There has been a rush of news around the xpPhone recently culminating in a rush of posts by top blogs and, over the last 24 hours, an article from the IDG news service that hit PCWorld and others top-tier reporting sites.
The xpPhone news has been around for a while and at Computex, we even got some hands on with a prototype. JKK has a video and I’ve got some photos of the prototype.
Since Computex we’ve had two updates from In Technology Group. One, a general marketing info-set and the other including the ‘leaked’ (bloggers like to use that word!) photos of the user interface and an update include a link to the latest information on the website.
“Xpphone” —The world first breakthrough “Mobile Phone, GPS, Notebook, Three-in-one pocketable mobile terminal”
it creatively breaks through the technical bottlenecks of the mobile phone and PC industries, achieving their functions based on
x86 platform at low cost and becoming the global first x86-based mobile phone. it supports all three 3G standards globally and the
future 4G , has many built-in wireless modules, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, 3G modules and auto rotated 4.8 inch touch screen,
and supports various VoIP calls and numerous Windows XP softwares.
It’s not the first XP/Phone device we’ve seen so why the blogging excitement? It all appears to stem from one line in the product literature, ‘AMD Super Mobile CPU.’
Just a quick heads up to you all that this isn’t anything new from AMD. It’s the, rather old, but ahead-of-its-time (why did you kill it AMD?) Geode LX CPU that was found in early UMPCs and netbooks. The Raon Digital Everun was an example and funnily enough, that had a phone function too. [Post and Video here]
There are still people out there that swear by the Geode so don’t discount it yet.
In Technology Group appear to have done quite some work on integrating the phone into the Windows XP ‘pc’ side of things so from a technical angle, I’m quite interested in testing one out but I can’t see this being used by too many consumers.
Some Promotional materials and UI images are shown below.
New article: xpPhone Update. Images. Technical Information. http://bit.ly/AMnXi
RT @chippy: New article: xpPhone Update. Images. Technical Information. http://bit.ly/AMnXi
The world does not want a phone that requires a Registry Cleaner or anti-virus software constantly running on it. kthxbai Next!
This is neither mid or a “phone” this is just a plain failed curiosity. I bet that this one will be a collectors item. XD
XPê°€ ëŒì•„가는 í°ì¸ xpPhoneì˜ ì¢€ë” ìƒì„¸ì •ë³´ 공개. 휴대í°,GPS,노트ë¶ì´ 하나로 합쳤다는 ëª¨í† ë¡œ 나오는 ì œí’ˆì¸ë°,글로벌 3G ëª¨ë‘ ì§€ì›ê³¼ ë¬´ì„ ëžœ,블투 ë“±ì„ ê°–ì¶”ê³ 4.8ì¸ì¹˜ì˜ í¬ê¸°. 별로 안땡기는 듯. http://bit.ly/16rAF8
Maybe it’s a real competitor to Viliv S5? The phone is just nice addition to WinXP MID functionality
i was thinking of getting this since my last choice (oqo model 2+) never came out. now that people’s suspicions that this thing is using a crappy amd geode processor is confirmed, i’ll be passing on this and wait for the next oqo substitute.
love how people are so negative,cracking worthless defragging jokes. minus the phone option and would u be negative? think about it, its a umpc. the exact reason why we read this website. in fact i like the idea of cell phone. holdn phone to your head jokes r irrelevant if u use its headset. right? anyother smart comments/critism? processor come on, have u used or measured performance? then how can u be criticise without the facts?
Include me among those who cant understand why this concept is being met with so much ridicule and sarcasm. I think this is a great idea: Finally a PC that’s completely mobile without cutting any corners. I simply don’t see this as a phone that runs Windows, to the contrary, I see it as a great mobile PC with dedicated voice features. The integration I’ve seen so far looks great. It’ll be great if they open the phone integration parts to allow devs to add phone functionality like call blocking, etc and this could become a popular platform. I see this as far more attractive than the bulky Shift, which is a similar concept, but not nearly as portable.
if you actually clicked on the links in the article, you would have found out that the amd geode lx is extremely slow. the raon digital everun has the 600 Mhz version while the xpphone has the 533 MHz one (from pcworld link). clicking on the reviews for the everun shows that it has problems playing dvds, clicks take time to actually register, low benchmark scores and generally an outdated processor.
OQO was a great UMPC product and the company failed, do you think that this will attract buyers in greater number? I really don’t think so, neither in Asia, Europe or US. But what i think is that this will be a good technical base for the company engineers to develop modern MID systems once they understand that Windows XP/7 & x86 processors are the thing of the past for the MID/UMPC market.
OQO failed because of the device’s high price, and for being “mobile” the battery life wasn’t any better than regular notebooks either.
There are a number of good aspects about this UMPC. It is small, it has a 7 hour (claimed) battery life, and it has what looks like a minimum bezel and as full as possible keyboard. Add in the various software tweaks like the resume from standby with incoming call, to its mirror system state and it is looking very good. It is a shame about the name as it conjures up an idea of a phone with XP added. Whereas it is a UMPC with FULL connectivity. It can deal with all bands around the world, it can connect with the various version of mobile broadband and is ready for 4G too. It has BT and WiFi – so it is a complete connectivity unit.
To my mind, the real questions are:
1) Is the CPU up to the job, or will it be too slow?
2) How usable is that keyboard?
3) Is the battery life really 7 hours, or will it actually turn out to be 2?
If the answers are at least:
1} Not too slow
2) Usable
3) More than 4 hours
Then even if you never use the phone function it is a GOOD UMPC. If you are like me and use a phone occasionally then it becomes an even better UMPC and if the CPU is actually more powerful than is being slated (stated) here, then it is a GREAT UMPC. After all, compare it with an S5:
Same size screen, same battery life, similiar dimensions, yet extra functionality in terms of the communication side and has that important missing keyboard. So given a choice between the two which should you go for? I would choose the XPPhone (dependent on the reviews answering the above 3 questions.)
Agree with Vakeros.
I have been using Everun and OQO for about 2 years. Everun is still my favorite UMPC versus OQO. I never take OQO outside duing to the battery life issue.
1. Everun is not too slow to run Windows XP Home. More importantly, xpPhone is running XP Embedded, WES 2009, instead of XP Home. WES 2009 is much better OS than XP Home for xpPhone. Which will significantly improve the operating speed than XP Home.
2. Everun can play movies for about 5 hours on xp home. It’s reasonable to say xpPhone can run for more than 5 hours on WES 2009.
3. In my mind, xpPhone is an UMPC, focusing on communication for both VOIP and ordinary phone call. It’s great to put VoIP and ordinary Phone together!
4. This will create a new category.
I wonder how the driver/software support is? After having many problems with my wireless devices(for desktop, routers, pci slot cards, various manufacturers) and their compatibility and same with the S5, software is a critical problem.
we love xpphone
http://www.xpphone.com
forum.xpphone.com
This is the Everun on disguise + telephony.The idea is cool but no thanks.I`ve replaced my Everun back in the days for the simple reason that it couldn`t handle any flash due to not having a dedicated 3d chip…does this have one?If it doesn`t then bye bye xpphone.Geode is fast for 2d (faster than my wibrain on certain occasions) but if you into gaming or flash this is not for you.
I was wondering Chippy if could you look into the EKING S515 as a competitor to the XPPHONE? Perhaps you could get more info from the manufacturer, a review maybe? I’ve seen it being sold on http://wwww.youbaonet.com & http://amazon.cn .
I’ve emailed a couple times to eking@ekingumpc.com (provided at the bottom of the youbaonet.com page) for more info on overseas pricing, but I haven’t gotten any replies! THanks! :-)
I think why most people are excited about xpPhone has nothing to do with AMD Super Mobile CPU, no matter it is Geode or not. What’s special about xpPhone is it can resume from standby mode with incoming calls and incoming SMS. That’s the breakthrough here. That makes MID a “real” phone!
Everun can NOT achieve it, so Everun has only fake phone function. No UMPC or any x86 MID can achieve it. It’s the first time in the history for non ARM CPU to work as a “REAL” phone!
If Geode can NOT achieve this, ITG is proving one thing “this resuming technology with incoming calls and SMS has NOTHING to do with the Geode CPU!”.
We should be able to see ATOM xpPhone, Moorstown xpPhone, VIA xpPhone very soon.
I’m thinking xp phone or PA3. If xp phone is around $400 or so. I’m down.
I find little to no interest in this device…
I think the best way to sneak windows into the smartphone market is to embed an ARM cpu alongside the x86 one. That way, it will work as a regular, long battery-life smartphone, while occasionally waking up windows from deep sleep to do some more demanding work.
Several companies have tried to embed ARM cpu and x86 CPU into one machine to support both voice and XP. They all failed. 7 inch HTC Shift has both ARM system and x86 system and it can NOT support voice communication. HTC Shift is out of production now. CPC from DualCor tried the same thing back in 2006 and the company failed…
I think there is big problem for ARM system to work smoothly with x86 system together into one machine.