Isaiah's Tech

Cisco has unveiled another tablet but this one is more for home use. This tablet / MID packs a 7-inch touchscreen display with a 480 x 800 resolution, an Intel Atom 1.1GHz CPU, WiFi 802.11n support, and Linux. This tablet is going to monitor your home energy usage and it'll reportedly cost about "$900 per installation." Apparently, it'll be subsidized by your monthly power bill though.

[Engadget]

A company I've never heard of before, SurfaceInk, has just shown off a pretty sweet-looking project. As you can see in the picture above, it's a tablet that may or may not hit the market. What you see is just a prototype and will be running on Ubuntu. This tablet will be sporting a 12.1-inch capacitive display with a [supposedly] 1,280 x 1,024 resolution, a Freescale i.MX51 800MHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU, WiFi b/g / Bluetooth 2.1 support, USB 2.0, an HDMI port, and just a front-facing camera. Furthermore, the specs are not final - seeing how it is a prototype. The company is said to also be working on a 7-inch and possibly an 8.9-inch model (with Gorilla Glass) as well.



[Slash Gear]

HP has just shown off a new Classmate PC at Computex. This new PC features a 10.1-inch display, a plastic body with the SUSE Linux 11 OS. Of course, this is going to be Intel Atom-powered and it also has VGA / two USB ports, a 4-in-1 memory card reader, audio jacks, and a front-facing webcam. Not much else is known about these upcoming Classmate PCs so we'll just have to wait around for RAM and internal storage.

[Electronista]

A small company, Realease, is looking to release a tablet in the near future - if everything works out. Dubbed the Shogo, this tablet will be sporting a 10-inch capacitive touchscreen display, Freescale i.MX37 / i.MX51 CPU options, a WebKit-based browser, a front-facing camera, three USB ports, audio jacks, a kickstand, and a Linux OS (in the video below they said that you can get Android on it if you want). Apparently, this tablet is targeted at businesses and it could hit mass-production in a few months. We'll see.



[Engadget]

A Linux smartphone has just announced and it's called the BPhone which is apparently a quad-band phone. Obviously, it looks more like a mini netbook tablet. This "phone" reportedly features a full QWERTY keyboard, WiFi / Bluetooth, a 5-inch swiveling touchscreen WVGA display, a Marvell PXA310 624MHz CPU, 256MB of NAND memory, GPS / FM radio, and has support for a bunch of file formats. This handset likely won't hit North America, but it's going to launch in China for around $569.99. You can start ordering it on China Grabber here.

[Akihabara News]

Notion Ink has decided to finalize the full spec sheet on their Adam (iPad-killer) tablet. The full spec sheet is below but the highlights are the 10-inch Pixel Qi touchscreen display with a 1,024 x 600 resolution, a dual-core 1GHz CPU, Nvidia's Tegra 2 graphics, 1080p video out, an HDMI port, three USB 2.0 ports, a 3MP AF camera, an SD card slot, a 16-hour battery life, WiFi / 3G support, Flash support, and a full OS (Android, Ubuntu, Chromium). Since it's got a full OS on there it's got multitasking capabilities. This one should be dropping for anywhere between $327 and $800 in either June / July of this year.

[Gizmodo]

Looks like the first possible screenshots of Google's Chrome OS have just been caught online. If you want to know more about Chrome OS, just check out the two links below because they truly sum it up best. I'm just staring at these pictures - even though there's not much to look at. Maybe Chrome OS will really be available this month - but I highly doubt it...

[Tech Crunch, Lifehacker]

The very sexy and very MacBook Pro-like HP Envy 15 has just passed the FCC and it spills a little bit more detail about this notebook. The body is said to be made of magnesium, it has a "buttonless glass multitouch trackpad", a Core i7 CPU, and Linux OS options as well. Check out the PDF here.

[Engadget]

According to the latest reports, version 2.0 of Moblin is now available for download if you have Moblin version 1. It will be a direct upgrade, but keep in mind that it's still missing key features that were spotted in Moblin version 2.1 that was shown off at IDF last week. Moblin 2.1 should be available in Q4 of this year.


[Netbooked]

At IDF yesterday, Dell showed off their Inspiron Mini 10v netbook running Moblin. The good news is that it will be available sometime today - so I'll update this post with a direct Dell link when I get the chance to. We're also hearing that it'll be available for $299 - for the base model of course - so if you're really interested then just wait for it. Keep in mind that this will be running the first Moblin and not Moblin v2.

[Engadget]

According to Intel's Open Source Technology director, Imad Sousou, we could see a netbook running Moblin v2 as early as this month at IDF 2009. We don't know when this is going to be released, but if version 2 is on the way then why not just wait for it.

In related news, Asus will be launching an Eee PC with Moblin next month (October).

[Netbooked]

These pictures have just been leaked online of an upcoming Vodafone-exclusive Samsung handset running Vodafone's LIMO-based OS - Linux Mobile. The body of the phones looks like it will be in brushed aluminum. The specs that we know of so far are promising: a big OLED touchscreen display with haptic feedback and an 8MP camera. As you can see (below), there will be social integration into this handset. According to the rumours, an event will be held in London on September 24th - a day before my birthday - regarding this handset. Take a look the link below for more photos of this handset.

Update on September 11th: According to Unwired View, this handset seems to be the Samsung Riedel i8305.

[Boy Genius]

Foxconn has reportedly just mentioned that they are working on "less than five" ARM-based mini-notebooks aka smartbooks. These smartbooks are expected to run some kind of Linux distro - possibly Moblin Linux - and will hit telecoms in China for somewhere between $100 and $200. According to the reports, Foxconn is also testing out Android "as a possibility" but they didn't mention anything about using Google's Chrome OS. The display is said to be somewhere between 7 to 10 inches.

[Liliputing]

Last week, we heard that Samsung will be launching their own Linux-based OS. Well, one new phone has just been spotted at the Bluetooth SIG. The picture above is the Samsung I6410 and the design description specifically states that it this is a "Linux based touch pad based multi functional smart phone."

This exact same description was also spotted on the Samsung Protector I8320 that passed the Bluetooth SIG two weeks ago. Could these be the first two handsets to use Samsung's own Linux-based OS? We'll just have to wait and see. Expect their new OS to be available in early 2010.

[Samsung Hub]

A new non-Nokia device has just been spotted running Maemo. What you see above and below is not a large iPod Touch / iPhone, it's the Optima OP5-E MID. This device is running Nokia's Linux-based Maemo OS, but unfortunately, all of the writing is in Chinese. This MID is expected to have built-in 3G support and will retail for "around $500 [USD]." Take a look at the quite lengthy video below.



[Engadget]