[Update:- Its Official! Available for Pre-order now at Amazon.com. Available Aug 15th for $699. (Not $599) Check out the Pepperpad homepage for more info. Press release is here. Carrypad product page has been updated.]
Following up on some Pepperpad and AMD searches today, I think I might have stumbled across a little gem at Hanbits website.
Pepperpad licensed the design to Hanbit in South Korea earlier this year and it seems that Hanbit are nearly ready with something.
The PDF on their website show some new pictures and confirms that a smaller Pepperpad ‘pad 3’ is being planned with a 7″ 800X480 screen and a price target of $599.
There is a technical specification page too which confirms the use of an AMD LX800 processor. The list also shows support for Voice over IP, Windows DRM, consumer IR, instant message clients, and a whole lot more. Hardware includes Bluetooth 2, composite video out, 20 or 30Gb disks and b/g variants of Wifi.
It looks like the design will be marketed both through a Pepperpad brand and also via other branding. Samsung are one of their partners and they were also rumored to be looking at an AMD-based design. Could this be it?
Lets hope we hear from Pepperpad soon about where and when this device is going to be sold becuase if all this info is correct, the price-point and specs look very good for the home-user. [edit: We just heard from them! European distribution details are not finalised at the moment.]
Hanbit also look to be busy in the ultra mobile PC market. It looks like they already have UMPC’s in development.
I guess Hanbit are at the Computex exhibition in Taipei this week so we’ll see if we can get someone to fly-by the Hanbit stand.
Regards
Steve / Chippy
