Rodfather Mobile

Since James liked the last one, I’ll focus on some devices that are hot in the news.

There seems to be a lot of demand for small, cheap devices but still retain a full sized touch keyboard.  But how small could you go?  By most accounts, the smallest you can go and still have the ability to 10 finger touch type seems to be around 9″ width devices like Panasonic R7 or Fujitsu P1610.  As of now, these devices can go up to the $1500-$3000 range.

Now we’re starting to see cheaper devices with the same width to provide the ‘smallest you can go’ keyboard.  The differences here are the rest of the parts.  The innards use first generation UMPC’s components, such as the 7″ 800×480 screen,  but with stripped components, reduced storage and low memory.  Not to mention the lack of Windows which reduces costs considerably.  At $399 for the Asus Eee PC with Linux,  this is generating a lot of interest.

Size Breakdown

The Packard Bell Easynote XS and Asus Eee PC are in this same boat and are the most similar in size.  These are the OLPC clones/cheapass  subnotebooks with 7″ screens. 

The keyboard on them should be similar to the Vye S37/Kohjinsha SH since the width is around the same.  It’s funny how long the Vye S37/Kohjinsha SH is even with the 3 cell.  With the 6 cell, it may extend up to an inch more.

The Shift is interesting since it lacks length and a bit of width compared to the ‘bigger’ devices.  Along with the screen mechanism, there doesn’t seem much room for the keyboard.  The keys must be squashed vertically quite a bit.  I’m not sure if you can 10 finger touch type on this. 

Chippy was able to type fairly fast with just his thumbs though.

As for the Fujitsu U810, well, it has a touch keyboard but by no means full.  There’s been a lot of flak about whether the keyboard should even be there since it’s not very useful as a touch keyboard.  With all the keyboard combos with the function key, it may be frustrating.

It sounds more appealing to me looking at U810 as a thumb keyboard clamshell device but with the ability to touch type with four fingers if you want to have it sitting on a tabletop.  Plus it’s a convertible Tablet PC.

Kevin Tofel over at jkOnTheRun just received the US model of the Vye Mini-v S37 Convertible UMPC.  He does a quick unboxing of the device while his Samsung Q1P is nearby for size comparisons.  I can’t wait for a followup and hopefully Kevin will address some of the issues I will explain below.

[Link]

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The main difference between the S37 and the Kohjinsha SH6/8 is the S37 comes standard with a 6-cell extended battery and USA keyboard layout.

One thing I’m curious about is the screen.  There have been reports the S37 screen has a matte finish and is not as bright as the Kohjinsha’s as noted here and here.

From UMPC Portal forums:

Firstly, let me tell you something important. The screens on these two devices are DIFFERENT. I didnt notice it at first but now they are side by side I can see it. The S37 is dimmer and has a matt finish (you can hear your nail scraping on it.) The SH6 is brighter and has a smooth finish. Both are 1024×600 and both are soft touch. The screen brightness on the S37 is 30% dimmer (at full) than the SH6 (as measured with a light meter) The frame on the S37 is also slightly buckled. I have emailed Vye about this and am trying to find out if I have some sort of prototype or wether the OEM has done a screen swap.

Dynamism IS carrying the 800MHz. They also just confirmed the screen type on the S37: “The screen is more of a matte screen but does have a slight reflective finish on it.” (They also won’t supply a UK plug. Boo. Considering the prices, you’d think they’d chuck one in )

Another is battery life.  From this review, the 3-cell battery on the Kohjinsha SH6, bought straight from a store in Japan, is getting 3.5 hours with heavy use.  This is odd since that range of battery life is normally only experienced with the 6-cell battery.

Battery

The battery is so small, once again you have to see it to believe it. I’m surprised the amount of power this thing can dish out and it’s only a 3 cell battery. While running 720p video, wireless off and full brightness, I got around 3.5 hours of battery. Another example is when I was in class for 5 hours straight, I had wireless off, 2 notches down from full brightness, was playing iTunes, sometimes typing and playing a little video every once and a while, I got 5 hours of battery. Not bad, but if you want more time, you should go for the more powerful battery.

I’m hoping the battery life issues have been resolved, but I’m doubting it.  Hopefully the reviewer can be contacted and reconfirm that statement. 

Where’s the built in stand in slate mode? I like having most of the guts sitting vertically for heat dissipation and not worrying about frying my device from split beer on the keyboard.
Thoughts?

CoolMod posted a user review of the Kohjinsha SH6 over at NotebookReview.com.

What’s surprising is the battery life.

Battery

The battery is so small, once again you have to see it to believe it. I’m surprised the amount of power this thing can dish out and it’s only a 3 cell battery. While running 720p video, wireless off and full brightness, I got around 3.5 hours of battery. Another example is when I was in class for 5 hours straight, I had wireless off, 2 notches down from full brightness, was playing iTunes, sometimes typing and playing a little video every once and a while, I got 5 hours of battery. Not bad, but if you want more time, you should go for the more powerful battery.

 

Has the battery life issues been addressed?   3.5 hours of battery life on the 3 cell battery under heavy use is very good.

[NotebookReview] via [Jerry from the UMPC Portal forums]

I punched in the dimensions of a few devices into SizeEasy.

Comparing the Fujitsu T2010, Sony TZ, Fujitsu P1610, Kohjinsha SH series/Vye mini-v s37, and the Fujitsu U810.

Noticing it’s a big jump in width and height from the P1610 to Sony TZ.  The Sony TZ is still very light at 2.5lbs, an inch thick, and excellent battery life.

The U810 looks significantly smaller in width but it is slightly thick and the screen is 5.6″.

The Samsung Q1, Kohjinsha SH, and P1610 are very similar but the P1610 is 10mm thicker.

Sitting At The Beach
At Manresa State Beach on one of
the benches. It’s almost sunset. I’m connected w/ the Novatel U727 sticking
out of the Q1. Working out nice.

Derek the lucky Australian dude who posted unboxing photos some time ago sent me an email today. It appears Derek really is lucky afterall. He posted in his moblog the result of an unplanned drop test of his Fujitsu U1010 UMPC.

That’s a nasty gash but works fine. Brownie points to Fujitsu for build quality.

Link
Mirrored Link (Original link seems to be down at the moment)

UPDATE 2: I emailed Dynamism to check if they had any Vye S37 demo units to compare the screen between it and the Kohjinsha. They don’t have any in yet but will let me know when they do.
I talked with Steve and the production units should have the same glossy screen. Vye is finding out why the pre-production units had different screens.

UPDATE: The S37 was set to ‘silent mode’ which apparently throttles the CPU. Steve will post new results in the thread.

I’ve been following the Kohjinsha SH6/8 and Vye Mini-v S37 for quite some time now. It’s definitely one of top candidates for my next device. I was going to wait for the S37 to pan out since their US site says it will ship with a USA keyboard. I’m not so sure anymore.

Steve Paine of the UMPC Portal has posted a message in the forums comparing the Kohjinsha SH6 (Intel A100 600Mhz) and the Vye Mini-v S37 (Inte A110 800Mhz based on the SH8).

What’s interesting, in his test, the SH6 comes out slightly ahead in almost all the performance tests. This includes the Windows Vista Experience Index and CrystalMark. Could it be that the SH6 is running Vista Home and the S37 is running Vista Premium or are there other issues involved?

What’s worse, the S37′s screen is different than the SH6! WTF? That’s very disturbing. The S37′s screen has a matte finish and 30% dimmer than the SH6′s smoother finish.

I wonder if those differences are there between the SH6 and SH8. Did Vye swap the screen out?

I will closely monitor that thread.

Hi All.

UPDATE: There’s some problems with these tests so don’t take them as final yet. I’m speaking to Vye to try and find out what’s up!

I’ve finally got a chance to sit down and run the SH6 and S37 models I have side-by-side. Here are some observations.

SH6 bought from Conics.net. 2GB RAM. 40GB disk. 600Mhz processor. Vista Home. Black
S37 on loan from Vye. 1GB RAM. 100GB drive. 800Mhz processor. Vista home premium. Black

Both devices optimised:
Defender: OFF
INdexing: OFF
Screen candy set for best performance (No Aero)
Automatic updates: Notify but dont download.

Firstly, let me tell you something important. The screens on these two devices are DIFFERENT. I didnt notice it at first but now they are side by side I can see it. The S37 is dimmer and has a matt finish (you can hear your nail scraping on it.) The SH6 is brighter and has a smooth finish. Both are 1024×600 and both are soft touch. The screen brightness on the S37 is 30% dimmer (at full) than the SH6 (as measured with a light meter) The frame on the S37 is also slightly buckled. I have emailed Vye about this and am trying to find out if I have some sort of prototype or wether the OEM has done a screen swap.

Keyboard: The S37 has a tidier UK keyboard without the japanese writing. I like it a lot better but I guess its not affecting my productivity.

Build quality: Apart from the screen buckle on the S37, bothe are the same. The S37 has a logo on the back of the screen which looks big in pictures but is actually quite small.

Tests done under mains power….

Boot speed
S37 much quicker. (By about 20 seconds to the desktop.)

Time to settle (After boot up. Disk activity stopped) SH6 (Vista Home) much quicker (by at least a minute)

Windows Experience Index (test performed after fresh boot. After pre-caching completed.)
SH6: 1.8 (CPU=1.8, Memory=4.5, Graphics=3.4, Gaming Graphics=2.6, Primary hard disk=4.3)
V37: 1.7 (CPU=1.7, Memory=4.1, Graphics=2.9, Gaming Graphics=2.6, Primary hard disk=4.5)

But wait……Let me swap the memory modules over and give the S37 2GB.
SH6: 1.8 (CPU=1.8, Memory=4.5, Graphics=3.4, Gaming Graphics=2.6, Primary hard disk=4.3)
V37: 1.7 (CPU=1.7, Memory=4.1, Graphics=2.9, Gaming Graphics=2.6, Primary hard disk=4.5)

Exactly the same. Thats something I don’t understand…..
Will check some more performance scores and update this.

Crystal mark tests show the SH6 to be faster in almost every test. So at this point i’m going to stop testing and contact Vye. Something is wrong…..unless Vista HOme Premium is killing the results. Could that be the case?

Further testing…..

BIOS: S37 has a newer BIOS that saves the BT and WIFI state between boots/hibernate/standby. Better but presumably the SH6 can be upgraded.

General speed. The SH6 with 2GB feels faster. (THis is obviously due to 2GB ram and VIsta Home basic.) after swapping th memory, the SH6 still feels faster. There’s pretty much nothing in it and the only thing I can summize is that the tablet features (5 processes and quite a bit of RAM) are slowing things down for the S37.

More later……after i’ve spoken to Vye. Suggestions greatfully received!

Steve

Layne Heiny recently fiddled around with google ads and search using ‘UMPC’ as the search term. It wasn’t pretty.

In response, he’s calling out for ‘ultra-plan’ and is going to start using a UMPC on a daily basis to help promote its use.

We need an ultra-plan. A plan to show people how to use the UMPC so that efficiency is improved. Therefore, I worked to clear up a TabletKiosk UMPC from my daughters and plan to carry the UMPC with me. I hope to write about the experience daily so that others can follow along and maybe get excited about why the UMPC is a great product.

Great move.

As for myself, I’ve been using my Samsung Q1 as my main device for over a year. I do all my blogging from this device whether connected through WiFi or tethered through a WWAN connection. As you may have noticed, I occasionally do ink blogging too.

When working away from the office, it does the job since it’s a full Windows device. I can run SQL server, remote desktop, SSH, VPN, and many other tools to get things done.

While at work, I take the Q1 to meetings and use Onenote to ink notes along with recording audio with its built-in mic.

It’s the perfect media player. I don’t have to worry whether a certain codec will work. I use VLC media player and it can play just about any format. I also use Miro as my video podcatcher and it’s great not worrying whether my device will play a WMV or Quicktime h.264 podcast. It just works.

It’s my GPS device. I have a car mount set up in my Subaru to stick my Q1 on the dash. I’m running iGuidance as my navigation software which is great since they include a UMPC specific version with nice big buttons to take advantage of the touchscreen. I have a bluetooth GPS receiver sitting in my car to which pairs with the Q1 automatically after running iGuidance.

I can go on and on. For me, the UMPC has been great and I will continue using it even after upgrading to a new device.

[UMPC Buzz : UMPC Search on Google]