Todays & Tomorrows Technology

Stop the presses! Motorola in “frankly quite reasonable phone, actually” shocker! Fresh to the Korean market comes this, the Motorola ROKR ZN50, a full-touchscreen slider with 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS and a T-DMB2 digital TV tuner. The 3.2-inch 240 x 427 touchscreen cellphone has a new Panorama UI, which looks surprisingly Android-like in its general layout and feel.

Even the three-panels design Motorola are touting – which gives three homescreens that can be flicked between and filled up with different icons and shortcuts – sounds like Android’s homescreen. Elsewhere there’s triband 900/1800/1900 GSM and 2100MHz WCDMA for up to 7.2Mbps HSDPA, together with Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0 and a 3.5mm headphones jack.

Motorola have also thrown in the SRS WOW HD sound system and tweakable EQ settings, and a microSD slot good for up to 16GB cards. The ROKR ZN50 measures 108.9 x 54.0 x 14.34 mm, weighs 143g, and comes with a 950mAh battery. No word on whether it’ll see a release anywhere outside of Korea, however.

We’re still waiting for an official release for ASUS’ Eee Keyboard – the latest we hear is that it should drop sometime in August – but that hasn’t stopped French site Blogeee from getting their hands on one. Rather than cherish it for the rarity it is, they’ve decided to open the Keyboard up and find out what’s making it tick inside.

As you might expect, it’s basically a long, flat netbook, with a custom circuit-board to which ASUS have frustratingly soldered the 1GB of RAM. Cooling is via heat-pipes to the Atom N280 1.66GHz processor and accompanying chipset, leading back to a 40mm exhaust fan which, Blogeee report, makes little noise. Other components are more modular, such as the Bluetooth and WiFi adapters and the 16GB SSD.

The battery is a 1,880mAh pack that Blogeee estimate will be good for up to 1hr 40 minutes wireless runtime. The unit they’ve acquired also has a Silicon Image wireless HDMI transmitter which also takes care of up to 1080p graphics and HDCP certification, though we’ve previously heard that not all models will include it.

Blogeee end up a little confused about the point of the ASUS Eee Keyboard, suggesting that the storage is too little for a true HTPC while a regular netbook or nettop will provide just as good an internet machine. We’re still keen to try it out ourselves, but for now we’ll have to wait for the official release.

LG’s latest super-snapper cellphone has broken cover, and from the spec-sheet at least you’d think this was the handset to quash all point-and-shoot digicams. The LG GC990 Louvre is tipped (despite LG’s own denials; see after the cut) to launch later on in 2009, taking the place of the existing LG GC900 (aka the Viewty II), and brings with it a 12.1-megapixel camera with Schneider-Kreuznach optics, Xenon flash and what the company suggests is ISO 3200 sensitivity.


Call us terrible skeptics, but we’re wondering exactly how much noise will be in images at those sort of ISO levels; this may be a case of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Elsewhere the camera can be re-purposed as a camcorder, grabbing 720p HD video at 30fps. Like the iPhone 3GS it supports touchscreen-controlled focus and GPS geotagging, and LG are claiming zero shutter lag too.

Elsewhere there’s a 3.2-inch 16:9 aspect touchscreen with the company’s S-Class UI, WiFi and Bluetooth, together with DivX and Xvid playback plus TV output. It can also stream media to and from other DLNA compatible devices.

We can’t say we looked at the Sharp Mebius NJ70A netbook – with its nifty touchscreen trackpad – and thought “what this needs is a second touchscreen”, but then we’re not SKY at UMPC Fever. After unboxing the N270-based netbook, he loaded up Windows 7 and then installed a touchscreen layer so as to use handwriting recognition direct onto the 10-inch display.

Interestingly, while he had the NJ70A open, SKY discovered that the optical trackpad actually has its own processor and RAM, meaning it doesn’t rely on the netbook’s own Atom CPU. He’s now trying to identify exactly what those mysterious components are.

Other hardware details include two RAM slots inside, which makes upgrading from the standard 1GB straightforward. XP will only recognize a maximum of 2GB; Windows Vista will recognize 3GB; and Windows 7 will recognize 3GB but only allow you to use 2GB.

HTC’s TouchFLO 3D UI for Windows Mobile is arguably the best way to navigate Microsoft’s platform, but now that we’ve seen the latest Sense UI on the HTC Hero it’s losing some of its gloss. Happily HTC haven’t ceased all work on TouchFLO 3D, and screenshots and a video demo of version 2.5 have emerged to whet our appetites.

The most obvious improvement is that HTC have buried Windows Mobile even further underneath their home-grown UI. Looking at the video demo below, you have to really go looking for the underlying OS; general, day-to-day use won’t really unearth it.

There are also new shortcuts on the homepage, the introduction of Footprints – HTC’s geotagging system – and a freshly swollen settings dialog that covers even more options. Interestingly, TouchFLO 3D v2.5 is said to only work on WVGA devices like the HTC Touch HD, Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2; no word on when we can expect to see it released, nor if it will be offered as an upgrade to existing smartphone users.

Over at our sibling site PhoneMag they’ve posted the full Nokia N97 review, and if you’ve been as eagerly-anticipating this smartphone as we have then you really need to read it. On paper, the N97 ticks just about every box you could hope for, but when it comes to usability and overall polish it seems that Nokia may have dropped the ball.

The QWERTY keyboard earns much of the N97 dismay, with poor tactile feedback, shallow travel and a frustrating layout, but S60 5th Edition, despite Nokia’s work to integrate touch-control, must share the blame. Compared to rival devices, it seems a lazy implementation, while the resistive touchscreen feels like old technology compared to the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre or BlackBerry Storm.

There are positive points, including strong multimedia performance (though ugly, basic apps), the homescreen widgets and plenty of onboard storage, but the overall feeling is that the N97 simply arrived too late to capitalize on its potential.

After telling us – and then telling us again – that the Eee Keyboard would arrive this month, ASUS are now promising their nettop-in-a-keyboard will actually drop in August 2009. Rather than blaming manufacturing delays or last-minute firmware tweaks, ASUS claim the Eee Keyboard – which squeezes in an HD capable nettop and 5-inch touchscreen – was in fact held back while they attempted to define a niche for it to sit in.

That’s surprising, given that back at CES in January the company seemed to have a pretty good idea of what the point of the Eee Keyboard was. Fitted with Wireless HDMI, it can stream HD content either stored on its 32GB SSD or from the internet to a nearby display, with controls and other apps shown on the compact touchscreen.

Still no final word on pricing, but the last we heard ASUS were planning for a $400 starting price – though that doesn’t get you Wireless HDMI, only wired – and two different models. Each will have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and both WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0. Earlier this month ASUS demonstrated the Eee Keyboard running Moblin, rather than Windows XP as it has been seen using in the past.

We’re still harboring a soft-spot for mintpass‘ mintpad MID, so it’s relieving to hear that the first English-modified units are meeting with approval. Pocketables shared their unboxing earlier this week, and now it’s time for some first-impressions. The mintpad’s 1.3-megapixel camera is proving surprisingly capable, as is the browser (despite not being fully translated yet) and the QVGA screen may be small at 2.86-inches but it’s still highly readable.

Build-quality, responsiveness and file support continue to satisfy, while the mono speaker is loud and clear. Fans of Windows CE – and we’re sure there are some out there – will be pleased to hear that the mintpad is compatible with apps for the Microsoft platform, so there’s flexibility in what you can run. Flash support in the browser is a nice touch (especially when you look at the number of smartphones that can’t do this) and audio quality is decent.

On the downside, there are no hardware volume controls, the browser lacks an on-screen keyboard so far, and the rotation-sensor is underused. Still, these things might change when the final English firmware release arrives at the end of the month.

Sharp’s Mebius NJ70A is still too rich for our blood – $1,000 or thereabouts is simply too much to pay for a netbook, no matter how slick its touchscreen trackpad - but that doesn’t mean we’re not interested in lapping up all the information about the distinctive ultraportable that we can. UMPC Fever have acquired one of the Atom N270 netbooks and promptly shot a video unboxing.
It’s not just the trackpad – which is actually a 4-inch optical-touchscreen running at super-crisp 854 x 480 resolution – which makes this netbook stand out physically. The huge Mebius logo, basically a stylized Möbius strip, certainly stands out on the lid, but it’s arguably more attractive than a massive Sharp logo.

Inside, there’s an easily accessible Gigabyte WiFi module and Fujitsu 160GB hard-drive; the RAM also looks pretty easy to reach too. We’re just hoping that Sharp see sense and drop the touchscreen into their more grown-up ultraportables; pair it with something other than an Atom N270 and a somewhat more realistic price and you’d have a real winner.

Details of a new device in Logitech’s distributed audio streamer range have emerged, the Logitech Squeezebox Touch. A WiFi-connected base-station controller with 4.3-inch color touchscreen and integrated stereo speakers, the Squeezebox Touch can seemingly both integrated with an existing setup as well as be used to access online music and internet radio.

The Touch supports MP3, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, AAC and Apple Lossless, among other formats, together with MP3, Ogg and WMA internet radio streams. Its WiFi b/g connection supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption, and there’s also a 10/100 ethernet port. A USB host port will allow you to plug in a USB drive, plus there’s an SD card slot for loading music and photos that way.

In addition to the onboard speakers there’s also a headphone jack, stereo RCA output, digital optical and digital coax outputs. Logitech have even squeezed an ambient light sensor and proximity sensor into the bezel. No word on release date or US pricing as yet.

According to Dave Zatz, both the Squeezebox Duet and Squeezebox Boom are also in for an upgrade, though no details on exactly what will change.

After mintpass made a few pre-release mintpad MID units available to touchscreen-loving early adopters last week, the first English-language unboxing and hands-on for the 2.86-inch device is here. We’re entirely unsurprised to see that Jenn from Pocketables is first; she’s already impressed with the build-quality of the WiFi-enabled mintpad, together with the range of accessories they include.
There are a few design frustrations, such as the microSD card slot being underneath the battery and the mintpad only having 4GB of its own onboard storage, but general things are looking good. mintpass even include a second sync/charge cable for use with the docking cradle, which is something plenty of other manufacturers could learn from.

As it stands, the firmware still has untranslated menus in the browser, and the file-manager and “ad-hoc chatting” aren’t ready for use. All that should change by June 30th, though, at which point an upgrade will be available. This is looking to be a very curious, very distinctive little device, and we’re looking forward to Jenn’s full review.

Considering you can find SD cards, PMPs and even fridges packing WiFi these days, it’s something of a surprise that so few digital photo frames include wireless connectivity. One such exception is the Sungale ID800WT Widget Photo Frame, an 8-inch 800 x 600 touchscreen display which not only promises to show off your holiday snaps – whether locally stored or in an online gallery – but YouTube, GMail and internet radio, too. Unfortunately, as Zatz Not Funny discovered, the reason so few frames include WiFi is perhaps because the manufacturers handle it so poorly.

Setup is simple, and the weather widget – which relies on your ZIP code to locate itself – works well. Unfortunately, if you’ve any greater ambitions than using the ID800WT as a glorified weather station then you may be disappointed: the YouTube and internet radio widgets could be persuaded to work only once or twice, the GMail viewer shows just a few lines of each message, it refused to connect to Picasa and the news widget, while functional, is hardly visually appealing.

The end result is something that reviewer Mari Silbey describes as “decent as a standard digital photo frame, but it’s not the tablet of the future”. Somehow it’s hard to justify around $165 on something that delivers pretty much the same as counterparts less than half the price.

Kohjinsha’s SK3 UMPC, which we saw yesterday, has been officially launched in Japan. The 7-inch touchscreen SK3 gets an Intel Atom 1.33GHz processor paired with 1GB of RAM and a 60GB 1.8-inch 4,200rpm hard-drive; there’s also WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS.

As expected there are also dual cameras, a low-resolution webcam by the screen for video calls, and a 3-megapixel version presumably for still shots. Ports include ethernet 10/100, VGA, audio in/out, a microSD slot, two USB 2.0 ports, multiformat card reader and an ExpressCard 34 slot.

It’s also impressively smaller than its SC3 predecessor, at 193 x 132 x 30 mm, and weighing just 720g. Kohjinsha are suggesting 3.2hrs runtime from the 17Wh battery in the Jeita test, a test known to produce over-ambitious results. Steve from UMPC Portal (who, frankly, we trust about battery runtime estimates more than we ever did Jeita) is guesstimating at between 2 and 2.5hrs of real-world use, which is a real disappointment.

Still, we won’t argue with more options in the ultramobile touchscreen category, and we’ve a feeling Japanese customers won’t either when the Kohjinsha SK3 goes on sale there. It’s expected to be priced at the equivalent of around $733, including local taxes.

Shuttle have announced a barebone version of their X50 all-in-one PC, offering buyers the choice to install the storage and memory they prefer. The X50 – announced officially back in March - has a 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 16:9 resistive touchscreen and Intel’s Atom 330 dual-core processor; in its barebone form it comes devoid of RAM or hard-drive.
According to the press release, it seems the X50 barebone can be outfitted with between 512MB and 2GB of DDR2 RAM, and various types of 2.5-inch drive. That could be anything from a budget 80GB hard-drive to a high-capacity SSD, though that would arguably be overkill given the 1.6GHz processor and GMA 950 graphics.

Other specs include a 4-in-1 memory card reader, gigabit ethernet, WiFi b/g/n, VGA output, five USB 2.0 ports, audio in/out and a VESA mount on the back. It comes with no OS, but instructions for loading software from a network connection or USB drive are included.

The Shuttle Barebone X50 will go on sale at the end of June, with an MRSP of €361 ($499).

Mio have released the first TV-enabled satnav units in the UK, the Mio Navman Spirit TV. First shown at the launch of the Spirit range back in May, the Spirit TV will be available in two versions – the 4.7-inch V505 and the 7-inch V735 – each with a touchscreen, Google search, TruMap and Junction views and of course Freeview digital TV with autotuning.

Each comes with a remote control, and can access the Freeview 7-day EPG for scheduling. The larger V735 also gets PMP functionality, including playback of videos and MP3s, together with a photo viewer and FM transmitter. All of the usual Spirit functionality is present, including NavPix geo-tagged photos, POIs and a pedestrian mode.

The Navman Spirit TV range will go on sale in the UK come July, priced at £299.99 ($493) for the V735 and £229 ($377) for the V505. More hands-on images of the new 7-inch Mio Navman Spirit V735 TV here. While Mio have not announced any plans to bring the Navman Spirit TV range to the US, the modular nature of the TV tuner would make a North America version technologically possible.

It’s ironic that what a year or two would’ve been called a UMPC (and, frankly, ignored by most people, tech writers included) is now called a touchscreen netbook and garners far more interest. Latest on the block is set to be the Kohjinsha SK3, an upgrade to the existing 7-inch SC3 UMPC. Among the changes are a new battery and upgraded cameras.
The SK3 has a convertible resistive touchscreen, a couple of inches smaller than that of the ASUS Eee PC T91, which folds flat onto the keyboard for portable slate use. Inside there’s the same 1.3GHz Menlow-platform processor – capable enough, we’ve seen, for Vista – though no word on whether there’s an SSD option this time around. WiFi has been upgraded, adding draft-n support, and there are still PCI Express, SD, VGA and ethernet connections, together with GPS.

According to UMPCPortal’s sources, the Kohjinsha SK3 will get its official announcement this week. No word on battery life from the newly-streamlined power pack, nor what sort of pricing we could expect.

If carrying your computer like a plastic handbag appeals, and you’re also a fan of pen-computing, then Daewoo’s latest netbook may be the best thing for you. The SOLO C920-mini starts from humble netbook beginnings – an Atom N270 1.6GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and a 60GB 1.8-inch 4,200rpm hard-drive – then throws in an 8.9-inch touchscreen and nifty carrying handle.

That should give you something to hold on to when you’ve flipped the touchscreen around and are using the C920-mini as a slate. The display runs at 1024 x 600, the same as ASUS’ Eee PC T91, and there’s a 1.3-megapixel webcam and stereo speakers sensibly located in the screen bezel rather than just above the keyboard where they’d be covered up.

Connectivity includes WiFi b/g/n, two USB 2.0 ports, ethernet and audio in/out. Thanks to Microsoft’s netbook software licensing policies, though, you can’t get the Daewoo machine with XP Tablet Edition, so there’s no standard handwriting recognition or any of the other pen-enabled niceties. No word on pricing nor availability outside of Korea.

It’s Monday morning, so what better way to start the day than with two netbooks most people can’t officially buy. Sharp’s Mebius NJ70A is one such device, complete with a touchscreen display in place of a traditional trackpad and Intel’s Atom N270 CPU, while the 1.86GHz Sony VAIO P25G has the faster Atom Z540 processor currently unavailable through official channels in the US. After the cut there’s a boot race video, plus more details on that surprisingly clever touchscreen.

Contrary to initial belief, the touchscreen used in the NJ70A isn’t a standard capacitive panel such as you might find gracing the front of the iPhone 3G S; nor is it a resistive panel. In fact, the Sharp netbook uses a 4-inch “photosensitive” screen, which can not only respond to finger-touch but also pen input for recognizing Chinese, Korean and Japanese handwriting.

What will be particularly interesting is whether such displays – which seemingly combine the touch-feel of capacitive with the stylus-flexibility of resistive – transition over into Windows Mobile devices. Microsoft have justified their mobile platform’s dependence on resistive touchscreens as that it caters for handwriting recognition, important in Asian markets.

ASUS’ Eee PC T91 convertible touchscreen netbook should have been on sale in the UK for several weeks now, but the 8.9-inch tablet has been suspiciously absent from online and bricks-and-mortar retail stores. According to what a company official told AsusTablet, that delay is due to a “logistical mishap” in distribution; we can apparently expect the netbook to arrive in stores from Monday June 22nd.
The ASUS representative did not go on to explain the exact nature of the “mishap”, although they were at pains to point out that the T91 is still shipping. It’s also unclear whether the delay will impact shipments of the netbook outside of the UK; the T91 was supposed to begin shipping in the US this week.

Buyers of the tablet will get an Intel Atom Z520 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 16GB SSD. What makes the T91 interesting is its rotating display, which can be folded flat against the keyboard and thus leaving the netbook as a touchscreen slate. Standard and 3G versions are expected.

We already knew the Viliv X70 would start from a terribly reasonable $599, but now we’ve heard from importers Dynamism that presales for the 7-inch UMPC will start at 1PM EST on July 6th. The first shipment of the Atom-based touchscreen handheld is expected on July 28th, and just to make sure every one of those gets a new home to go out to, there are a few tempting offers available to those who preorder.
The freebies are limited to the first 777 preorder customers. Those who go for the cheapest $599 Viliv X70 Express will automatically get an upgrade from the standard 1.2GHz Atom CPU to the 1.3GHz Atom Z520, together with a free car kit, leather pouch and screen-protector.

Meanwhile anyone going for the more expensive X70 Premium models – which have the 1.3GHz CPU as standard, with various SSD sizes from 32GB to 128GB and the choice of integrated 3G HSPA – will get a free standard battery, car kit, leather pouch and screen-protector. The Premium range starts from $729.

While the bigger SSDs and integrated 3G sound good, we’d still go for the base model X70 and pair it with a MiFi. After all, slot in a 16GB microSD card and you’ve got twice the solid-state storage, plus 3G connectivity for four other WiFi devices.