theONbutton@CES – MIDs & UMPCs everywhere
UMID’s M1 is the cutest ultra-tiny-light MID I’ve seen so far. The 4.8inch screen needs to be close to your face, but the device is so light that it can easily be held for prolonged periods of time. The keyboard is usable, but in fact I found the keys have slightly too much travel for fast typing. The screen looks great however and is touch sensitive.
OQO’s model 2+ is awesome. Why? Because it has an awesome OLED screen, which is sooo bright and showed an HD video sooo well that I totally want one. $1,499 of ultra-light awesomeness. The non-OLED version starts at $999.
Neil Berman
HTC Excalibur S620 / T-Mobile Dash Review
Brushed aluminum finish looks smart
HTC comes up with some great names for its cellphones. Diamond, Kaiser and Wizard have all figured in their recent line-up. The Excalibur looks a bit different from King Arthur’s mythical sword, but can it slay the competition in the same way?
Taking the smartphone out of the box it’s immediately obvious that this is one device which looks way better in real life than on the web. The Excalibur screams quality with a brushed aluminum and soft-feel black finish encasing a flush fitting screen. It’s light too at 130 grams. The battery cover hides the SIM and Micro SD card slots. Other specs include a 200MHz processor, WiFi b/g, EDGE (no HSPA unfortunately), Windows Mobile and of course the music loving stereo bluetooth.
Keypad has good tactile feedback
The Excalibur’s Blackberry/Palm style keyboard has tightly packed raised keys which illuminate blue when the phone’s backlight is on. The keys on these devices are always a matter of taste, personally I find the Excalibur’s okay with plenty of tactile feedback but inferior to HTC’s own TyTN and Kaiser (AT&T Tilt) with their wider and larger keys. The Excalibur could also do with a couple more assignable keys. There are ones for email, internet and the camera but I’d also like ones to assign to Windows Media Player, the connections manager and the task manager for easy application switching.
Which leads me to the JOGGR slidy-thing on the right side of the screen is a curious surface, which offers up/down controls as well as two assignable buttons. Some carriers choose to disable this control surface, which to be honest I can understand. It’s a great idea but too easy to brush it accidentally which can be annoying. Once I got the hang of the JOGGR it did become useful, but might be too fiddly to win fans during a five minute in-store test drive. I would have preferred a hardware wheel and buttons.
Powering up the Excalibur illuminates the stunning 2.4 inch screen, which is a joy to use indoors and out.
2.4 inch screen is bright and sharp
Whilst not readable in direct sunlight, it is possible to use this phone outdoors on a bright day. The flush fitting screen gives a paper flat image, but is also very exposed if the cellphone in jiggling about in a pocket next to some keys. There was a protective belt holster in my box, which is a useful screen preserving accessory.
The version I’m using has Ricky Wyatt’s Windows Mobile 6 ROM with a few added extras taking it to 6.1 spec, such as the newer Windows Live client which does a great job of pushing mails to the device for certain web-based non-POP3 email clients. Another sweet tool on the ROM is an over/underclocking tool for the the 200MHz processor, which allows manually forced power saving and power enhancement. This is a great addition as most usage only needs 150MHz or so, which helps to extend battery life nicely. Running the Excalibur at this speed I was able to listen to music over stereo bluetooth and read the newspapers on AvantGo.
Other tasty morsels in this ROM include Opera Mini which works great on the Excalibur and Resco Explorer which is a good replacement for File Explorer. I also added Google Maps, which renders extremely quickly on the Excalibur compared to my TyTN and scarily pinpointed my location to within one city block.
Excalibur is size zero thin
The sound performance of the Excalibur is up to HTC’s usual high standards overall. Sound quality from the earpiece and microphone both seem fine, although the speaker was a bit tinny and unlikely to break any cellphone records for bass response. The stereo bluetooth paired to my Logitech Freepulse easily and sound quality was exceptionally clear, so you can give those wired adphones back to the twentieth century where they belong. The USB charging port doubles up as a headphone/hands-free port. Whilst there are adaptors available to let you use wired 3.5mm phones, you’ll probably prefer to stick with the stereo bluetooth to avoid dangling wires…after all with a micro sd slot to play with, the Excalibur could store your entire music collection so you might as well look the business while you’re listening.
Battery life was good, and as always was influenced by the amount of wireless connectivity and data usage. Forcing the screen to dim quickly after periods of inactivity also helped. With mixed usage including some WiFi and EDGE data action, voice calls and listening to music over stereo bluetooth I got just over one day before the Excalibur asked to be returned to the lake for some juice.
Can the Excalibur slay the competition? It’s certainly a strong Windows Mobile cellphone, nay very strong when paired with some useful added software. At 130 grams it competes directly with RIM’s Blackberry Curve, which ends in a tie for me with RIM’s solid messaging experience battling the huge Windows Mobile application development community. If you do go for the Excalibur though, it’s a worthy sword to have in the armory.
Neil Berman
Ricky Wyatt’s Excalibur ROM is available at XDA Developers. I do not recommend flashing a ROM onto your cellphone. Flashing a ROM onto your cellphone is done entirely at your own risk, can brick your phone, will most likely invalidate your warranty and might lead to a total freak-out if it goes horribly wrong!!
Thanks to Joan & Alan for this one.
Gallery:
-
- Brushed aluminum finish looks smart
-
- Keypad has good tactile feedback
-
- 2.4 inch screen is bright and sharp
-
- Back plate covers battery, SIM and micro SD slot
-
- 1.3MP camera is alright, but nothing special
-
- USB charging connector doubles as handsfree/headphone output
-
- Excalibur is size zero thin
-
- Micro SD slot gives huge storage potential
-
- Windows Mobile panels include media player
Acer Aspire One Review
Following a false start worthy of the Olympics, Acer’s repair shop just delivered me a new Aspire One. My first One must have been so fried that it was not worth repairing, so take two begins…
First impressions are just as before: great ultralight design, perfect keyboard, boots in under twenty seconds…but this time continue beyond five minutes as the WiFi connects swiftly and I’m off surfing in no time. I upgraded to Firefox 3 with this handy guide.
And that’s when it hit me: the One is loading pages faster than anything I own. I’m unable to pin it down to any one system element, but the combination of the Intel Atom, the SSD and Firefox running on Linpus Lite makes the internet scream on this baby. Way faster than my EEE 2G was, no comparison. Firefox’s full screen option makes the experience even better, taking advantage of all 8.9 LED backlit screen inches.
I installed Skype and tried a video call. I told Skype to start video automatically and the webcam worked perfectly. My friend at the other end of the line in Tokyo could hear and see me clearly and I could hear him fine too. Again, the quality of the experience hit my old EEE for a home run…where I tended to reach for my Nokia N810 for Skype due to the 2G’s choppy chatter, the One was clear as a bell and it was handling the video well too.
The One also ships with several installed applications, such as OpenOffice, a media player and photo maanger, which together with the web browser 
may take care of most owners’ needs. Again, OpenOffice opened much faster than on my EEE 2G and saved documents almost instantly. This Linux version running Linpus Lite ships with an 8GB SSD. If you need more storage there are two SD card slots, of which one allows an inserted card to show as a hard drive extension in the file manager. The second slot shows up as removable storage.
Unlike my EEE experience, I have been able to touch type naturally on the One. The keyboard is very usable with everything in the right place. I’ve also found the trackpad to be big enough, as long as you’re a tap-to-click type and not a button pusher. I would like Acer to have implemented a MacBook style double finger right-click tap, as right clicking requires moving off the trackpad to find the button. There is a dedicated button on the keyboard for opening context sensitive menus however, which makes this omission easier to forgive.
The keyboard and wrist rest also remain at a reasonable temperature during use, as does the underside of the One. This is probably due to the low power consumption of the Intel Atom processor. A small fan kicks in now and again but it is unobtrusive.
Given its size and weight I expect my One to get plenty of outdoor use. The screen is bright enough to use outside in the shade, but becomes unreadable when hit by direct sunlight. As a guide it’s a lot brighter and sharper than the EEE 2G, but is outshone by a MacBook. The One does ship with a slip cover, which offers useful (non-waterproof) protection in transit. Regular travelers might prefer a closed protective case, but it’s a great free addition as a basic cover. Nice One Acer.
Battery life is quoted at three hours for this three cell Linux version and I achieved close to that with sensible moderation of the screen brightness to fit my environment. On full brightness with constant WiFi usage I’d expect that to go down to around two hours. Acer quotes the Windows XP version at 2.5 hours, probably due to the SSD being replaced by a regular hard drive. After boot-up I hardly ever see my SSD light illuminated, but the XP model is likely to be busier. So taking more frequent disk accessing together with the effort required to spin the platters would definitely reduce overall battery life.
On balance, the One represents the best balanced experience of any of the small (< 9 inch) netbooks I’ve tried so far. Its keyboard beats the EEE 901, its size is more practical than the seven inch models 
and its processor runs more efficiently than the VIA C7 powered HP Mini-Note or Everex Cloudbook. In six cell guise with XP, it would be compelling but I have also appreciated the fast boot-up time and low resource usage of Linux.
The market is about to get more crowded with the imminent arrival of Dell’s mini Inspiron and future VIA Nano based machines. The ten inch Lenovo, Asus and MSI netbooks are also worth considering if you want to move up on screen size. For now though, the Acer One is a solid contender amongst the midsize netbooks.
Update: Acer has now lowered the retail price of the 3-cell Linux version to $329. The 3-cell XP version is now down to $349 and the 6-cell XP version is set to retail at $399.
Neil Berman
-
- Netbooks captured the the public’s imagination in 2008
Netbook market grows further, has Aspiring winners and falling Stars
A glance at Amazon’s top 25 bestsellers gives a window into today’s netbook market.
The recent $100 price drop of the Asus EEE 1000H has it selling strongly, Acer’s Aspire One Linux is sitting at number 11 and the pre-order XP version is at 14. Various other EEEs make up much of the middle groung and Micro Star International’s Wind is caught up in turbulence at 24.
Given its $399 price tag I expect the 3 cell XP Aspire One to climb that chart, although hopefully they won’t suffer from the quality control issues which sent my Linux One back for repair only days after its unboxing.
Lenovo announced its entries, the S9 and S10, a few days ago. Only the S10 will be coming to the US and will bring a ten inch screen, Atom processor and XP starting from $399 in October…and it looks great.
An unfortunate characteristic of the Wind since its missed launch date of mid-June has been rumored, and now official, price hikes. The 3 cell XP model is now at $499, which looks forgettable compared to the pricing of the One and S10. This Wind is blowing in the wrong direction.
We’re still waiting to see what Dell’s E is going to throw at us, shouldn’t be too long now. Their rumored $299 entry price will ruffle a few feathers and their marketing might will ensure a sale or two.
Then there are still more models expected to launch in Q4 with VIA’s celebrated Nano CPU, just to make buying decisions that little bit harder.
If I was a betting man I’d say that Acer’s Aspire One and Lenovo’s S10 are set to be strong sellers in XP guise. Dell won’t take any prisoners either when they launch. So within a year I expect the Wind and Mini-Note to be shaken out of the market or forced into price cutting. Perhaps the savior of the Mini-Note will be if HP can swap in the Nano for the C7.
For the Wind, price cutting alone may be too late for mainstream buyers. If broad stock fails to arrive soon then how will they break onto retail shelves which already have Acers, Dells and EEE on display? It may end up being too little too late for this great product.
Neil Berman
Opera 9.5 Beta for Windows Mobile Review
The best mobile surfing experience out there?
Back in Feb Opera demo’d their latest Windows Mobile browser to oohs & ahhs from all corners championing it over the iPhone. Sporting a slick fullscreen mode, copy & paste, downloads and image saving, WM users couldn’t wait to get their mitts on it. It’s been a long wait but the beta recently went public. So is it really that much better than the iPhone? Let’s see…
After a straightforward installation and launch Opera 9.5 was happily loading pages over both WiFi and T-Mobile’s EDGE service. The browser fitted rendered pages to fill the whole screen perfectly and from there the finger pointing begins. Swipe up, down, left or right to scroll, double tap any area to zoom and again to zoom back out. The motion as the page moves is beautifully fluid and the zoom renders quickly.
Page loading was slower than my Nokia N810, which also runs Opera, but this is a pre-production version so it’s unfair to make a performance judgement just yet. As a guide over WiFi the NY Times website was half rendered in about 8 seconds and I was able to start swiping/zooming after 25 seconds while the pictures finished loading in the background. When I went to the site a second time, I could start swiping/zooming after about 15 seconds due to caching. Times were about twice as long with EDGE.
There are various display options, including full vs mobile view and screen font size. Images can be blocked to speed up page delivery.
Multiple tabs are also available, although your device’s capabilities will determine how many you can open before running low on memory. Opera 9.5 Mobile is a 8.9MB install which needs to go into main memory for this beta release. However the cache can be put onto a storage card, I allocated 50MB which speeds things up if you visit the same sites regularly.
So from this fully rendered CNet home page, you can zoom into something like this in a second or two…
…and then jump into a story… 
…turn on text selection like this…
…and copy the text you want into an email or document just like a normal computer web browser. You can send it directly to someone via SMS as well as the page link, which is even better. You can also send links and images directly via MMS or email. Images and files can be downloaded to main memory or to the storage card for easy portability. Whole pages can be downloaded for offline viewing, for example when in the subway. Hmm, this is sounding like the daddy of convergent mobile internet…
Various other config optionsare included, including the ability to set a cache size. Here’s my 50MB cache in action, if you’re a heavy user you may want to go for more. I’m unaware of any cache limit, my TyTN has a 2GB memory card in it…that kind of cache size might be overkill but you get the idea!
Security options include proper password management.
With the current beta version there are a couple of missing bits, such as ActiveX and Flash so if you want these you might prefer to wait until the full production release. Also bear in mind that this is a beta version so if you do install it on your phone there may be compatibility issues or other freaky things happening – best to backup beforehand just in case!
.
Overall there’s no smartphone browser I’m aware of which offers such a sweet all round browsing experience. The initial impressions in February were right: where the iPhone’s Safari once led the pack, it’s now in second place. Can’t wait to try the production version…
Acer Aspire One on the internet for three seconds, dies, now alive again
1. Unboxing…pretty
2. Inspection…very very pretty
3. Boot-up Linux…fast, about 15 seconds
4. Launch network center, configure wifi
5. Connects immediately, after three seconds message appears saying update is ready – click to install. Click…
6. Fade to black, computer says no
7. Hangs
8. Still hanging
9. Several lights on but no one at home
10. Forced to turn off
11. Boot-up Linux…fast…but then self-reboots
12. Boots, OS looks normal
13. Click network center, no response, no network connectivity at all through wired or wireless
14. Reboot…same story
15. Check forums, it’s an epidemic. Gazillions of posts from owners whose network connectivity has failed
16. Sent support email to Acer, told me to call…
17. Acer said there are two OS distros out there and the updates are mixed up, which has created the problem. Advised to restore from recovery disc and avoid updates for now.
18. Recovery took 20 mins
19. Boot-up…fast…network center opens properly
20. 
Update one day later:
21. Still sick
Update several days later:
22. Acer sent me replacement, read the full review here
Neil Berman
It was love at first sight but Eee’s not the One.
A few months with an Eee 701 have taught me one thing. It’s not the one. It was one heck of a first breed of ultralight laptop and it was fun while it lasted. But three days on since Acer’s announcement and my One is in the mail. That’s the Acer Aspire One.
It’s fair to say that it would have been the Wind if anyone was actually selling them…The Wind forums are full of people saying they’ve just ordered a different machine out of sheer frustration.
In only nine months the Netbook market has moved so far, there’s no room for supply chain slip-ups. I’m looking forward to seeing how the One performs: Atom processor, near full size keyboard, webcam, 8.9″ LED backlit screen and as light at my 701. It sure does sound promising.
Best of all it’s real and is in a UPS truck right now heading for chez moi. Full review to follow…
Neil Berman
theONbutton
Turning the world on, one gadget at a time.
