Technofile: So what's the rundown on the Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC? Well, whether it flies off the shelves or not, the device is now lighter and more powerful. Weighing in at 690 grams, the Q1 Ultra (pictured) is 12 per cent lighter than the original Q1. It's also just slightly smaller.
It has a sleeker overall look, a brighter seven-inch touchscreen LCD display and stereo speakers. The touch-screen keypad has been joined by a hardware keypad divided in two parts. The Q1 Ultra ships with an 800MHz Intel microprocessor.
Samsung has not revealed the exact CPU but has confirmed that it uses an Intel ULV processor, which in practice does not seem to make the device run amazingly quickly under Vista. It has 1G byte of memory, an external USB keyboard, and it has support for HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks and WiBro, a mobile version of WiMax, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Although it supports HSDPA you won't be able to make normal mobile phone calls, unless you use VOIP software like Skype.
Optional extras include a fingerprint scanner, dual digital cameras and a GPS navigation pack.
The unit runs Windows Vista Home Premium operating system.
The battery life is supposed to reach - according to Samsung - four hours with the standard battery and seven hours with an extended battery. The Ultra will come with a 60 GB hard drive into the UMPC, but down the line a 32 GB flash hard drive will probably save weight, space and increase the battery life even more.
• At CeBIT, Samsung Electronics said it plans to ship a seven-inch digital photo frame with built-in Wi-Fi that can display images from an Internet RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. The frames also work with four kinds of memory cards and will take a USB flash drive or portable hard disk.
The photo frame is meant to be paired with a PC running Microsoft Vista, using Wi-Fi. A cheaper version doesn't have Wi-Fi.
Samsung also launched digital photo frames measuring eight inches and 12 inches across the diagonal.
• Also exhibiting at CeBIT, memory card maker SanDisk launched an 8GB SDHC card and two new microSD cards in either 1GB or 2GB flavours.
The cards allow fast transfer of content to and from mobile phones as well as increase storage for videos, music, ring tones, digital images, and other files.
• USB Drives were all over CeBIT, and most now are a whopping 2GB in size. The only difference now is that they are even smaller than the average USB stick.
There's no end to it, in a word.
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