A brave owner of the Viliv S5, Sky, has open his S5 Premium and taken some useful pics of the internals. You’ll see the 1.8″ Zif-connected drive, soldered RAM and a PCI-e space without connector. It’s difficult to tell if the PCI-e slot is reserved for HSDPA or not. It’s possible that on the ‘Air’ models, Viliv will use a half-length SSD and put a PCI-e 3G in there but there may also be an option to connect a 3G module via USB.
With the Mifi 3G router the corner though, I wonder if it might be more flexible for end users (in Europe at least) to take this option. The Mifi may be alittle more expensive but it’s going to 3G-enable everything with a Wifi connection. We gave it the MeetMobility Best of CeBIT award because of that.
More pics at UMPCFever: Viliv S5 Premium Dissected and Hints of Update HSPA – ultra mobile PC Fever.
Viliv S5 Premium. Mobo, HDD, PCI-E shots. http://www.umpcportal.com/?p=6428
This is rather disappointing, I was sort of hoping that the usb cut out on the back beneath the battery was the route they would take; like there is a usb port back there and you’d just have to order their 3g usb module when its available, take out your battery insert a sim card in the usb module and plug it in the s5… That would have been a great solution for everyone, or freaking leave a mini pcie connector in place so that one wouldn’t have to solder. But oh well!
That ” usb cutout ” is SIM card slot
So no 3G with HDD: http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2009/03/viliv-s5-dissected.html