“I saw the N800 and fell in love.. but then i saw the Sony UMPC… and wanted marriage… but saw the price tag and decided I was too young for marriage…” (from IRC)

The Origami project began with a lot of hype and the promise of a windows-XP-based mini computer for less than 500$ that will run for a full day on one battery. This hasn’t happened: Now in 2007, we have a number of bulky and heavy tablets with 7-inch-screens, usually priced around 1000 Euro.

Some smaller devices such as the Oqo or the Sony UX are closer to the originally promised device dimensions, but come at a price tag way beyond that.

So nothing revolutionary yet: Less-than-1kg Subnotebooks such as the Toshiba Libretto or the JVC XP were sold years before the Origami announcement.

The Nokia 770 and N800 came much closer: Just a bit more than 200 gramms, a full day or two on one battery for average mobile use. Thanks to the ARM-based chipset made for low-power systems and a Linux system that has been taught to conserve energy whenever it can.

But there are some interesting advances in x86-based UMPCs these days. Intel decided to make low power consumption a priority and wants to come up with a special UMPC CPU and chipset:

[..] Intel announced that they will make a dedicated CPU / Chipset platform for the UMPC that [..] will get the average power of a UMPC down to SUB 4-Watt. [..] The low-power screen component looks like it will come from Samsung who have developed, specifically for UMPCs, a 7″ screen that drains just 0.6Watt. That’s about 30% of what today’s screens typically take. [..] 4W average drain is amazing. It means that a 2006 UMPC that ran for 3 hours could potentially run for 9 hours. It also enables smaller devices to be built. It means that x86 architecture is becoming so efficient that RISC/ARM based tech loses a lot of its advantage.

The cynical result of these improvements might be smaller devices with smaller batteries that still last the magical 3 hours, only, but here’s hoping.

Intel is competing with AMD. Their Geode chipset is already used in PDA-sized windows XP computers such as the Raon Digital Vega or the upcoming Digital Cube G43 UMPC. A working prototype (it was functional and ran XP, but the case design will change) was on display at CeBIT: Twice the weight and a bit bigger than the N800, but still fascinating:

Of course, ARM CPUs will also continue to be improved. 2007 and 2008 will be interesting years for mobile computing, as ARM-based PDAs continue to become more like mobile PCs while x86-based PCs turn into PDAs.

In the meantime, Intel wants to push new UMPCs on the market. Here is an image and a video of a prototype of one of these upcoming devices, announced for this year.

According to Harald Welte, Intel has a company policy of releasing Linux drivers for all its chipsets. x86-based Linux will be an actual, well-supported alternative operating system.

A full Gnome desktop with Firefox on this? If it’s significantly less than a 1000$, count me in!

(Image via pocketables.net)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMsM8ku9CZ0]

(Youtube video from UMPCPortal)

After using the N800 for a few weeks now, here are some follow-ups to my initial review.

Steven from UMPCPortal reports that his N800 broke after accidently dropping it from just a few centimeters of height. Ouch! So to reiterate: This is a fragile device.

It is just slightly too long. Unlike the Palmpilot, which was designed for a shirt pocket, the N800 cannot be carried comfortably. If Nokia could just cut a few centimeters off the case… (Does the N800 really need stereo speakers?)

Thanks to its size, it’s hard to find a good case for it. This is the ugly thing I use right now. It’s too big for my coat:

Siarhei Siamashka, the developer of mplayer for Maemo, made some benchmarks and found out that the graphics bus bandwidth to the video framebuffer is 3 times slower than on the Nokia 770. So despite its better CPU, the N800 will most likely never be able to display full-resolution video at 800×480 @ 30 fps. Daniel Stone confirmed this and explained in related discussions that the N800 uses a different hardware architecture. Since the TI OMAP CPU’s system-on-a-chip LCD controller was not suitable for the N800′s screen size, the device required the use of an external LCD controller.

Frankly, this looks like a design mistake on behalf of Nokia: They have chosen hardware with closed drivers and apparently it’s still not the best fit for the targeted screen of the device. This is a major disappointment, since video on the go is my personal killer application.

Disclaimer: This was a personal review of some small issues that bother me, not a general “Nokia’s hardware sucks!” complaint. Actually, I like the N800 quite a lot.

Visiting CeBIT, I had the chance to meet Steven from UMPCPortal. He owns an N800, too, and we were both intrigued by Beijing Peace East Technology Development Co. Ltd‘s claim of an UMPC based on Linux, so we arranged to visit their both together.

The device is indeed running Linux: After crashing the device by trying the GPS app, the bootup sequence showed the familiar penguin boot logo.

The H9 is much bigger than expected. See it next to the N800 in the photo above. On that photo, you also see their CE product below the glass display table.

The user interface is not Maemo, but it is obviously heavily inspired by it. The user interface doesn’t look very polished yet and the hardware as shown on CeBIT felt very much like a prototype. Note the WLAN card in the PCMCIA slot – but this might change for the finished product.

Next to the Maemo GUI being copied, Microsoft will also not be happy: Note the MSIE icon on the button and the Windows icons. The whole user interface is a mish-mash of existing ideas and artwork. Well, in China nobody cares, I guess.

The applications’ artwork is very Asian. The representative couldn’t answer many questions about the operating system and the development of the apps, he also couldn’t tell us which browser the device uses.

The software is written in China by Insistech, a company I never heard about. Despite the rough edges and the feeling of using incomplete beta versions, the software appears to be functional and useful. Surprisingly, the video player seems to be much better than on the N800, apparently playing full-screen DivX at high resolutions. (I couldn’t test this with own files and didn’t see the specs of the test videos, so this wasn’t an actual test.)

Is it a competitor to Maemo? No idea. Probably not, since the whole system felt a bit crude and incomplete. It would be interesting to see the actual programming interfaces. It’s doubtful that third-party development is possible or desired by Insistech and that they even know about the GPL’s requirements.

Googling about Insistech, there is little to be found about them. No idea what the company does, no idea who their developers are, no idea if their system is used on more devices than the H9. Their developers have discussed about Konq/e and the Helix Media Player, so one can assume that these are used in the H9.

This brings me to the bigger picture of Linux outside the “Western” world. I know there are a lot Linux developers in Europe and the Americas, but have you heard of major Linux applications coming out of India and Asia? Now here is a mystery company building a complete set of applications and a GUI and the result is not too shabby, either. Surprising. What other Linux developments are going on out there that the English-speaking world never hears about?

Update: There is a video and some pricing info at pocketables. Steve posted his impressions at UMPCPortal plus a gallery and video.

Visiting CeBIT this Saturday, I’m sure not to miss the booth of Beijing Peace East Technology Development Co. Ltd. Chippy from UMPC Portal was there, already, but didn’t gather much new information.

The ARM-based device comes with any feature you could wish for, including a harddisk, GPS receiver, WLAN, Bluetooth, USB, PCMCIA, SD and a kitchensink. Looking at the device’s screenshots, it appears to be running Maemo, yet the company or its Chinese developers haven’t appeared publicly on the Maemo mailing lists. The software package announced for it is also unheard of on maemo.org.

Quite a mystery device. Do you know more? Do you have suggestions what I should ask them at CeBIT? Do you have information about it? Let me know!

Update: I’ve seen the device at CeBIT. It’s running Linux, it’s not Maemo but obviously inspired by it, it’s a lot bigger than I expected, it’s quite fascinating, it’s not a real competitor to the Nokia devices. The full report with pictures will follow tomorrow.

Small computers are great, so this was exciting to hear: After years of hype, the Vulcan Flipstart has finally become an actual product. Hopefully it will be shown at CeBIT 2007 somewhere.

Looking at the specs, photos and James Kendrick’s informative video, the product doesn’t look too promising, though. Pretty ugly design, no touchscreen, quite heavy and a rather high pricetag. What a disappointment.

The Raon Vega, the Sony UX, the Oqo and the upcoming Arima UMPC (to be sold in Europe by Medion and Gigabyte) all look far more advanced and better engineered.

All of these devices share a major problem, though: They are small bricks. Compare that with the Nokia N800, which weighs just a bit more than 200 gramms and runs for days on a tiny battery. The above-mentioned UMPCs need a big battery and still run a few hours, only.

Update: “Days?” Read Karel Jansens’ clarification below.

Will there be Maemo-related exhibits at the CeBIT this year?
I asked the same question on the maemo.org mailing lists, alas, no response. The CeBIT appears to be losing importance…

One of my favourite things on the Nokia 770 was watching TV recordings on the subway to work, transcoded using 770-encode. The 770′s pre-installed video player is quite limited in playback, but the Maemo port of mplayer is able to play files at higher resolution and bitrate.

I’m using the N800 to learn Vocal Percussion with Wes Carroll’s DVD: Too bad it looks stupid to practice beatboxing while watching it on the subway.

For the N800, the pre-installed video player has improved a lot and can handle larger files, although some new nasty bugs have shown up. mplayer on the N800 is still quite unstable compared to the 770 version. Thus right now, watching video has become a bit less enjoyable on the new device, but these bugs will most likely be fixed within short time.

It’s a bit disappointing that the video still needs to be transcoded to be suitable for the device, though. The following is a rather unfair comparison, but it shows the quality tradeoff between a transcoded video and the original DVD:

Click the preview to compare the transcoded video’s quality.

While I know little about embedded devices and may be naive about the hardware of the N800, the specs suggest that it might be able to decode DVD content at fullscreen resolution, and with SDHC coming up, it also brings the storage space to carry a full movie or two with you.

A very similar video format is used for DVB broadcasts. (Germany is switching to digital-only broadcast TV right now.) It is surprisingly easy to watch DVB TV through a multicast on a local TCP/IP network (we did that during the games of the last soccer world cup) and the N800 would be a perfect little portable receiver for digital TV or DVD streams.

But the software can’t handle DVD or DVB, yet. I hope that Nokia or 3rd party developers can overcome this limitation some time in the future.

Update (08/2007): Since I wrote this article a few months ago, Nokia has improved the video codec and the device can now play much higher bitrates than shown in the DVD comparison above. However, you still have to transcode video to a lower resolution and bitrate and you still cannot play a raw DVD-rip in fullscreen.

Years ago, I bought “Monkey Island 1-3″ from the bargain bin of a local computer game store, but never finished the game.

ScummVM is an emulator of the Lucasarts engine and it turns the Nokia into a great casual gaming device. I finished Monkey Island 1 on the 770 and now I’m playing part 2 on the N800.

(Disclaimer: I really like the N800! Yet, I’m going to collect a few minor nits about Maemo and the N800 in this little series…)

Maemo comes with a central account settings controlpanel, but it’s not that central, actually: It only contains the Jabber settings. The Mail client has its own account settings menu. Both account settings are found through completely different menu paths on the device and it’s not very obvious where to look when you want to create or change one of your accounts.

It would be nicer if accounts for all online applications such as Jabber and Mail were stored in the control panel.

(Disclaimer: I really like the N800! Yet, I’m going to collect a few minor nits about Maemo and the N800 in this little series…)

While it’s wonderful that the N800 now supports BT keyboards out of the box, the BT settings are odd. You can easily make the BT icon disappear, and you have to dig deep into the control panel to make it reappear.

It would be nicer if the BT icon didn’t disappear, but just turned inactive/gray when bluetooth is off.