Preparing for a Mobile Device Switch.

As I come towards the end of the loan period for the Wibrain i1 HSDPA and Compal MID (Thanks Mobilx. Thanks Intel) it’s time to start thinking about what device(s) should replace them. The i1 has been extremely productive and enjoyable and the battery life was the best that I’ve ever experienced without using an extended battery. It will be hard, if not impossible with the devices on the market today, to replace it. The Compal Jax10 (3G) was the best browsing experience I’ve ever had in my pocket so that’s going to be tough to match too.

For the time being I’m not going to buy anything new and there’s two reasons for that. Number one is cash. There isn’t a lot in the UMPCPortal pot at the moment and with CeBIT just a month away, I need keep money locked-up for that. The second problem is knowing about devices that are coming up. Viliv S5, UMID M1 and the new Nokia Tablet are three devices that I really must know more about before I buy something and that information just isn’t available at the moment. I know many of you are in the same position. Frustrating isn’t it!

Fortunately, I do have a selection of devices to fall back on. I’ve got devices ranging from the 226gm Nokia N810 right through to the 1300gm Medion Akoya Mini netbook. I have the two Samsung Q1’s that I bought in 2007 and the devices that Wibrain and Raon Digital sent to support the official forums.

If you’ve followed my twitter account over the last few day’s you see that I’ve been toying with the Everun Note D24S (24GB SSD) and the Nokia N810 again. This is the way I plan to go over the next 4 weeks and here’s a rundown of why I’ve chosen these two devices.

Nokia N810. Microblogging and presence.

One thing I missed from the Compal MID was an easy way to monitor and update twitter. There are no downloadable 3rd party applications so I tried Tweenky which is a browser-based application for twitter but then the short 2hr battery life of the Compal just wasn’t enough to keep the process flowing smoothly. Running twitter app’s on my phone brings up the same problem of battery life and I’d rather not have to worry about having a dead phone when I really need it so I broke out the Nokia N810 again, updated the OS, Maemo and community software repositories and took a look at Mauku which is a microblogging client for Maemo. At the same time I installed Skype, updated the chat program to support Ovi and transferred over my OPML file to make the N810 into a dedicated IM and microblogging tool. Web browsing is still terribly slow so it will never find a place with me for that (Note: Google’s mobile pages work very well) but for IM and microblogging it’s perfect. It has a better keyboard than the Compal and word completion (in two, selectable languages which helps me in Germany) really speeds up the input process. Battery life over WLAN is well over 4 hours (I need to measure it today. It’s generally sitting around with the screen off and not doing much apart from occasional polling of services so I’m hoping for 6 hours online.) and it sits in a pocket nicely. The only problem is (and it’s a big one) is that it needs to be tethered to a phone when out of the house. When tethered, the mobile phone battery life becomes an issue again and as I only have a ‘web’ (proxied http) data plan, IM and Skype stop working when on the road. The Mauku program doesn’t seem to pick up the proxy settings either so that stops working too. As a mobile internet device, its kind of useless, a bit like the iPod touch or Archos 605Wifi with a keyboard but I do intend to keep using it around the house and will turn off my desktop IM and microblogging clients this week to see how it goes. If the next Nokia tablet introduces the expected processing and video performance increases, the HSDPA and hi-resolution camera it could well be that it’s enough to push the tablet into the MID zone and I guess that the Maemo community, already a productive and healthy group, would reach critical mass. At that point, third party application development should really take off. Moblin needs to watch this area carefully. [Sidenote. Have a look at this fascinating thread at Internet Tablet Talk. A group of people are analysing the content of the latest Maemo 5 software build to try and work out what hardware is going to be in the new tablet.]

Everun Note. Mobile productivity.

I still like the Everun Note D24S. I’ve managed to get the HSDPA working in it over the last month (I have a production sample here which had a pre-wired external antenna solution on it. GSM doesn’t work with my 3g card though) and although it’s not ideal with the external stub antenna, and it’s not as stylish as it could be, it’s one of the most productive mobile devices I have. My Medion Akoya doesn’t have 3G or Bluetooth so it’s a PITA when I’m out and need connectivity and I don’t have another mobile PC with a keyboard as good as the one on the note. I even thumb on it between two hands which makes it flexible enough for many usage scenarios. As with the Compal, battery life is a problem. 2.5hrs is not great but I do have a spare battery (only 31 Euros – great value) and I’ll be ordering an extended battery and external charger for it today. The idea is to prepare it as a blogging and video editing machine for CeBIT. By attaching the external power pack and running the Note at in full power, I can crunch videos in about 50% of the time it takes to do it on a netbook. With the power-pack, it will weigh in at well under 1KG in total making it the lightest, most powerful notebook-style device available. I also have a little upgrade project going on too. JKK sent me a Runcore 32GB SSD so if I can get a working build on it, it should make a big difference as the read and write speed is much much better than the stock SSD. More about that upgrade when it’s complete.

As we go through Feb, I’m expecting to hear news about the S5 and UMID devices and there’s a chance that we’ll hear more about the new Nokia tablet at MWC in a few weeks but I don’t expect any of these device to be available in time for our trip to CeBIT. It looks like the Everun will be my companion there and its likely to be the only computing device I take with me.