May 16th, 2007
Mossberg likes the new Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC
Well, he likes it more than he did the first-generation Ultra Mobile PC from the Korean electronics giant. Although he still thinks the UNPC form factor is rife with too many compromises to meet broad mainstream adoption (and I’m certainly not going to argue with that), he finds the next-gen Q1 a significant improvement.
The full review can be read on the All Things Digital site Mossberg recently launched.
Of particular note in his review was the following statement (emphasis added by me):
In the new Ultra model, the built-in keyboard, meant for thumb typing, is split, with half of the keys on either side of the screen. This approach looks daunting, but works pretty well once you get the hang of it. Unfortunately, Samsung and Microsoft didn’t build any intelligence into this keyboard, so it doesn’t automatically complete words, add punctuation and capitalize the first letters of sentences, unlike the keyboards on most smart phones.
This is one of the really great things I’ve come to appreciate about the Nokia N800’s onscreen keyboards (yes, the plural is intentional). In both the tap-a-letter-at-a-time half-screen and full-screen thumboard implementations on that device, Nokia uses predictive text to make educated guesses about the word you’re entering which are refined as each letter is added. And, the engine gets smarter over time, adding words you use frequently to its word list.
Hopefully someone at Microsoft is taking notes. This is a great suggestion that could significantly enhance the UMPC form factor, especially as most are not equipped with anything other than a software keyboard.
Marc Orchant has been building, testing, and sometimes breaking hardware and software for 25 years. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
