With Verizon’s ad campaign for the Motorola Droid kicking off in earnest over the weekend, and a launch date of October 30th tipped, it comes as little surprise to see a pre-production handset arrive over at the BGR. They’re mightily impressed, too, calling the Droid “the fastest Android device we’ve ever used” courtesy of its TI OMAP3430 chipset, branding its capacitive display “awesome” and “huge”, and concluding that it’s “the Android device to beat”.
We can’t help but think that if OQO had seen this much interest a few months back, they may not have gone bankrupt. An OQO Model 2+ UMPC – the company’s most recent model, complete with OLED touchscreen, Intel Atom 1.86GHz processor and integrated Qualcomm Gobi 3G WWAN – is currently listed on eBay, with bidding already at $5,100.
OQO have confirmed that they have closed down, with no remaining stock to be liquidated and no provision to repair or service any of their UMPC range. In a statement on OQOTalk, the shortfall is blamed on “financial constraints”; according to Bob Rosin, SVP of sales and marketing at the company, a deal is being explored with another PC vendor, over the OQO technology and engineering team.
It’s been a week of mobile device reviews, along with the Bluetooth accessories that go with them, here at SlashGear, with Samsung’s Tocco Ultra S8300 and Instinct S30 showing up for playtime. We also gave our opinion on the big news in Bluetooth headsets, in the shape of the Plantronics Voyager Pro and the Aliph Jawbone PRIME. Finally, HTC’s Touch Diamond2 flaunted itself in a video unboxing, while the Mophie Juice Pack Air for the iPhone 3G got its review.
OQO have apparently canceled all pre-orders for their Model 2+ UMPC, leading to the assumption by many that the company is facing receivership. The OQO Model 2+ was recently pulled from online retailer Expansys; we’re yet to hear anything concrete regarding the situation from OQO themselves.
The world’s smallest full-featured PC is a title held by the OQO. It’s a small UMPC that’s been around for a few years, and OQO was due to release a follow up, the OQO Model 02+ early this year. However, due to financial troubles and other problems for the company, it looks like the OQO Model 02+ is not going to be released any time soon.
While we grabbed not one but two hands-on demos with the UMID M1 MID at Mobile World Congress last month, we didn’t want to push our luck running benchmarks on the compact touchscreen handheld. Obviously UMPC Portal’s Steve isn’t quite so shy, hence these CrystalMark 2004R3 results for the 1.3Ghz Atom MID.
Details are still emerging about OQO’s Model 2+ UMPC, and one of its most interesting aspects: the OLED touchscreen. Aside from brighter colors and improved contrast, OLED is said to offer much-reduced power consumption over LCD; that bodes well for a mobile device like the Model 2+. In the field, though, things aren’t looking quite so positive, with Steve Paine reporting 10.5w drain with the backlight on high – that works out to potentially under 2hrs use from the standard 17wh battery.
There are now two of OQO’s Model 2+ UMPCs out in the wild, and the second – which has the SSD option – paused long enough to get unboxed by MID Moves’ Steve Paine. The solid-state drive seems to make a big difference, with its maximum 53MB read and 35MB write rates keeping Vista moving along smoothly, despite the Intel Atom processor.
Unboxing video of the OQO Model 2+ after the cut
OQO’s new Model 2+ was only officially announced back at CES, but the OLED touchscreen UMPC is already going places. Pocketables’ Jenn is taking it on an Intel-sponsored MID tour, and since one of the biggest changes in this generation of hardware is the switch to the Atom Z540 1.86GHz processor, she’s run some benchmarks of her test device.
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