Has anyone else in Europe spotted a massive price drop on the Fujitsu P1610? For about two weeks the prices have been at the 800 Euro mark. which is about a 50% discount over previous prices.

The P1610 is a well-respected ultra mobile workhorse. Good build quality, hi-res screen, fingerprint reader, heavy-touch screen for reduced vectoring, PCMCIA slot and extended battery capability. It runs XP TE and Vista Business (dual-boot as I understand it) on a Core Solo processor at 1.2Ghz and weighs 1.2KG which is the same as an MSI Wind or Eee PC 901. At its previous price of over 1600 Euros it was out of reach for most people but at 800 Euros, its a different matter.  [Article continues…]

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Jenn from Pocketables  shows us a press release from Fujitsu making official the latest iteration of the Lifebook UMPC. We already knew most of the details regarding the Atom based U2010, but the press release has shed light on a few new bits of info. The U2010 will be available in five different colors: Ocean Black, Pink Gold, Cool Silver, Fuchsia Red, and Luminous Blue. Fujitsu is also saying that the U2010 will run for 8 hours on its extended 4-cell battery, or 9 hours with the 4-cell battery and the announced 64GB SSD option. The U2010 looks to be shaping up to be a good sequel to a pretty popular line of UMPCs. Lets just hope that press released 9 hour battery figure is true!

JKK uncovered something nice on his daily FCC rounds today. The U2010 that seems to be shooting up the UMPCPortal charts (#4 as I write this), is going to be available in the U.S. as the U820. Jkk reports that there doesn’t appear to be any differences in spec apart from an FM transmitter (for in-car audio transmission) and a good-to-see, XP Tablet Edition option. Bravo Fujitsu!

Details: JKKMobile.

Meanwhile, over at the UMPCFever offices, JOE has been doing some more testing with the U2010. He’s completed 2 battery life tests which proce that it’s running more efficiently than the SC3, the other Menlow-based laptop-style UMPC. Playing a movie with 50% brightness, Wifi on and power saving mode returned 2hrs and 30 minutes. 3hrs browsing might be a little difficult to achieve at 50% brightness but it’s going to be very close. Is it going to be enough for people though? Joe continues testing and promises some CrystalMark results tomorrow where we’ll probably get a good feel for disk speed; another important factor.

Specs for the U2010 are available here.

UMPCFever are the source of the information here and I find myself more than a little interested in this 1.6Ghz Intel Centrino Atom-based (Silverthorne + Puolsbo) device having read the article. The Fujitsu U2010 appears to be a significant step forward for UMPCs and a possible replacement for my broken Q1 Ultra (more about that here and later.)

Improved:

• Keyboard
• Wifi/BT on/off switch
• Battery life
• Screen Res

UMPCFever have measured 3 hours WiFi-on, full screen backlight playing a movie. Remember this is on a 20wh battery. 7W drain under those conditions is nothing short of impressive. Expect around 7-hours music playback, 5 hours wifi-off typing or 3 hours browsing. If you so wish, you have a 40wh battery option which will bulk the device out a little but double your battery life.

The U2010 has many of the components of the SC3 but it’s smaller (click the size comparison on the left,) is more powerful and has better battery life. In my book, that’s worth paying for so it’s the reason that the U2010 has gone right to the top of my wishlist. Anyone want to buy an SC3 from me?

UMPCFever U2010 First impressions.

UMPCFever have also got pictures of the device disassembled. Check out the internals here where you’ll see the good news that the HD can be swapped out and the bad news that the memory is soldered.

We’re tracking and linking all the U2010 info as we find it on the U2010 info page.

Just like the Kohjinsha SC3, the Fujitsu U2010 is a mini, no, tiny notebook PC running on the new Intel Menlow platform. JKKMobile and UMPCFever have reported the specifications (now in the database) and I’ve been looking over them.

Firstly, the screen is an amazing 1280×800 which is the same pixel density as a Sony UX UMPC. It’s high, but useful. You can always bump the font sizes up if you need to.

Secondly, the battery life is quoted as 3.5hrs under Bapco MobileMark 2007 Productivity. As far as I can tell, that means Wifi-off, low screen brightness and some office application work. 3.5 hours isn’t bad. Probably 30 minutes more than the Kohjinsha SC3 under those conditions. If the Wifi module is good, that means 3hrs browsing time which is much more than the SC3 will achieve.

Update: Looks like I was spot on with the battery life. See this report.

It looks tempting with it’s very light weight (610gm) fingerprint reader and dual memory card slots Local street price in Hong Kong is said to be $1350 though which is a lot more than the SC3. Willcom D4 vs Fuji U2010 vs SC3 fight anyone?

Focusing on the ‘high-end’ of the market, the Fujitsu U2010 that was announced in Korean today will be an Atom-based (we assume Silverthorne/Poulsbo) ultra mobile PC running Windows Vista and including GPS and 3G. One of the problems of the previous U1010, the multi-function keys, might have been solved in this model as there’s a 6th row of keys on the device. Weight is an impressive 610g. Screen is 5.6" at, we assume, 1024×600. I also see a fingerprint reader and SD card reader.  There’s no word on processor speed but we can assume that this will be running 1.6 or even 1.8Ghz and a few quick calculations based on a small 20wh 2-cell battery as seen on the U1010 returns a potential in-use battery life of around 3hr which would extend to 6hrs with the commonly used 4-cell battery pack.  A local Taiwanese price of $1300 puts it into the middle of the ultra mobile PC pricing along with other 3G-enabled devices like the Q1 Ultra HSDPA and a July launch ties-in with the expected availability of the Intel Menlow platform.

Its good too see some more pro-mobile devices appearing but the success of this little baby will largely depend on how Vista performs so keep any eye out for reports from Computex.

Source: Digitimes. Via JKKMobile