5.5 hour train journeys really aren’t so bad when you’ve got some gadgets to play with. Apart from the poor quality (stylus-in-hole) stand, the Everun is proving to be a good companion so far. I must admit though, i’m spending more time messing around with my N82 mapping software than anything else at the moment! Google maps works well with the GPS so a least ill be able to find a nice restaurant when we get to our weekend holiday destination.

Being a two-device man myself (small smartphone + handheld computer) I’m not a great fan of ultra-convergants. I had the E90 for a while and although it was an amazing piece of tech that could, given patience and a reduction in quality, achieve anything, it was too much of an all-round compromise. Too big to use as a phone and too small to run a desktop OS. Even if the device was powerful enough to run a desktop OS, the screen size would be way too small. If you needed […]

Here’s a nice challenge! You are going away with your wife and kid for three days. You are going on the train and will be using backpacks. What devices do you take with you?

For this trip i’ve chosen the smallest possible combo. An Everun S6S (with extra 8GB flash and HSDPA) my favorite keyboard (the Samsung Q1 organiser pack keyboard with mouse button) and a Nokia N82.

The Everun will allow me to import images and videos taken with the 5mp Nokia (The images are easily the best quality I’ve seen on a smartphone) and create blogs and manage the website if needed. It will also serve as a video playback device should my daughter need a distraction. The GPS (which is locking very quickly on the N82) will help us navigate and will also act as an on-the-go Internet device for checking emails and feeds. With the 3.5mm headphone socket it will also serve as the mp3 player.

I like the fact that i’ve got long battery life and no hard drive storage. Its all flash based.

So as you’ve probably guessed, I won’t be around much over the next three days. Simon and Kornel will be around and i’ve got a nice CPU overview article to post tomorrow that should give you something to think about.

Until Monday, Chippy.

The N82 arrived. Oh my oh my. The spec list was impressive enough. Then I open the box and find an a/v cable – its got video-out capability. Then I dive into the UI, its fast. Then I dive into the browser, its like the E90, fairly slow but way better than my S40 browser. Then I rotate the device, the screen follows. Then I go into the map application, give it permission to use A-GPS and the damn think locks in about 10 seconds. I’m sitting at my desk […]

It’s not the most exciting video but its about all I can find at the moment (I’m on a constant lookout for info on the Mylo 2!) There’s a series of unboxing videos in sfitzjva’s channel in YouTube. The Sony Mylo 2 is shipping now though so expect to see some good reviews coming out in the next week. I’m tracking links and good reviews as I find them and putting them in the product database. They will all appear on the Sony Mylo 2 info page so keep checking […]

Its time to move up a notch with my smartphone. I’ve been using a Nokia 6280 3G feature-phone for the last two years and it’s been fantastic but now that the back has fallen off and the front is cracked its time to buy a new one. The requirements list went something like this: Small HSDPA 3MP+ digital camera with decent optics Video recording (VGA @ 30fps) Series 60 GPS So after I read a few N82 reviews, there seemed to be no question that it was for me. The […]

When the Ultra Mobile PC market got it’s big boost from the Origami project nearly 2 years ago, motherboard and layout designers had a fairly slim choice of processor technologies to choose from. VIA made their C7 processor available in Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) format, Intel did the same with their low-end Celeron and Pentium range and AMD offered their Geode LX CPU and chipset. We saw mid-range devices like the Amtek T700 and Samsung Q1 being built on the C7 and Celeron devices, low-end devices like the Pepper Pad and Vega being built on the Geode and eventually, higher end devices like the Q1P and i7210 being built on the Pentium. All four CPU’s presented challenges to size, heat and cost calculations and resulted in devices that, while amazing in terms of size, were restricted due to component size and heat dissipation issues.

On the 1st anniversary of the Origami launch, Intel announced that they would make a new optimised platform and were going to build, from the ground up, a brand new processor architecture for portable devices focusing on the 4-5″ screen size and consumer designs. Since then, the processor landscape has changed somewhat and we’re now in a position where there are more than 7 different processor architectures and platforms for designers to choose from making optimal designs easier and cheaper to achieve.