I love competition. A company drops a device like the iPhone 3G integrating some great hardware, and quite soon after, all the other players realize that they need to update their own hardware to catch up. Welcome the new Sidekick LX into the competitor’s corner. The Sidekick has been exclusively on T-Mobile since its creation, and the LX is no different. While the overall form factor of the Sidekick LX has not changed much from past iterations, the LX adds some nice new hardware:

• 3.2 inch high res 854×480 screen
• 3G connectivity
• GPS
• 3.2MP camera with autofocus and LED flash

Additionally the Sidekick’s software has been updated to be a bit more social. Twitter, Facebook and Myspace integration has been built into the interface so you can get notifications from your favorite social network on the go.

Adrian Covert from Gizmodo got a short hands-on with the device saying that the external design of the device is not much different but it “feels and looks pretty solid as far as Sidekicks go inch. And that the keyboard “feels nice and clicky, and the screen is gorgeous inch. Sounds like a nice upgrade from previous models. Swing over to the Gizmodo article to see some images of the Sidekick LX.

As time draws closer and closer to the time when Intel’s Moorestown platform is due to be released, I’ve been looking around at some of the concepts that they have been showing over the last year to get an idea of what we’ll see when the Moorestown platform hits. Moorestown is a platform for an upcoming set of devices that will blur the lines between smartphones and MIDs. Chippy used the term ‘MIDphone’ not long ago in an article about a voice capable software stack that would be making its way to Moblin (a MID oriented OS). One of these MIDphones that you will probably recognize is, at this point, nameless, but many have said that it looks to be a super-wide iPhone (let’s call it Moorestown X). A little while back, Intel released three videos showing concepts of what they want a device like Moorestown X to be able to achieve with the platform:

As I look at these videos and compare similar hardware that we have access to today, I get quite excited to see if something like this can be delivered. Obviously the videos above are simply conceptual, but if they could deliver functional software that is even half as polished as what we see above, it would make for an excellent device, as long as the Moorestown platform is really up to the task of delivering this experience with the battery life that people expect from a phone. Moorestown is purportedly going to consume ten times less power while idle than current Atom platforms. Concepts like these always make the software look good, but I hope they spend some serious time on the GUI if they are planning on bringing a similar product to market. I can’t stand the idea that the eye-candy would get in the way of productivity.

It seems like some of the focus on Moorestown has been shifted in light of the success that Intel has been having with their Atom platform, which powers an incredible amount of the netbooks that we see today. As far as we know however, Intel is still hard at work on Moorestown, and as soon as they complete their work, which should be in late 2009 or early 2010, we’ll start seeing hardware that should change the way we think about pocketable computing.

It is interesting to me to think about what will happen to devices like the iPhone and upcoming Palm Pre when they are put in perspective with the kind of devices that we could see coming from Moorestown. Competition always functions as a driver for innovation, so I think its safe to say that the release of the Moorestown platform will be good for everyone in the long run.

Thoughts on the Moorestown vision? What would you be willing to pay for a device like the Moorestown X? Are you excited about the upcoming platform if it could bring products like this into the smartphone/MID space?

I briefly mentioned this back in late 2006 so I was surprised to see it in the flesh at CeBIT 2009 yesterday. Rather disappointed to hear that it still hasn’t hit the market though. Fortunately for ROAD, they were way ahead of the game so they’ve still got a chance to get this out without the specs looking too outdated although something tells me that the 2.5G data capability isn’t going to impress too many ‘road’ warriors .  JKK and I did a quick video overview of the device which you’ll find after the jump.

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Here’s a few more clues to how the voice capability on Moorestown ‘midphones’ will be played out. Open-Plug have announced their 2G and 3G capable ‘ELIPS’ Telephony stack for Moblin, the OS being built for current and future MIDs and netbooks.

This Open-Plug stack is likely to be the one on the LG  ‘midphone’ announced for 2010. We’re expecting to hear a bit mroe about that next week at CeBIT.

“Mobile Internet Devices make it easy for people to stay connected wherever they are,” said Pankaj Kedia, director of global ecosystem programs in Intel Corporation’s Ultra Mobility Group. “Intel’s next generation MID platform, codenamed Moorestown, in combination with Open-Plug’s telephony stack integrated with a Moblin based Linux OS, will set a new threshold for making this connected experience a reality by delivering a compelling Internet experience while supporting voice capabilities on the platform.”

Intel appear to be starting to push their marketing towards smartphones now so expect a lot more talk about Moblin 2 ( release due in a few months) and smartphones/MIDs from Intel over the next 18 months. Can’t wait to see them at MWC in Barcelona next year.

Source Finazenachrichten.de

Jkkmobile points out an interesting video from Engadget that shows some interesting multi-touch demos on a resistive touchscreen. Have a look at the video embedded below, but be sure to stick around for some thoughts below.

The demos are definitely neat, but I’m a very big proponent of capacitive touch technology, not because of multi-touch, but because of its consistent recognition of input. Multi-touch and the ability to do gestures is great, but I would argue that it is not the best part of capacitive touch technology. So they have managed to port the multi-touch facet of capacitive touchscreens over to resistive touchscreens, but they stick lack the consistent detection of input. Nothing is more annoying to me than having to click on one item several times because it is easy for a resistive touchscreen to either miss or misinterpret your input. It really ruins the touchscreen experience. Low pressure input resistive screens help to alleviate this to some degree but the issue still remains. Capacitive touch’s ability to extremely consistently recognize touch input is what makes it possible to have a viable on-screen keyboard on a device the size of the iPhone. I’ve tried many other resistive touch phones with OSKs, and the experience is almost embarrassing to the hardware.

As for the pressure sensitivity of the demoed screen: The way it was described is that it recognizes how much pressure you are putting on the screen by how much contact there is with the surface of your finger. If this is the correct explanation of how the technology works, then pressure sensitivity will not be able to be measured with a stylus. When you apply more pressure to a surface with your finger, the skin around the bone presses down with a larger surface area, this obviously doesn’t occur with the tip of a stylus.

This is definitely good for resistive touchscreens and a jump forward for devices that will continue to use them, but in many cases I still feel like capacitive touch offers the best experience.

I’ve been pondering this question for a long time and have never come up with a decisive answer. Ever since the iPhone came out, people have been criticizing it for not providing the ‘full internet experience’, citing the lack of true flash support. I just don’t get it though, where is the demand?

Several years ago it seems like having a full flash website was all the rage, but since then lots of great web technologies (javascript, ajax, etc.) have been utilized to make highly interactive websites that often outperform their flash counterparts in both performance and utility. These days it seems like the majority of flash content comes from flash video players, and of course the king of all flash video players is YouTube.

When you upload a video you YouTube, by default, is it transcoded to a format playable by most modern smartphones (using built in media players, not flash). I couldn’t tell you for certain, but in my experiences, it seems like the majority of YouTube’s content is available in this format. The iPhone already has a dedicated YouTube application which makes it easy to browse YouTube’s library and play videos. For phones that don’t have a dedicated application, there is the www.m.youtube.com site for browsing the library and doing many of the things you would do on the full version of the site like rating and commenting on movies. Once you get past YouTube as the majority of Flash content, you start to break it down to other video players. Sites like Hulu, Netflix, and many others offer video through flash players as well, but don’t offer nearly the amount of content as there is available on YouTube.

After videos players, I would argue that the second most common flash content is flash advertisements. These things are scatter all over pages these days, and unfortunately, those that design flash ads are not usually concerned with the efficiency of their animations, they just want to animate enough motion and colors to capture your attention. What this leads to is poor performance on the flash content that you actually want. For example, a website like Gametrailers will have a flash banner ad, or a box on the right of the video that plays a flash ad while you are trying to watch a video through a flash player, and flash generally splits the available resources between the two. I’ve seen the framerate on videos drop so low because of other pieces of flash content (like ads) playing on a page at the same time that they are unwatchable, and that is on a full computer. How do people expect mobile phones to handle all the flash content on a page these days, in addition to watching a flash video player? It is important to realize that if you are asking for full flash support, you are also welcoming all the resource sucking advertisements that plague websites. These ads aren’t usually a performance concern for full computers (except the situation I provided above), but on low powered hardware they could be a serious performance ditch and that always leads to reduced battery life.

Aside from flash video players and flash ads, the remaining flash content doesn’t seem to be in high demand (unless I’m missing something important). For example, there are lots of flash games out there, and they are lots of fun. But even if we did have full flash support on mobile phones, I don’t feel like phones are equipped with the necessary control schemes to be able to manipulate that content. Do people expect to be able to play Desktop Defense with the navigation ball on their Blackberry Pearl? I don’t think that it is realistic to expect mobile phones to be able to interface with flash content that was designed with a user, using a mouse and keyboard, in mind. Do people expect flash developers to adapt their flash content to function with the myriad of phone control schemes that are out there?

It all seems rather ridiculous to me, and I still don’t understand what content there is that drives people to ask for flash on their phones. Flash videos players are great, but the majority of content (ie: YouTube) is already available to most modern smartphones. If other flash players want to bring their content to mobile phones, they could do so much more efficiently (for the phones) by following YouTube’s approach. I don’t quite see it being necessary to provide full flash support on mobile phones; what would be the benefit of doing so? Maybe providing a familiar programing environment?

One potential option that I see for the future is that phones begin using a ‘Flash Lite’ standard which provides programmers with a familiar programming environment, and makes it easy for popular flash player sites to create simple flash applications (like video players) that will launch from a link on a website into a Flash Lite application on the phone.

I don’t think we’ll see full flash support (ie: flash players, apps, and ads embedded directly into websites) in mobile phones for a long time because it just doesn’t make sense when you weigh the content gain against the performance and battery life concerns, and isn’t practical when you consider the logistics of controlling that content with various phone control schemes.

I’ve been using an iPod Touch/iPhone 3G for nearly a year now and I can’t say that there are many times while using them that I’ve said to myself “Wow I wish this thing supported flash”. Sure, occasionally there is a video I want to watch that isn’t hosted on YouTube, but on another flash player instead; is that justification to ask for flash on phones? In my opinion, the answer is no, but I want to hear the thoughts of others. When you are using your mobile phone for web browsing, what content do you come across that makes you wish you had full flash support?

With an even bigger WVGA screen than the HTC Touch Pro2 that we highlighted earlier today, the Acer M900 Tempo is going to be another high-end smartphone to consider if you need a consolidated device. Its got a similar high-capacity battery to the Pro2, GPS and a higher resolution camera. The processor is still an ARM11 device though so once again, the form factor is good but the CPU isn’t quite there. I can also hear the simultaneous cheers and boo’s for Windows Mobile!

Full specifications:

• Operating system: Genuine Windows Mobile® 6.1
• Processor: Samsung S3C 6410 mobile processor (533 MHz)
• System memory: 128 MB SDRAM for user applications and storage, 256 MB flash memory for operating system and embedded applications
• Display:3.8″ WVGA TFT LCD touch screen, 800 x 480 pixel resolution, 65536 colors
• Expansion: microSDâ„¢ Card
• Dimensions: 119 (L) x 62 (W) x 17.1 (H) mm
• Weight: 188 g
• Battery: Rechargeable lithium polymer battery, Capacity: 1530 mAh; Talk time: 3G: 5h depend on usage / 2G : 5h depend on usage; Standby: 160h depends on usage
• CMOS camera: 5M pixels Auto-Focus with flashlight, up to 2560 x 1920 resolution
• Audio: Built-in microphone, speaker
• Communications: HSDPA Category 8/ HSUPA Category 5 ( 2100/1900/850 Mhz); GSM/EDGE: Quad-band, 850/900/1800/1900 MHz; GPRS/EGPRS: Class B, multi-slot class 11; WLAN: 802.11b/g Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® network connection; Bluetooth: Bluetooth® 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
• GPS: SiRFstar III®
• I/O interface: 2.5mm stereo jack / AC adapter, microSDâ„¢ Card, SIM card slot
• Sensor: G-sensor
• User interface: Acer Shell v2.0
• Phone Tools: Phone settings, SIM toolkit, Speed dial, Call filter, Wireless modem, Communication manager
  Add ringtone, CSD type, Voice commander, Connection wizard, SMS sender, MMS composer
  SIM manager, Video Telephony
• Multimedia tools: Pictures & Videos, Camera /Camcorder, Album, Streaming player, Media player
• Utilities: Backup utility, Default Settings, Application recovery, Memory Optimization
• In-box accessories: Mini USB headset, Mini USB sync cable, Mini USB AC adaptor, Battery pack
• Optional accessories: Car mount kit

I’ll try and get the in the database ASAP so you can side-by-side it with the Touch Pro2, N97 and others. Right now though, I think that’s enough smartphone coverage on UMPCPortal for one day.

Acer product page with images is here.

Via PhoneScoop

It’s not quite the MID that many of us would like to see (it’s missing a slightly larger screen and a dod of processing power) but because its voice-enabled, highly converged and slick, we’re going to keep a close eye on this one. We’re tracking details and keeping the new Pro2 product page up to date.

Engadget also have a hands-on video.