Hot from the “hang on, why haven’t I seen that before?” department comes ARM’s video demo of what a Mobile Computer Concept should be. Based on ARM’s Cortex A9 processor with the ARM Mali 400 chipset providing graphics, the most obviously unfeasible part of the concept is the pull-out, flexible touchscreen.
Video demo after the cut
Since spending a few hundred dollars of his own money on importing one of the first SmartQ 7 MIDs from China, Steve over at UMPC Portal has been promising a full review. That’s now online, and it’s a mixed bag; the SmartQ 7 ticks many ultraportable boxes - like decent battery life, solid 1mbps DivX playback and a browser that handles page formating well - but falls well short in other areas.
Video demo after the cut
Apple are advertising for a low level iPhone programmer with aptitude in ARM processors and NEON vector units. The job listing suggests that the next-gen iPhone will use an ARMv7 Cortex processor rather than the ARMv6 processor as in the iPhone 3G and iPod touch, as NEON is the extended multimedia acceleration instruction set associated with the newer, faster CPU.
That would certainly fit with the most recent specification tips for the upcoming third-generation smartphone, which predict that the iPhone will have double the processing power of the current model, together with video recording and editing capabilities. NEON would certainly allow the new phone to take advantage of the ARMv7 Cortex’s increased multimedia prowess.
Another ARM-based touchscreen device blurring the definition between PMP and MID, the Chuwi W3000 has a Telechips 7901 dual-core chipset with integrated DSP for what’s said to be better audio and video playback. There’s also WiFi and possibly Bluetooth, GPS and USB Host functionality.
SmartQ’s 7 MID has shown up in a live photo, together with a price and more complete spec sheet. There’s good news and bad: the good is that, at $189, the 7-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen SmartQ 7 is pretty much as cheap as we were hoping; the bad, unfortunately, is that it uses the same 667MHz ARM11 processor as the SmartQ 5, which leads us to wonder whether it will suffer the same ponderous performance.
Nokia have released hardware specifications for their N97 smartphone, and it makes for disappointing reading for anyone hoping the QWERTY handset would pack the same CPU and GPU grunt as recent rivals. According to Nokia, the N97 uses an ARM11 434MHz processor and 128MB of RAM; that’s actually less than the Nokia XpressMusic 5630, which musters up a 600MHz CPU.
A demonstration of what looks to be a Skytone Alpha 680 prototype has been added to YouTube, showing the budget netbook running the Android OS. Announced earlier this month, the Alpha 680 is one of the first netbooks to be confirmed as using Google’s open-source platform; as the videos show, however, there’s a little work to be done before it’s a completely smooth transition from smartphones.
Video demos after the cut
If none of the existing MIDs on the market take your fancy, you could always do what HY Research have done and build your own touchscreen marvel, the Beagle MID. Based on the Beagle Board, the DIY mobile internet device packages a 4.3-inch 480 x 272 touchscreen with a custom interface board and Bluetooth.
Video demo after the cut
Samsung’s Mondi WiMAX MID had something of a stretched out launch – first being demonstrated at MWC as the SWD-M100, then getting a quiet mention through the company’s own RSS image feed, before Samsung finally came clean early this month. What we haven’t known until now is the processor powering the Mondi, and anybody hoping for something esoteric and interesting will be disappointed: it’s an 800MHz ARM11 chip.
The SmartQ 5 has been making quite a few people excited, with the prospect of cheap ARM-based MIDs sweeping through and significantly undercutting Atom-based rival devices. Last week we saw the first batch of SmartQ 5’s unboxed now it’s time for some home truths: for all its promise, the ARM chipset used just can’t keep up with what we want from a mobile internet device.
Video of the SmartQ 5 in action after the cut
SlashGear Japan
