The PC manufacturers, led by chipmaker Intel have always conceived of a Netbook as a small PC, while the dominant handset chip maker Qualcomm (and other mobile chipmakers such as Freescale) have always thought of it as a smartphone with a bigger screen. Which is perhaps why they are now calling them something different with the term Smartbook has coined and the Computex show in Tapei was used as a launching pad for the idea and a number of the devices. Computex in Taiwan’s capital is a show where all the world’s manufacturers, including those from mainland China, meet with component suppliers and plan the future of both the PC industry, but also increasingly the handset business as well.
So what are the key differences ‘ well you wouldn’t expect to have to re-charge a smart phone more than once a day, but you would expect a laptop maker to claim its charge lasts 5 hours, for it to actually manage 3 hours, and then, as the battery gets older, for this to fall to 1.5 hours or less.
The big battery users in laptops are powering up the screen, powering up the rotating disk drive and actually carrying out calculation ‘ processor cycles and memory read-writes. And it is these elements that keep it at over 2 pounds weight, still way out of being ‘pocketable.’
This year each of these ideas are being separately attacked at Computex. Flash memory options are in abundance, replacing hard drives, new screen technologies, such as those which dynamically change between the electronic ink style screens (very low power like in the Amazon Kindle eBook reader) and the high refresh rates needed for video or those which use more reflected light. The dual mode concept is well established in the design of handset chips ‘ have them use multiple processing cores, and turning off those which are not currently being used, as well as powering them with smaller and smaller lithography technologies which require less power.
So in the screens we have a potential shift to OLED, which even in the first generations are claiming to reduce power consumption by 40% against LCD, but at the same time companies like PixelQi, are changing the power requirements for a screen by changing how it works, depending on what you are doing with it.
PixelQi is showing off its screens at Computex and says that in late 2009 there will be devices with them in. The screens will be available for mini-laptops and ebook readers in high volume mass production in late-2009.
The company says that it uses standard manufacturing materials, processes and factories but that its screens use as little as a quarter of the power of a regular LCD screen, and when integrated carefully with a device can increase battery life between charges by 5-fold.
It doesn’t actually use electronic ink, which is the invention of E Ink Corp, which is used in book readers like the Kindle, and is very low power, but its ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) controls an LCD screen in a way that emulates e’ink. The epaper mode has 3 times the resolution which makes for a good reading experience, the company says. So it is high resolution when showing text, but a lower refresh rate, and vice versa when showing video.
Meanwhile Qualcomm, which reckons it has an 18 month lead on Intel in using low power CPU chips based on the ARM chip processor design which powers almost all smartphones, has bet it can take the market for Smartbooks with its Snapdragon chip. New devices which use it from ASUS, Compal, Foxconn, HTC, Inventec, Toshiba and Wistron will be on show at Computex.
Qualcomm told us last year that the Snapdragon was operating at 500 milliWatts and that it would go to 300 milliWatts once the design is in 45 nanometer technology,’ and that they will ship with 16GB of storage for around $30.
Qualcomm was launching its new 45-nanometer version of the Snapdragon at the show which used 30% less power and said that more than 15 manufacturers are now developing more than 30 Snapdragon-based products.
Qualcomm has its own Mirasol division creating new screen technology based on using reflected light, rather than generated light, but whichever way these smarkbooks go screenwise, they are more likely to reach the point of having a battery charge last the day, than the current crop of disk based netbooks.
This week Qualcomm’s MEMS Technologies subsidiary which makes the Mirasol screens said that a dedicated Mirasol fabrication plant which has been built in Taiwan has come online. This was a partnership with Foxlink.
Back with Smartbooks Qualcomm defines them as phones with an operating system (with Android, Linux, Symbian or Windows) and a bridge between smartphones and laptops – smartphone experience on a larger-display, typically anything from 3 to 12 inches. They should be constantly connected via 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS, ultra-portable and last all day on a single battery charge. So far on a Netbook that’s a pipe dream. The trick now is to see these come to market as fully subsidized by cellular operators, which we should see early next year.
Qualcomm also listed a number of new software supporters such as
Zinio for digital media services; RealNetworks, Bluestreak and Varia Mobile for multimedia players; Phoenix Technologies, ThunderSoft and Xandros with new versions of Linux operating systems; and applications from Haansoft, Remoba, Conveneer.