, is nothing new. Every UMPC manufacturer must have looked into this but I guess that XSP/Vista based systems are just too scary for the types of sales and support processes that the carriers and resellers have. A ‘tailored’ MID will be different so a $200 discount for a 24 month data contract would make a huge difference bringing the price down to the $300 range.

Original story.

Via JKKMobile.

I’ve just done a quick photo-shoot with the HTC Shift. You’ll find a nice set of photos in the UMPCPortal Gallery.

Click through to the gallery here.

The HTC Shift finally arrived a few hours ago and I’ve put together an unboxing video. I’m actually having major problems with my video setup here with crashing PCs (two of them) and a broken capture card but I managed to scrape something together. I’ll remaster the video and get a better quality version up later and post to YouTube. Problems solved!

Don’t forget the live session later at about 2100 CET on http://www.umpcportal.com/live

Direct download WMV format here. Part 1 and Part 2 videos from YouTube below. (Part 2 is still processing as I submit this)