The project is currently on hold.

-Ismael

I was wondering if you have made any progress on this project?

Your comments are right on target.

Also, delays with the Snapdragon are creating interesting challenges too…

-Ismael

By the end of the year you may be able to buy 3”x5” units, but I think you’re looking for at least 6”x10” prototypes (A4 paper size). The gesture recognition software also isn’t well defined yet, so what you do with multi-finger input is a big question. You’ll need to open that part of the firmware up. If you’re willing to live with single touch, then you have a plethora of choices. Most of them are resistive, but there are a few capacitive ones out there.

Everything else seems to be commodity. Integration and power management will be your biggest technical challenges, but otherwise this seems eminently doable. The question really, is whether it can be done well. A polished interface is crucial to making it easy to use.

Audio capability seems to be missing. With audio and a pluggable webcam, you could use VoIP to replace a phone and support video conferencing as well as real-time collaboration over the net. Of course, only if those capabilities are embedded in firmware, which can be inserted like a card in plug and play mode. Java software would never be able to cut it!

-Francis

P.S. The Model 1 is comparable to MIT’s $100 PC for kids in the third world. All cell phone manufacturers are hard at work in producing a new generation of cell phones that will work like current cell phones as well as VoIP phones. This is the 4G cellphone. My ex-school mate in Hong Kong has a software to support Customer Care and Billing for 4G cellphone services already! He was the IS Director of ex-Hong Kong Tel and represented Hong Kong at CCITT, now ITU on world telecom standards. iPhone is just an also ran 3G phone at best. North America is several years behind in terms of cell phone services as compared to Europe and Asia!

The Chumby is a really cool device indeed, and its user interface very close to what we need, but the form factor is very different. I’m wondering if we could use it as a starting point though. Do you know anyone there?

Best regards
 -Ismael

Courtesy of my good friend Francis Pisani.

-Ismael

Courtesy of Dynamism’s Doug.

-Ismael

You’re right. I think the key elements there are good power management and a big battery. The iPhone can give us a good sense of how to make it work. The fact that it goes to sleep very quickly when inactive is helping a lot. Also, when the device turns on instantly when you press the ‘On’ button, you save a lot of power by not having to wait for it to get ready. And if you do not care for real-time notifications, you do not have to leave WiFi on all the time when you do not use the device.

But again, we won’t know until we try…

Best regards
 -Ismael

Very ambitious, but knowing you…

I think you should consider adding on-time per charge. If you are using it at your conference, you don’t want your attendees running out of power, and WiFi seems to be power hungry, based on the behavior of my Dell Axim.

Cheers

Bob