xpPhone Hits Computex, Turns Heads, Raises Questions

Jun 5 2009, 2:40pm CDT | by Robert Evans

When we first heard about DualCor's 'xpPhone' all we got were some vague details about a hybrid "smartphone/netbook" that could run either as an XP-loaded tablet or a traditional 3G smartphone. The first design images to leak made the xpPhone look a little like a big wireless router with a screen.

Now the xpPhone has hit Computex, and we can finally get a look at this bizarre hybrid device. It looks sort of like a huge Gphone, which is pretty much par for the course with mobile Internet devices (MIDs). The xpPhone has a sliding QWERTY keyboard and a 4.8" touchscreen, and it comes packed with more hardware than seems entirely possible. It's got 1GB of RAM, an AMD CPU, a 64GB SSD, WiFi, GSM support, and a 1.3 megapixel camera.

So we've established that the xpPhone is impressive as hell. Unfortunately it also seems pretty darn useless. MIDs in general don't make much sense (half the functionality of a netbook at 3 times the price!), they're just too large to be easily portable and too small to be useful for anything but browsing the Internet. If smartphones didn't exist, there might be more of a place for MIDs in the world.

The xpPhone is gorgeous and all, but it's too big for a pocket, and it'll probably end up costing more than a top-shelf netbook and a brand new smartphone put together. Still, it's neat to see how beefy we can look forward to our smartphones being in another year or two. When DualCor can cram this much power into an iPhone-sized package they'll have something truly useful on their hands.

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.