Olympic MIDs
From a Linux perspective, the most remarkable location at January's CES (Consumer Electronics Show) was Intel's Mobility booth. It was so crowded that I could barely elbow my way to the display cases. When I asked to see gear that ran Linux, I was told Linux was running on most of the gear they were showing there.
And sure enough, it was. I got to see and handle MIDs, or Mobile Internet Devices, from Lenovo, Clarion, Aigo, Samsung and Digifriends. Most appeared to be running China's Red Flag Linux and the CoolFox browser -- obvioiusly a Mozilla derivative. The UIs were modeled on the iPhone, with square application icons and a "coverflow"-like file browser that let you fan horizontally or vertically through choices.
Since then it has become clear that Intel and its OEMs are pushing to have some of these products ready for the summer Olympics in Beijing. It should be interesting to see not only how much reporting in the wild is made possible by these new Linux handhelds, but how many cool new hacks on them will be encouraged by the setting.
Of particular interest to me is the Lenovo Ideapad U8 Mobile Internet Device. Two reasons.
First, Lenovo is already the first major PC hardware OEM to market Linux aggressively. Their U.S. index page (lenovo.com/us/en/) at this writing (in April) says "ThinkPad notebooks with Linux" right up front, rather than buried somewhere down the directory tree.
Second, the Ideapad U8 is an interesting device. It lacks the slide-out keyboard of the Nokia N810 (the Linux pioneer in the category), but has a virtual QWERTY keyboard that can pop up along the bottom of the screen -- plus a numeric hardware keypad on to the right of the screen for T9 predictive text entry. In addition to the touchscreen (for finger or stylus), it has a hardware pointer reminiscent of the familiar red ThinkPad nub, but with no moving parts. And it has a bunch of other features you'd expect in a Linux handheld PC.
The Ideapad U8 was vetted at the Spring 2008 Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, where Intel also shared details of the Menlow platform on which the device (along with many others) is based. Menlow puts the new Silverthorne CPU on the single-chip Poulsbo chipset. Significantly, at least one of the units being shown came with a colorful back badged with Olympics imagery.
An open question at this point is hackability. Nokia has openly courted and supported individual developers through the Maemo development platform. Nokia's purchase of Trolltech earlier this year also says it's serious about Linux development on mobile devices. At this writing, however, it isn't clear whether the new Menlow-based MIDs are going to veer in the "applianced" direction (like the iPhone) or the "generative" direction (like the Nokia MIDs). For more about the difference, read "A Tale of Two Futures" in this month's EOF (inside the back cover).
If they're hackable enough, the market will get to decide. We look forward to reports from Linux Journal readers as these devices flow into the market, starting this summer.
- Doc Searls