Preview: Intel to Demonstrate Moblin Smartphones at Computex

You’ve seen the Inventec Mediaphone, the Moorestown-based MID already but we’re in for an even better treat tomorrow. At about 2pm here in Taiwan, Intel will be showing 3 working Moorestown products running Moblin V2 and if all goes well you should see a video of me making a phone call from one to the other proving that Intel are entering the smartphone market. It’s hard to believe that the PC architecture can be optimised and enhanced to the point where it defines a new category of smartphones.

In a discussion with the Ultra Mobility Group today I learnt that we’re going to be seeing demonstrations of working products. No timescales were given but based on what I saw of the product today and the fact that Moblin 2.0 will only be targeting the Netbook and Moorestown platforms, the Moorestown program has been accelerated and that we could be seeing product launches in 2009 rather than 2010.

We won’t be seeing low-cost smartphones of course and there will be products based on Moorestown that won’t include voice (think of the existing MID markets – PMP, Full Internet, Navigation, Social networking) and voice-enabled products that you might not even want to put in your trouser pocket but this is Phase 1 of a multi-year rollout of ever-improving platforms that can go from deep in the feature-phone territory right up to grab-and-go UMPCs. Intel is serious about this. They see themselves picking up every customer in the mobile phone ecosystem in this program.

My prediction for tomorrow.

• You will see 3-4 Moorestown designs.
• You will see future concepts based around Medfield specs
• You will see devices that idle, connected, at 100-300mw with the screen off (The official line is that devices will idle at 1/50th of what we see on Menlow-based MIDs today)
• The low idle and system power will allow battery sizes to be slashed in half. 8-10hrs online. 3hrs working.
• You will see voice calls being made.
• You will see 720p video recording being done in hardware.
• You will hear that LG and others have committed to products in 2010
• You will hear about new software partners

The Ultra Mobility Event starts at 1345 here in Taiwan 0645 London. 1:45am New York, 10:45am San Francisco and I’ll do my best to live blog it here on MIDMoves.com

For many, tommorrow will be a day to go down in computing history.