The inquirer has an interesting comment on ultra mobile PC battery life today.

They talk about the 7″ screens from the automotive world and they say that the backlight on these LCD screens is responsible for 30 minutes of battery life.

That equates to 2-3 watts which is about right I think based on our tests and predictions. In fact, in an idle ultra mobile PC (lets say for example, while e-book reading) the backlight would account for 30-40% of the power drain and would lengthen the battery life of the device by over an hour to 4 hours.

The best bit of the story is that they think that the power-hungry ‘Cold Cathode Fluorescent’ backlight, will be replaced by very low power LEDs before the end of the year. Sounds good to me! Every little bit helps to keep the ‘Carrypad’s Law’ of battery life on track.

power requirements of mobile devices will reduce by 20% a year – Carrypad.

This equates to the following max battery life figures:

• 2006 – Average ultra mobile PC life 4 hours
• 2007 – Average ultra mobile PC life 4.8 hours
• 2008 – Average ultra mobile PC life 5.75 hours
• 2009 – Average ultra mobile PC life 6.9 hours
• 2010 – Average ultra mobile PC life 8.3 hours.

Update. It’s 2015 now so let’s extend the prediction.

• 2011 – Average ultra mobile PC life 9.96 hours
• 2012 – Average ultra mobile PC life 12 hours
• 2013 – Average ultra mobile PC life 14 hours
• 2014 – Average ultra mobile PC life 17 hours

For more info on the predictions (and more LCD power-saving technology), see this article.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

The ultra mobile PC product list contains UMPCs that range in price from about €350 to well over €2000,- euro and if you look at the functionality of these devices, there isn’t really much difference. They are all capable of performing the core ultra mobile PC functions like quality internet browsing, email retrieval and sending, video playing, audio playback and document creation.

We’ve just posted our latest review – the Sharp Zaurus S-CL3200/CL1000 – here on the Carrypad main page.

Yes, its been around for a while, but its an Ultra-Mobile PC we’ve been wanting to test and it was interesting to use this device directly after the using Paceblade Easybook P7. It proves how useful a keyboard option can be.

The review is here.
We’ve also put up a gallery here.

Thanks to Trisoft for the loan of the device and the great support.

Steve / Chippy.

Engadget have some new info on the Averatec AHI ultra mobile PC that was rumored.

There’s a tempting list of specs including the $800 price!

“optimized for VoIP, videoconferencing, viewing live TV and VOD, and apparently even gaming” – Engadget.

Like engadget say, its hard to believe the specs but we keep our fingers crossed.
We’ve changed the status of this device from ‘rumor’ to ‘planned’

Steve / Chippy.

At last i’ve managed to get some translation skills together (not mine!) and put together the bare bones of a German version of the Carrypad website.

If you’re English speaking, you can stop reading now!

Wenn sie Deutsch sind, probiermal das Carrypad Portal auf ihre sprache! Alle unser ‘reviews’ werde auf Deutsch ubersetzt und wir wollen auch anderer reports ubersetzen. Keep watching!

MFG.
Steve / Chippy.

[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

I’ve just published a short report on the Carrypad main portal about the AMD low-power processors with my opinion about how they could be utilised in ultra mobile PC devices. You can find the report here.

Regards
Steve / Chippy.

[img]https://www.umpcportal.com/origami/images/samsungQ1New.jpg[/img]

[url=http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/rumor-next-samsung-umpc-to-run-amd-178369.php]gizmodo.com[/url] has a link to story claiming that that Samsung will be dropping the Celeron M processor in its Q1 ultra mobile PC and will instead start using AMD chips to bring down the price.

Also, according to the story, in Korea they will be dropping the price of the device from $1300 to $780 by bundling the system with a subscription with the WiBro wireless service.

So at this point there are rumors of a VIA based Q1 and an AMD based Q1. We are still not sure which ones are true. However, seeing a price drop on these systems by fall would be great. Read the full story