There are two ways to look at the Samsung Mondi, the oversized slider-style PocketPC with built-in WiMax. Either you wonder why Samsung didn’t go all the way with the convergence theme by adding in the cellular voice capability or you look at it as a flag-bearer in the Smartphone and MID market. One of the first devices that promotes the use of internet based services for all your communications and a real benchmark for pricing and capability.

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As time goes on, more and more of my time is being taken up reading very interesting smartphone news. WVGA, Android, WM6.5 and Cortex are the important keywords and every time a device comes up it becomes clearer that the push towards the MID market is greater from the Smartphone manufacturers than it is from the Intel-based MID and ultra mobile PC market. With Menlow in a strange UMPC-like state (with no Moblin support now) there’s a long wait until consumer-focused MIDs come out on the Moorestown platform in 2010. It’s even clearer than before that ARM will have the upper hand in the MID space in 2009 by building up from existing products and brands that already sell millions of devices. Intel will have to sit back and wait for the time being.

Today has been particularly active in the ‘MIDPhone’ space.

As I was updating myself on the status of my Samsung Omnia order (no delivery date in sight) I took a quick look at other options that are available and the Toshiba TG01 (soon available in the U.S.) jumped up at me. With a screen size of 4.1 inch, a resolution of 800×480 and  processing power that is 2-4 times as much as the Nokia N800 / N810, it’s difficult to ignore. Pricing is now under 500 Euro for an unlocked version and 02 in Germany are selling it for 150 Euro with a 25 Euro / month contract. Add 15 Euro on top for Internet and you’ve got an interesting option that you I could walk out and buy tomorrow. Chris over at SlashGear has just finished his review and although he wasn’t impressed with the UI and predicts that the WM operating system could be an issue, I still think that the device represents great value for mobile internet fans. When Windows Mobile 6.5 comes along it could make it even more interesting, especially if Opera 9.7 works on it. I’m looking forward to seeing some browsing speed tests on this one. Note: No keyboard!

As I was finishing up reading Chris’ article a news item about an HTC Leo popped up. The Ai.rs blog has posted what they say are the specifications for this new HTC device. I don’t know who Ai.rs are but everyone seems to be following up the story. WMPowerUser (a blog I frequent more and more these days) says that the device is the HTC Firestone. All I know is that it’s rumored to have a 4.3 inch screen and run a Snapdragon platform at 1Ghz. This is definitely another one to add to the MID list. Again, it looks like there’s no keyboard.

Only a few minutes later I read the news that the Samsung Mondi is launching. The Mondi is an even bigger device with a slider form factor and a 4.3 inch screen. Samsung are dropping a WiMax module inside and handing it over to Clearwire for a launch in Las Vegas. It’s an ARM11-powered device running Windows Mobile again. No pricing, No availability details. Style and feature-wise it’s not too exciting and in fact it doesn’t even support voice so this is really focused at mobile internet activities.

The Mondi’s compact design provides the user with a more mobile form factor and ease-of-use than the typical laptop or netbook. While it is small enough to fit into the user’s hand or pocket, the Mondi packs an impressive Web browser, powered by Opera 9.5, which takes full advantage of the device’s 4.3-inch touch screen.

I’d like to see this with HSPA, Android, a high-end CPU and a big fat battery for all-day mobile internet use!

Press release. Via.

Finally, in addition to all that, there’s news about a Sony Xperia X3 which had previously been known at ‘Rachael.’ Dutch blog ‘All About Phones’ found the information in an Expansys we page and it’s quite the interesting read, largely because it’s going to be running Android and will have a 4 inch 800×480 screen. As yet, the CPU information is unknown. If you’re thinking about an HTC Hero, you might want to wait for final specs and pricing on this one.

Breaking: Xperia X2 news is coming in

None of these devices represent the ultimate MID yet but you can see where things are going. The 4 inch to 5 inch space is getting very busy already. I’ll beadding some of these (if not all!) to the database very soon.

I’ve just had confirmation that Intel is going to sponsor MIDMoves to cover one of the Mobile Internet highlights of the year. The Intel Developer Forum 2009 in San Franscisco. This is fantastic news.

I attended IDF last year under my own steam with UMPCPortal and it turned out to be one of the most important weeks of the year for getting hands on, speaking to the OEMs and finding out exactly what’s going on in Intel with regard to Mobile Internet Devices. This year is going to be even better.

Menlow refreshed. The Z515 CPU will be appearing in a new MID, the Compal KAX-15 and I feel sure that we’ll see some more devices too. Viliv have the S7 almost ready for launch and I know for sure that they have a few devices up their sleeve for the latter part of the year. Then there’s the stuff we don’t even know about yet!

Moorestown details. Up until now we’ve only been given basic details about the architecture of the Moorestown platform. At IDF, all will be revealed. We’ll find out about the graphics core and get real hands-on with devices. If we’re really lucky there will be time for an in-depth testing session. Just how long will that platform idle? Those 50x idle power reduction promises need to be tested.

Moblin. The Moblin story gets more and more interesting by the day. The Menlow platform is pretty much out of the Moblin picture but for the netbook platform and the Moorestown platform it’s a different story. Computex was a real eye opener in terms of Moblin support and with Wind River now in the picture, things could get very interesting indeed. Expect to see netbooks running the final cut of Moblin with modifications and enhancements.

Pine Trail. The next-gen netbook platform will be revealed and it promises to be leaner, cooler and more efficient. Netbooks have already reached into the ultra mobile PC segment with the existing platform but Pine Trail could widen the scope even further.

The Technology Showcase was a real suprise for me last year.I never expected a big exhibit hall and I never expected to get so much hands-on with the MIDs, netbooks and UMPCs that were there. This year looks to be just as good with a MID community and Moblin community to check out.

The keynotes are always interesting and entertaining and this year I may even have a chance to question the speakers in a private session.

Inter-twined across the whole three-day event are the technical sessions. This is where you can get down to the nitty gritty of the technology and meet the people that work day-in, day-out with the technology. In the MID technology area we have a ‘Meet The Experts’ session, a session about gaming on MIDs and sessions on MID and smartphone security, entertainment and user interfaces. You can see the huge range of sessions listed in the IDF content catalogue.

The extra events in and around IDF will also be interesting. This year I plan to attend the tweet-ups and other social events around the event to talk about MIDs and learn from others in the mobile computing industry. I also plan to hang around after the event and try to arrange some sort of Mobility event. Cycling, camping or just a series of meet-ups and demos. I’m not sure what it will be yet but if you have ideas, please let me know.

Stay tuned for the lead-up to IDF over the next weeks. The event starts on the 21st of September but as always, the leaks start earlier and I’ll be tracking them all here on MIDMoves.com.

You can find out more about IDF at the Intel website.

IDF-related information is also available on Twitter. Follow @idf

Back in Feb, I listed a set of devices that should be high on your list if you’re thinking about mobile microblogging. It included MIDs and UMPCs. As the market for mobile social networking, mobile web search, mobile content creation, location based services and lifestreaming (my rough definition of Mobile Microblogging) gathers steam we’re seeing more and more devices coming into the segment and it’s mainly from the smartphone sector. UMPCs and MIDs aren’t getting a look-in. In fact, in my latest list, below, you won’t find a MID or UMPC.

Smartphones with bigger, higher resolution screens and high-end processors are appearing on the radar almost every week. Smartphone-based mobile software development is increasing too as more and more mobile device application stores tempt developers with easy-to-use, rich SDKs and APIs, a channel that reaches right down to millions of users devices and a good cut of any earnings.

What’s really interesting about the Mobile Microblogging phenomenon is that very little software development is happening for today’s Intel MIDs, the very devices that were targeted into this segment. Intel have stopped work on the Moblin OS for them and they’re effectively UMPCs. You could even argue that there are no Intel MIDs any more! They are being totally left behind in both software and hardware until Intel push the reset button when Moorestown MIDs with Moblin hit the market. Until then, it’s desktop operating systems for MIDs and UMPCs.

You won’t find an easy-to-use, small-screen, GPS-enabled search service on Windows. You can’t even link Google Maps to a GPS on the browser. Forget the thought of a compass helping with augmented reality, an accelerometer, an FM receiver with RDS or, if you’re into internet photography, a half-decent snapshot camera. There’s no application store either. Only on smartphones will you find the creative software and hardware that is driving the mobile microblogging market and making it exciting, fresh, competitive and, quite frankly, desirable.

Moblin-based MIDs do have a chance as do Maemo 5 based devices but you won’t find any on the market yet so it’s going to take time for the developers to warm to those platforms. Come back in 2010 to discuss that!

Apple and Android have done a lot for the new generation of mobile internet devices and usage scenarios and so it should be no surprise to see smartphones dominating this Mobile Microblogging segment to the point where UMPCs and MIDs don’t get a look-in. UMPCs and Netbooks still have big  advantages for general purpose, day-to-day productive computing but if mobile creativity is your thing, there’s nothing better than the new generation of smartphones.

One could argue that smartphones have grown into the MID segment but for me it was always about usage scenarios rather than device categories. As Intel said, communication, location, entertainment and productivity. It’s a shame that Intel’s MIDs aren’t living up to their own hype yet. (see my recent Moorestown article for thoughts about 2010)

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The CommunicAsia expo is happening in Singapore right now and Samsung have taken the opportunity to show off a previously ‘leaked’ product, the Omnia Pro B7610.

Like the HTC Touch Pro 2, it’s got a slider keyboard, an 800×480 screen and Windows Mobile. it’s got a 5mp camera and an 800Mhz CPU. 800Mhz sounds quite hefty but the CPU architecture details aren’t known yet so don’t get too excited about this being the ultimate pocketable browsing device.

It’s said to ship with WM6.1 but Samsung have promised an upgrade to WM6.5 which should keep this device current for a good year or more. While some of you might not like Windows Mobile, I still find it a productive and relatively open environment with a great software ecosystem. It should also be capable of running Opera Mobile 9.7 too which is one of the most advanced mobile browsers out there.

One more thing. The screen is a 3.5 inch AMOLED type which will provide great indoor color saturation but may not be the best choice for outdoor use. Expect a release in Q3 or even Q4 and keep your fingers crossed for 720p recording and the high-end processor that could make Opera Mobile a truly slick mobile browser experience.

Via Akihabara News

More thoughts on pocketable communications solutions from the smartphone bracket in this article.

I wake up this morning to a clearer understanding about where Moorestown fits but to an article that highlights that there’s a lot of marketing to be done by Intel. The new platform, demonstrated yesterday on a number of working devices, appears to be technically very capable and extends through a number of product sectors. It brings new levels of processing power and leads in making the Internet in your pocket more ‘real’ than with any other platform I’ve researched and yet there’s a surprising lack of interest. In fact, over the last 24 hours, there has been more interest in Intel’s deal with Wind River than with their move into the smartphone market. What happened?

E3, smartbooks, booth babes, an Apple conference, Palm Pre reviews and a lot of other news have a lot to do with it so perhaps the timing wasn’t exactly perfect. Perhaps Intel could have helped too. They’re calling it a MID platform and up to now, there really hasn’t been much penetration for the term and certainly no big-number consumer hit so attention levels could have been low when Intel mentioned that the platform is voice-call capable. They also failed to mention that the platform is 720p recording capable and that it could be used to make some amazing Moblin-based smartbooks. Intel is confident that they would be better than the ARM based ones too!

Maybe I can help, just a little, by trying to simplify the key points. What does Moorestown mean for consumers?

Moorestown is a computing platform, based on a more efficient version of the Atom CPU and big changes in the way that the other components in a traditional ‘computer’ are built. There will be versions that will run Windows XP or Windows 7 or other desktop platforms but that’s not really what Moorestown is intended for. Intel have built their own software to go on top of it and its a snug fit. It controls the ‘computer’ in a way that means it can continue working in a state where it’s effectively sleeping with one eye open and that opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Here’s some examples:

Smartphone

Expect Moorestown-based devices to be as small as a smartphone and to be able to run, on a smartphone sized battery, for over 24 hours. Intel are telling us that devices will idle with 50x less power drain than today’s Intel Mobile Internet Devices. The worst MID I ever tested ticked-over for about 1 hour on the juice of a smartphone-sized battery. Intel says that this will increase to 50 hours. The best-case scenario, based on testing I’ve done on the current best-of-Intel is 3-times that figure. 3-days active standby.

Smartbook

Moorestown scales. It sleeps with one eye open but when it wakes up it’s capable of Internet browsing speeds, accuracy and richness that you will have never seen on an ARM-based device. I’m expecting high-end versions of Moorestown to bring sub 10-second average page loads to every web page on the Internet. The current best smartphones take twice as long as that and the next-gen may only shave 50% off that.

Mobile Creativity

I really wish Intel had highlighted HD video  recording as it’s an important benchmark figure these days. Smartphone manufacturers are building these facilities into their devices and HD video is a huge growth area on the Internet. Moorestown enables 720p video recording. Not only that but the software layer has been designed with that in mind too. GPS-enabled applications with social-networking capabilities are baked into the software making it easy to make compelling mobile applications.

No more 99c apps

Moblin, the name of the software that runs on Moorestown, is a standard-compliant software stack too so there’s a huge library of free software out there. Moblin has the potential to offer a very rich choice of software, for free and because it scales and can be connected to the internet all day, introduces new revenue generating models.

For me, those are the key features of Moorestown but it clearly brings advantages for existing MID, PMP, Navigation, and ultra mobile PC market segments too. Think about it you won’t have to turn Intel’s mobile devices off any more. That alone, is a huge change for a mobile ‘computer.’

Intel still has a journey ahead and there’s some good competition out there but I, for one, will be looking forward to putting the Moorestown Internet experience in my pocket

You’ve seen the Inventec Mediaphone, the Moorestown-based MID already but we’re in for an even better treat tomorrow. At about 2pm here in Taiwan, Intel will be showing 3 working Moorestown products running Moblin V2 and if all goes well you should see a video of me making a phone call from one to the other proving that Intel are entering the smartphone market. It’s hard to believe that the PC architecture can be optimised and enhanced to the point where it defines a new category of smartphones.

In a discussion with the Ultra Mobility Group today I learnt that we’re going to be seeing demonstrations of working products. No timescales were given but based on what I saw of the product today and the fact that Moblin 2.0 will only be targeting the Netbook and Moorestown platforms, the Moorestown program has been accelerated and that we could be seeing product launches in 2009 rather than 2010.

We won’t be seeing low-cost smartphones of course and there will be products based on Moorestown that won’t include voice (think of the existing MID markets PMP, Full Internet, Navigation, Social networking) and voice-enabled products that you might not even want to put in your trouser pocket but this is Phase 1 of a multi-year rollout of ever-improving platforms that can go from deep in the feature-phone territory right up to grab-and-go UMPCs. Intel is serious about this. They see themselves picking up every customer in the mobile phone ecosystem in this program.

My prediction for tomorrow.

• You will see 3-4 Moorestown designs.
• You will see future concepts based around Medfield specs
• You will see devices that idle, connected, at 100-300mw with the screen off (The official line is that devices will idle at 1/50th of what we see on Menlow-based MIDs today)
• The low idle and system power will allow battery sizes to be slashed in half. 8-10hrs online. 3hrs working.
• You will see voice calls being made.
• You will see 720p video recording being done in hardware.
• You will hear that LG and others have committed to products in 2010
• You will hear about new software partners

For many, tommorrow will be a day to go down in computing history.

We’re not quite sure if we’re supposed to have this PDF but it’s just landed in our lap and we don’t see any confidential markings so we might as well relay the info. It’s a slide set from an investor meeting from the Ultra Mobility group and it highlights a few interesting points about Moorestown and Medfield. It appears to be dated 05_2009 so it’s very recent.

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