This year’s CES2010 in Las Vegas had SmartDevices’ SmartQ V5 MID on display.We had a chance to examine its sibling, the SmartQ5. The operating system and hardware are practically identical for the two models, with the exception of RAM size and built-in memory card capacity.It’s sometimes hard to understand the popularity of MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices).
one point of view, they are quite similar to smartphones based on Android, iPhoneOS, Symbian, or RIM. Alternately, MIDs might be marketed as very compact netbooks. What the SmartQ5 most resembles, however, is a classic Compaq (now HP) iPAQ on steroids, with enhanced RAM and CPU, and networking capabilities thrown in.
Hardware The SmartQ5 incorporates the ARM 1176- based S3C6410 Mobile Application Processor manufactured by Samsung Electronics. While normally clocked at 667 MHz, firmware tweaks can overclock the CPU to 800MHz. Though ‘tweaked’ firmware is officially supported (see http://www.smartdevices.com.cn/files/SmartQ5- v5.2-800.rar), there is an opinion that the installed RAM can’t run smoothly at the higher clock speed, so beware if you plan to try this. The 128 MB of internal memory might seem a bit modest for contemporary applications; however, it is more than adequate for watching movies and surfing the Internet. The SmartQ5 will enthrall Linux geeks – it runs Ubuntu Karmic! The operating system (including the /home and swap partitions) resides on a fast internal SD card. Unfortunately, the card has little free space for user data – though “1 GB Flash, 256 MB available to users,” a df listing via SSH shows roughly 93 MB free on the home partition:
The MID does have a free SDIO slot that supports up to 32 GB SDHC cards, though there’s a rather unfortunate catch: from my experience, and the fact that Task Manager has the option to “…switch between Bluetooth / the storage disk,” you can’t use a memory card at the same time as the included MiniUSB connector! While the MiniUSB connector would have been ideal for connecting Bluetooth devices or CDMA/3G modems, the hardware design of this particular MID makes it an either-or affair – considering the dearth of on-board storage, which is rather annoying.
The SmartQ5 features a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack – no need to worry about proprietary connectors and compatibility with other audio equipment. The 40mW output level generated by the SmartQ5 is enough to feed almost every external audio system. Besides, the built-in speaker’s maximum volume shames many notebooks’ on-board speaker systems (Figure 1). A hidden microphone provides for audio recording, though you’ll need to install recording software – only playback software is shipped in the SmartQ5’s default set-up. The screen measures 10.9 cm (4.3 inches), with a WVGA resolution of 800 x 480 pixels (Figure 2). This is overlaid with a resistive touchscreen, which is the sole means of input (the MID has no physical keyboard). From a usability point of view, the included stylus turned out to be required most of the time, since the UI is not finger-touch-friendly – more about that later.
The built-in 802.11b/g WiFi network card enables you to avail of speedy network connections when you have accessible hotspots nearby – and that’s becoming increasingly common today.The device is powered by a 2000 mAh LiPol (lithium polymer) battery. Though the manufacturer’s specifications page doesn’t make any specific claim about battery life for the MID, an informal test (recounted below) hints that it is quite adequate.With dimensions of 120 x 74 x14 mm, the SmartQ5 visually resembles a small brick. The body is made of dark gray plastic,and unfortunately, comes as a single moulded piece. This is a mixed blessing – on the one hand, even if the device falls from a height, it will survive with only scratches, and won’t break up.
Software
The UI sports a MacOS X-like Quick Launch bar with frequently-used applications like the Midori Web browser, Wi-Fi network connection manager, Task Manager, external MiniUSB modem connection manager, FBReader, the StarDict English-Chinese translation software, the Systems Manager, and a screen-lock function. The dock isn’t apparently customisable via the SmartQ5’s own UI – I guess you need to edit config files with Abiword, or with vi/nano via an SSH session. The main menu provides categories similar to those seen on a larger screen computer, while the system notification area on the upper right provides the familiar volume and brightness controls, battery monitor and clock. The LXDE main menu’s categories provide several applications: Accessories: Games: Graphics: Internet: Office: Sound & Video: Preferences: Appearance, Bluetooth, Language, Openbox Manager, SysSettings, Wicd NetManager The system configuration applications allow you to change the system font, window manager appearance, settings for Openbox, language settings and more. Language, by the way, is restricted to Chinese and English only. As far as actual package installation is concerned – GDebi has a nice GTK GUI interface, but is completely useless – it shows nothing. Hello, developers! To install software packages, I had to log in via SSH and run console ‘Aptitude’ commands. Note – to upgrade installed software or install new software, you’ll need an inserted SD card, because Aptitude generates index files that it seeks to store on the SD card.
Galculator – a calculator with multiple display modes: Basic, Scientific and Paper. The latter will be interesting to old-school accountants.
Leafpad – A simple text editor; ideal for scripting, and similar to Windows’ Notepad.
Search for Files (the search is performed by PCManFM manager)
StarDict – translation between English and Chinese, and vice-versa.
Xarchiver – archive manager that handles tar, gz, bz2,lzma and rar archives.
Evilvte – terminal for command line users
Gweled (a FOSS version of PopCap Games’ immensely popular ‘Bejeweled’)
Shisen-Sho (a tile-based game of logic, of Japanese origin)
Evince Document Viewer – for PDF documents
Image Viewer
rgbPaint – a simple graphics editor akin to MS Windows’ Paintbrush
Claws Mail – a popular branch of the Sylpheed e-mail client
Feed Circuit – an RSS feed reader
Midori Web Browser – quite a feature-packed Web browser, based on the WebKit engine. It boasts a plug-in subsystem compatible with Netscape (and obviously with several plug-ins from Mozilla as well). It passed ACID tests flawlessly. The available number of settings is modest, but provides enough control to deliver a pleasant surfing experience (Figure 4).
Pidgin – (formerly GAIM), a popular multi-protocol IM client
Transmission – yes, incredibly, a BitTorrent client!
Abiword word processor, FBReader e-book reader,Gnumeric spreadsheet
Osmo – a Personal Information Management (PIM) program with a task/to-do list alongwith reminders and alarms, contacts management, notes, and calendar integration.
SMPlayer – a GUI front-end for MPlayer, which plays both video and audio media.
Sonata – a GUI music player with a simpler interface than SMPlayer. It turns out that this application,though ostensibly an audio player, can handle video files too – just add them to the play list and hit ‘Play’!
System Tools: GDebi Package Installer, PCMan File Manager
Other software distributions
One of the great aspects of Linux embedded devices is that sooner or later, a variety of distributions become available to be installed/run on your hardware.
source:Internet, linux
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