This is serious competition.
 

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/09/a...-phone-tablet/


If this comes out before the n900.... end of story for Nokia.

PC-like Internet experience enhanced by a high-resolution 5" screen and full-width page viewing
Adobe Flash(TM) and Flash Video(TM) support, full screen
Access whenever and wherever to TV, movies, photos, music and games
Uncompromised TV recording and High Definition (HD) playback, all formats
Hundreds of hours of video storage, up to 500 GB
Innovative design: compact 10-mm ultra-thin tablet
Long battery life, 7 hours' video playback
3.5G 7.2 Mb/s HSUPA
Laptop-like performance from the first implementation of OMAP3440 processor based on the ARM(R) Cortex(TM) superscalar microprocessor and DSP

Re: This is serious competition.
 

You mean like the Pandora ? :-)

Seriously, given Archos' pricing policy and their history of closed-source, locked-down devices, I wouldn't give it a chance outside of the usual passive PMP consumer crowd, even if it lives up to the hype, which it probably won't.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

except for the OMAP3 processor. isn't the n900 going to have something faster?

Re: This is serious competition.
 

But this one is with Android!

Re: This is serious competition.
 

The RX-51 (the so-called "n900") will also have an OMAP3 processor. It should be out a bit before the Archos device, or at least around the same time.

I have no idea why this would be an "end of story" for anyone. OMAP3 is the natural next generation processor. Android is a nice OS, but I think Fremantle will be a more interesting OS.

I like the idea of a 5" touch screen OMAP3 phone-enabled device, however. I wonder how long before someone hacks the Archos to run Mer?

Re: This is serious competition.
 

Although it is not end of story..... If the archos tablet is previewed in MWC then more and more will be aware of the hardware, appearance etc. Wheras we still dont know anything about the size, capacity, and the appearance of the tablets.
Archos internet media tablets were nice multimedia tablets, but they sorely lacked in the ui and browser.... now with android, phone, huge storage and archos media capability... they certainly look a lot better than the to be announced(for ever) nokia n900.

The interest already is very low with nokia not choosing to annonce anything... the interest is slowly dwindling with such annoncements from competitors

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I can't see how that device could possibly be 'end of story for Nokia'. A phone with a five-inch screen? A 500 GB HARD DRIVE? Moving parts and all? And the description doesn't say anything about what SD card features or wi-fi, bluetooth features it has. No. No. Not for me.

A hard drive, in 2009? They've got to be kidding.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I was just about to post about this one :-)

It's major downside, for me, is that it doesn't have a physical keyboard.

That device, with a physical keyboard, 7" screen, and the 6 shortcomings of Android* fixed, would be like an ideal mobile device for me. Ideally with the convertible tablet swivel screen format.


(* some gmail shortcomings, some google reader shortcomings, google docs isn't read/write, shortcomings in the ConnectBot/ssh and VNC viewer integration, lack of SyncML client, and some IM client shortcomings)

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I think,

it is a good thing, Nokia loses extremely in the near future

Nokia N97 - Samsung S8300 or Nokia N900 ??? - Archos Android or

other Android Internet Tablets

because otherwise they will not wake up - unfortunately

Re: This is serious competition.
 

More interesting for whom?

A small market of geeks who want actual linux tablets (where the linux layer is accessible, and mostly compatible with traditional linux apps)?

Or the larger market of consumers who want usable devices?


I think that, for the former, Fremantle will be more interesting. For the latter, I don't think Fremantle will be more interesting. Unfortunately for Maemo fans, I think the latter group will do more to determine the longer term landscape of the market. And that's the group that's more likely to choose Android over Fremantle.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I missed this the first time:

What?! The first implementation? Ohhh, it is the 3440, not the 3430.

Hm, I was looking at the TI pages for the OMAP3430 (the RX-51) and OMAP3440 (Archos).

It seems that the primary difference between the two chipsets is that the 3440 has some specific optimization for HD video playback, which would make sense for an Archos device.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

Until now there was no clear competition for nokia. There wasn't another portable mini laptop in the sub 500$ scene. But now others are coming into this market and it will be increasingly difficult without some sort of innovation. And for god's sake leak some pictures to sustain the enthusiasm.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I think this is just another foot-print device (5") used as a phone cum Internet Tablet in the Android world.
I do think with such a large device, it will have some kind of usage of the phone with all the necessary BT profiles to be able to use it hands-off with a BT device and not have to hold this monstrosity to the ear.

And true - while we all do crave a lot of internal storage, a Hard disk is hard the appropriate way to make a portable device these days (though I understand cost wise this might have made sense).

I still think Archos will still remain more of a multimedia centic device (the 500Gb hard disk says so, add the HD capable Omap3 chip too as a indicator) more than a useful, handy internet tablet or a tablet phone.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I think Fremantle is more interesting because they're the only OS in this marketspace that is aiming for the second group (with a suitably flashy, friendly interface) but with an infrastructure that makes the first group happy, too.

I get the impression that Nokia is finally going to put some of its "mobile phone industry leader" muscle behind this release. Unlike the current Maemo devices, Fremantle isn't going to be a geek toy.

But we'll see.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

When.....

we have been waiting for ages.... while other companies announce new products... we are still waiting.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

Fremantle will have to be a HUGE departure from the previous editions of Maemo for this statement to be reasonable, IMO. There is nothing about, say, Diablo, which would lead me to believe that Nokia has made a reasonable nod toward the second group.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I think that's exactly why a HD is a reasonable choice for their device. They're looking at movie storage specifically, and media player capability in general, I would guess. Thus, a comparably priced SSD would be insufficient in storage space, compared to their other products.


For me, a 500GB HD would make it a rather useful "bring ALL of my data with me" device. Access it via Android apps while I'm on the road, access it via Ubuntu or Mac (or even Windows) apps when I plug it into my computer. Assuming they'll make that 500GB hard drive readable via USB (the OS data for Android isn't exported via USB when you plug it in, just the microSDHC card, so it's a somewhat reasonable question... I can guess what they'd do, but it'd just be a guess).

Re: This is serious competition.
 

When?

Maybe Feb 16th, or maybe later, who knows. Not a big deal, although I'm dying to see some pictures and/or video myself. We know it's coming this year, probably this summer, maybe a bit later...

Re: This is serious competition.
 

General Antilles summarizes what we know here. The new Maemo device is really shaping up to be great.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I've seen those before. They answer "useful", not "usable". The 2nd group is going to want usable, not just useful.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

Speaking of competition, the new Kindle and new competition for the Kindle are being discussed on the front page of the NY Times today, and elsewhere. I think it's interesting that the competition for the Kindle (which I think will flop) would be even larger. Yuck!

Now, if someone came out with 500 gb of free storage provided by a free net connection analogous to what the Kindle provides, plus of course free Internet connectivity, that would be nice. One thing people appreciate about the Kindle is the no-brainer aspect of getting a book. You don't have to find a provider, just start downloding.

I think that no-brainer wireless Internet access included in the price of the device would be an interesting way to go.

By the way, I noted with interest that the new Kindle has text to speech provided by Nuance, the clear speech-to-text leader. It tempts me to buy one, just for the good voices Nuance has.

(My wireless keyboard is going insane as I type, so some opinions above may be its and not mine.)

Re: This is serious competition.
 

If it's Android, it's not in the same class as Maemo.

While Android claims to be 'open' (it's not all that open, compared to Maemo), you still can't go and throw just any existing application at it. People make apps for Android the same way they make apps for S60 or the jPhone... Did anybody say 'fragmentation'?

It may be a competition in terms of marketing and commercial success, yes, but it's no compatition at all when it comes to my money.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

<shrug> Obviously.

Nobody can answer the "usable" question yet, but if Nokia is going to do for Maemo what they did for Symbian (and everything we've heard from Nokia suggests that they're throwing that kind of weight behind this project), then I'm pretty sure we'll see "usable" too.

I think Nokia is holding the new UI really close to their chest on this one because it's going to be really nice. You can tell by the way they don't care so much that we know the hardware specs, but they're not ready to show us the UI stuff...

Re: This is serious competition.
 

On the other hand Nokia skipped the Elephanta (and maybe a device) to speed up the RX-51 development. As they're about to release them in about the same time frame as this Archos and other competitors, it seems it was a wise choise. If we had gotten a device and OS in between, Nokia would be behind the competition now.

Just my humble opinion of course :)

Re: This is serious competition.
 

The problem is that we have been hearing about fremantle being sooooooooooooooo.... good and so on.. but seriously until it is here.... no one cares

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I wouldn't say "no one cares", but I would say that it's irrelevant until it's public. There is no substantive information about the fremantle UI today ... and there's no need to speculate about the Android UI today, because it's here.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

Nah, the OMAP3440 is 800MHz, while the OMAP3430 is 600MHz (I just redid the OMAP wiki page, which has some details). Basically, this thing is going to be a power hog like no other. The consumption jump between the OMAP3430 and the OMAP3440 is . . . non-trivial (I had some numbers at some point, but I can't seem to dredge the up).

It'd be cool if the OMAP36x were on a schedule that might work for the RX-51. 45nm would offer some nice improvements.

As far as "usability" discussion, well, none of us can do more than talk for the time being, because no matter what anybody says (unless they work for the big N), nobody here really knows (so stop pretending like you do ;)).

Nokia has stated their intention to improve on this point a lot for Fremantle (remember, this is step 4) and it will be a major departure from Diablo, but this is as much as we can say for sure for now. There's an intention, and there's change, whether it'll pan out will have to wait for a real release (or the beta SDK).

Re: This is serious competition.
 

It is hard to make something usable with out usefulness. If it isn't useful it's soon becomes useless. :)

I like the way Maemo has matured and what RX-51 is shaping up to be. The N800 is my first Nokia device and if I was a "fanboy" of any manufacturer it would be /\/\otorola. < Like that fanboy stylized "M", LoL.

As to the device featured in this thread: I'm thinkin' that the 5" screen is just a tad big for top pocket usefulness. The 3440 a tad slow to run any useful HD apps. And Android may be a tad immature to use all of the device hardware.

My N800 was guilty of all of this the first year that I owned it. On top of that, the first 3 releases of the OS could not broadcast the syntax I needed to BT DUN using my cell phone. For that first year it was pretty much useless to me...

...however, there was this useful community that grew up with the tablets so I stayed involved. The syntax problem was resolved through a very useful bug tracking program and the Opera web browser gave way to MicroB so that useful web apps like flash and CSS could be used. These and other things made the tablet more "usable".

I now seldom leave the house without my N800. :)

What kind of "useful" support does Archos provide for its other devices?

Has it ever abandoned or orphaned a device?

Just thinkin' :)

Re: This is serious competition.
 

It's an Archos... they can keep it.

I have an Archos 604, and it's locked down so tight you can't even replace the hard drive in it without sending it back to Archos. Every codec costs an additional $20-$25, the expansion connectors are all difficult if not possible to obtain (no cheap docks, etc). Android or not, you won't be able to put anything on it, based on Archos' past policies.

As far as support, they stopped supporting it as soon as the next device (604 Wifi) was out, and there hasn't been an update in forever. So basically they abandon their legacy users after a year at most.

I bought an iPhone 3G in the meantime to give me something to tinker with, but will probably end up with the RX-51 when (if?) it ever comes out.

Be patient, and don't make a mistake on the Archos.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

Those two comments kind of lead me to believe that you don't know what usable means...

Usable is the formal/clinical term for the colloquial "user friendly". It's a Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics term. Things can easily be usable, but not very useful. Several of the cheap $10-$20 PDAs that don't sync with anything, don't have the ability to load apps, etc., are actually quite usable (well designed, straight forward, easy to use/figure out interfaces), but have rather limited usefulness.

The opposite can also be true... things can be quite useful, even amazingly useful (lots of utility, lots of features, powerful hardware for delivering those features, etc.) and abysmal when it comes to being usable.

Useful and usable have almost nothing to do with each other, other than building on the same root word.

The things you said in the 2nd paragraph I quited, in fact, do nothing to make the tablet more "usable". More useful, yes. More usable, no.

It is true that something which isn't useful becomes useless. That says NOTHING about whether or not it is usable.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

And I rarely get into bed without it. :)

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I haven't touched my N800 since I bought my N810, a year and 3 months ago.

I haven't touched my N810 since I bought my G1, in September.

And, I'm a hard core unix geek. Have been for 22 years. I refused to even take a mac seriously until it had a unix core (and, because I was a NeXT geek back in the day, mac is what I primarily use now). So, the idea that the N810 has a fully accessible *nix layer, and Android does not, seemed like it might bug me at first. But it hasn't. Not even a little.

Unlike the other Archos devices, this will be an Android device. I'm not sure it makes sense to judge this new one based on their previous ones. Different platform.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

Yes, an Android device... but an *Archos* Android device. I would be shocked if they didn't lock it down just as tight as all of their other *Linux* based devices...

Remember, Archos released the 'full source code' to the 604 series, but there was no way to install it on the device, as they had an encrypted bootloader that would refuse to load unsigned packages. And wow, they conveniently forgot to release a tool to sign packages that others created. :rolleyes:

There were also a number of proprietary drivers that were not included, so basically the release of the code was a complete and total sham.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

What I found interesting in today's announcement is that the Kindle2 has discarded WiFi and all connections to the net use the 3G network.

You want to surf the net, you use 3G. Like it was a cellphone.

Except there's no charge -- no data fee, no monthly or annual access fee, nada, zero, zip.

Makes the $359 seem a lot less, if for instance it enables you to drop an unlimited monthly data plan from your cellphone provider.

Roger

Re: This is serious competition.
 

In case you haven't seen it anywhere, the voices are Tom and Samantha.

And for the present you cannot install any additional (or replacement) voices.

Roger

Re: This is serious competition.
 

depends... how featureful is the browser on the kindle?

Do I get a full Google Reader, Google Docs, and Gmail experience? SSH and VNC?

Others will probably want flash support for youtube and such.

Or is the kindle's web browser very limited and featureless, so that you can basically just download amazon books? In which case... would you really end up using that 3G connection for very much?

Re: This is serious competition.
 

Nothing like surfing the web in 16 glorious shades of gray!

EDIT: I actually see nothing about surfing the web, only using the Whispernet to buy stuff from Amazon. So they just pad their prices and eat the cost of bandwidth. Think of the 3G cost as "delivery charges". Other than copyright costs and maybe some formatting, that's pretty much the entire cost of the e-book, after all.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I'd like to see those numbers just out of curiousity (I'm not disagreeing with you or anything). I'd imagine that these stats are probably really going to be true for processor intensive users, but with my understanding of ARM processors, it seems a bit counterintuitive. From the sounds of this, it would seem that the 3440 was only an overclocked 3430, with no other different components?
Edit: I guess, that considering the current state of using software that is *mostly unoptimized for ARM, the time to downclocking might be more of a factor and could make the issue with battery drain a bit of a problem.


Also, I don't remember who was commenting on it but: I wouldn't be particularly concerned about using either the next NIT or the next Archos with "HD" since that would be primarily handled by a seperate processor, and if properly implemented with software and drivers this wouldn't bog down the main processor.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

I've been looking, still can't seem to locate them. I'm pretty sure they were on ti.com, though, if you want to poke around.

Basically, yes, I believe it's just an overclocked OMAP3430 (Speed-sorted batches of OMAP3430s that can handle 800MHz without cooking themselves mostly likely). Problem is, the core voltage was jacked way up (I want to say 1.2v vs 1.6v).

With ARM, a faster core means a shorter time to idle, means lower overall power consumption (Race to Idle), but I think the increased power requirements would offset this. Would there be a difference, though, at 1% CPU with both devices in the same op-mode? I don't know, but in practical active usage, I believe the OMAP3430 will come out on top.

By "HD" do we mean video? In the case of the RX-51, decoding is going to be handled DSP-side (430MHz C64x+). I dunno about the Archos, but the Beagle has been doing 720p with NEON-only optimizations (ARM-side) since forever.

Bigger than the SoC power consumption-wise, though, are the screen (5" is a lot more backlight to drive) and hard drive.

For Nokia, I think it's likely a combination of availability (the OMAP3440 is a much more recent beast than the OMAP3430), cost, and battery life.

Re: This is serious competition.
 

im guessing you got a SSH client going, and can therefor log onto anything more powerful.

i guess it really depends on how one view things. for some the N8x0 is a unix computer in their pocket. for others, its a portable terminal for their computer back home or in the server room at work.