Is this the Vaio from Sony's teaser campaign?

Don't wanna wait for Sony to complete their teaser campaign to peep that Vaio they're trying to generate some buzz about? Don't worry, jkOnTheRun has got you covered (well, maybe). According to site founder James Kendrick, a "reader who wishes to remain anonymous" sent him a number of pictures of this supposed ultraportable Vaio, which do indeed feature all of the disparate components visible in Sony's brief Flash movies. Besides portraying the device as a UMPC-style tablet with sliding QWERTY keyboard, one of the pictures clearly shows the words "Bluetooth," "WLAN," and "WWAN" on the screen's bezel when viewed full-size. We can also make out that fingerprint scanner from the teaser campaign, as well as a MemoryStick Duo slot and a "capture" button, although if that Motion Eye doesn't swivel, it won't make much of a camera. Of course these pictures, even if genuine, reveal nothing about the actual guts of the machine, so Sony still has several important details such as processor types/speeds, operating system (a return to PalmOS, perhaps?) and storage system/capacities to hold over our heads. More pics are available by following the "Read" link...

[GB @ May 14th 2006 7:17PM]

I really hate to quote paris hilton but... thats hot

[dave @ May 14th 2006 7:17PM]

Neat. When? How much?

[mitzouki @ May 14th 2006 7:20PM]

coool

peut �tre l'ultime Origami en vaio

mais le prix avec eux n'est pas pret de baisser et l'umpc de se d�mocratiser

en tous cas moi je l'attendais celui l�



@+ une fran�aise

[pony @ May 14th 2006 7:22PM]

I bet this cost twice as much as "ordinary" UMPC

[Petey Boi @ May 14th 2006 7:29PM]

Meh!

[blahblah @ May 14th 2006 7:31PM]

Um... WOW. 0_o Do we have specs yet? As in, what's the screen resolution? If it's in the XGA range, I'm definitely interested.

[Radical Conformist @ May 14th 2006 7:40PM]

"a "capture" button, which may indicate the inclusion of a camera on the back of the device"

Sometimes you guys scare me. The lens is visible directly above the screen.

[Bill @ May 14th 2006 7:40PM]

even if it is shopped it is a really good job...i dont think it is but it is amazing...i want one.

[scoobie @ May 14th 2006 7:42PM]

An "insider" posting to the sony u750p forum has said that it runs Windows XP Pro. The screen is a touchscreen. It looks like the follow up to the u750p, the docking station in particular is very similar. The functionality implied by the keys tells me this is a Windows device

[bob @ May 14th 2006 7:55PM]

"a "capture" button, which may indicate the inclusion of a camera on the back of the device" its on the front you can see it.
"An "insider" posting to the sony u750p forum has said that it runs Windows XP "
oh well, it had hope until that.

[Don @ May 14th 2006 8:03PM]

There's what look like Windows and context menu keys along the bottom row of that keyboard. Smells like Windows to me.

[Erick Perez @ May 14th 2006 8:10PM]

It looks like a camera and biometric sensor right on the top

[John Walters @ May 14th 2006 8:13PM]

It seems Bill Gates has a winner on his hands with these second generation UMPC devices.

Go Microsoft go... w00t !!!

http://www.umpcStyle.com

[scoobie @ May 14th 2006 8:14PM]

Now please Sony:
- Sell the thing in Europe (Sony has a habit of not selling ultraportables in europe, the u750p never made it over here)
- Please put a Windows Tablet OS on it. Rumour has it this thing runs Windows XP Pro with a touchscreen - Why not tablet os?

[Jason @ May 14th 2006 8:16PM]

First UMPC that I actually am thinking about buying. (If this is a UMPC at all)

Sony made some really innovate Palm OS Clie so this is feasible.

[Troy @ May 14th 2006 8:23PM]

On the upper left seems like it has a fingerprint reader.

If this is around ~$1k like Samsung's I am sold.

[Kev50027 @ May 14th 2006 8:29PM]

This looks like a second generation of my U70, which is still an awesome mobile PC by today's specs (I got it a year and a half ago). I think Sony really is the best company out there at making sexy small PCs, and the extreme to that is their U line. I don't know if this will sell well, but it sure looks nice.

[TC @ May 14th 2006 8:49PM]

Does anyone else wish that the good departments of Sony (like the design guys, SCEE and Sony Ericsson) would just break away from the poor parts (Any of the s/w depts. and SonyBMG)?
Some of these new designs are really tempting me to part with my cash.........

[Jerome Demers @ May 14th 2006 9:13PM]

If this is why they stop to make clie, I understand and approuve!

WOW!

I hope the PSP2 looks like that a little bit!

[Special_K @ May 14th 2006 9:14PM]

I wish this were real, but the Vaio logo is cut off at the top right, and the corners seem blurred and uneven at the bottom. I'd buy this in a second were it real, but I have a feeling Sarny just isn't this design concious (the DualShake and George Forman Grill-esque PS3 both don't instill confidence.)

[CaptnCivilian @ May 14th 2006 9:52PM]

Hot Damn, CLIE lives!!! I've been missing my TH55... (I cracked the screen and had to replace it with a Palm TX that does half as much half as well). If the price is decent I may be forced to get one. :)

[Rich @ May 14th 2006 9:56PM]

Hey, a Sidekick that runs Windows. How 'bout that...

[Richard Lawrence @ May 14th 2006 10:03PM]

I do the the looks of it. Interesting to note that Nokia will be revealing their 770 follow-up on Tuesday as well, I wonder if there will be any similarities? Finally, the pictures don't give me a real of the unit's dimensions. Are they listed somewhere and I just missed them?

[DS @ May 14th 2006 10:09PM]

wow, for sony this is an ugly product. it looks like something dell would build. I mean these guys have a *LONG* way to go b4 they catch up to Apple design wise. This thing looks like a brick.... and I like to throw bricks...

-D.S.

[rudy @ May 14th 2006 10:41PM]

Looks kinda chunky to me but cant beat a full QWERTY keyboard. If done right this will rock. And whats teh deal with the blu ray support? Teh sony site is updated to say somethign on those lnes.

# 26 - is ur name dipsh1t?

[fastolfe @ May 14th 2006 11:05PM]

D.S., if you painted it all white or all silver, and put an apple logo on it, would you love it then? Apple doesn't have the final say on great design and you don't have to be a lemming.

[Adam @ May 14th 2006 11:24PM]

I find it pretty interesting that there's a speaker in the upper left corner and what looks like a standard mic hole in the lower right. If it's not meant to be a cellphone, then it's definitely going to have VOIP capability.

[Alex Brewer @ May 14th 2006 11:32PM]

To #7, Engadget isn't stupid. The capture button is for a camera on the back , not the motioneye webcam included with many vaio notebooks. To Engadget Editors and Reader, if you look at the picture of the top that shows the capture button, you also see a slide for adjusting between macro (see the flower symbol) and another mode. This is located towards the back going down the curved side. This suggests to me that there is in fact a camera on the back. I'm guessing 2.0 or 3.2 megapixels branded with Carl Zeiss. (You heard it first here folks ;) )

Brewer

[CBG @ May 15th 2006 12:09AM]

I hope it plays UMD's!

[teejay @ May 15th 2006 12:22AM]

Wow, that looks very very nice. Sony Corp might not always have the best products but they've got a great designer somewhere in there.

[Jon @ May 15th 2006 12:36AM]

More tidbits of information that I've found about the UX series...

The UX180P is set to be released in the U.S. for $1,799.99 around June. It will have a 4.5 inch 1024x600 touchscreen with XBRITE, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Windows XP Professional, 1.2GHz Core Solo processor, 512MB RAM, 30GB hard drive with shock protection, 802.11a/b/g, WAN (Cingular EDGE), Bluetooth, dual cameras (VGA on the front, 1.3 MP on the back) with a microphone, and a biometric fingerprint sensor. There is 1 USB port, a Memory Stick slot, and headphone and microphone inputs. The weight is 1.1 pounds with dimensions of 6" x 4" x 2" and the battery will last from 3 to 7 hours. A stylus and a case will be included, as well as a docking station which adds 3 USB ports, 1 Firewire port, and VGA/AV outputs. You can view the screen in portrait or landscape modes with the ability to zoom with dedicated buttons. GPS will also be supported through Bluetooth and pre-installed software. For those who are wondering, the images in this post are indeed what the UX180P will look like.

That's all.

[blahblah @ May 15th 2006 12:45AM]

Jon (#33): A 4.5" WXGA (1024x600) screen?! Are you sure about that? Where di you get that info from?

The resolution is fantastic, but I'm trying to picture using it with the stylus or KB. *0_o* OTOH, maybe it wouldn't be so bad...

[Jon @ May 15th 2006 12:58AM]

34: Yes, I'm sure. I believe 1024x600 is SVGA. The zoom buttons are there to accommodate the small screen size.

[Asher M. @ May 15th 2006 12:59AM]

This is an amazing machine. The only concern I have is that it wont have an exceptional OS like Microsoft Windows Vista (possibly) but a Symbian one. I wish that it will be more than a toy and something that is actually productive in day to day life. A little UMPC would be nice.

[caleb @ May 15th 2006 1:04AM]

i'm pretty sure that this device (if it is real, which seems unlikely: how would that HDMI port be useful on an UMPC?) is not the one that's being hyped on the vaio site: based on the fact that the site now says that "Blu" is the color (or something to that effect) i'd say that the site is presenting the VAIO RC Series - the blu-ray laptop.

[DirtHerder @ May 15th 2006 1:04AM]

fastolfe

I'm no Apple zealot (farthest from it... more of a Sony zealot I guess ^_~). But I'd kind of have to agree a little bit with DS (minus the Apple sentiment of course).

I'm flipping through my beat up copy of "Digital Dreams: The Works of the Sony Design Center", and looking around at the various Sony gadgets and gizmos that we've got around our place and this just doesn't seem to have the same clean, solid design.

I mean, even if you were to compare it to something similar from Sony's past like the various Clie's or the older U70, this one just doesn't measure up IMHO anyway.

[DirtHerder @ May 15th 2006 1:09AM]

Wow... 2 inches thick?

Yikes, that seems pretty beefy. -_-

[Jon @ May 15th 2006 1:32AM]

37: The VAIO site is showcasing two new notebooks, the AR and the UX. The AR series is the one with a Blu-ray writer and the HDMI output, not the RC (which is a desktop that will also have Blu-ray). The "UMPC" is the UX series. I also forgot to mention that the UX will be able to support Vista, though how efficiently is another question.

[Le Guardian @ May 15th 2006 3:39AM]

bof, rien de special la.

a+ un fran�ais

[myscrnnm @ May 15th 2006 4:20AM]

Why is everyone talking about the UMPC like it's some sort of new device? Sony's U-series, which came out months before the UMPC was even mentioned, has pretty much the same features. It's not like the UMPC was a new invention, Sony's just continuing what it had already made.

[Vas @ May 15th 2006 5:00AM]

"Finaly Sony is releasing their "PDA"
I absolutely agree with you #42 myscrnnm. SONY released the Vaio U-series almost a year ago. Sony is just continuing what they have been doing.
I hope the screen size is not more than 5inch. I am a bit worried about the price:-(

[Shmee150 @ May 15th 2006 5:54AM]

Wow....

I really wanted a U... what seems like a very very very long time ago but could never justify buying it because it just wasn't quite useful enough... But I only have a laptop (a TX) for using at hot spots and on the go, not for proper work. I'm guessing any mobile internet features on it aren't going to work in Europe and probably going to mean it's never going to be released but I'm going stateside in August, so hopefully it's out by then!

Another thing I've been trying to work out is what on earth the stick thing behind the finger print reader is? Is that an aerial because it's up in all of the pictures and that would just be annoying!

ShMeE

[TZK @ May 15th 2006 6:30AM]

That antenna has to go, man.

[Dennis @ May 15th 2006 7:58AM]

I've tried scaling the high quality pics to real size, based on the size of the ports, etc. Based on my rough approximation, the screen is 5" diagonal, and the main unit is about 6.25" x 4.5" x 1.75". This size makes the fingerprint reader about 0.5", which seems more proportionate, and the keys become about the same size as on the keys on the Cingular 8125. The dock would be about 6" wide and 1.5" thick. When I tried scaling it to make the screen 7", the thumb board becomes kind of unusable, etc.

By the way, I think the antenna is on a grooved slot on the back and is extendable, which could boost wireless reception pretty considerably. It looks too flimsy to have out all the time.

If you want to try it yourself:
-head on picture scaled 63%
-top down picture scaled 64%
-dock picture scaled 95%

[Dennis @ May 15th 2006 8:39AM]

By the way, that was on a Dell 2405 LCD at 1920x1200, but the proportionate scalings should be identical regardless.

This frankly looks like a PSP accessory to me, like the Mac mini looks like an iPod accessory.

[phi @ May 15th 2006 11:27AM]

knowing sony's track record, that thing is gonna cost 2400 bucks.

[blahblah @ May 15th 2006 11:49AM]

Quote (Originally posted by Jon)
I believe 1024x600 is SVGA.

No. SVGA has a maximum resolution of 800x600. XGA maxes-out at 1024x768. So it's an XGA display but, since it has a 16:10 aspect ratio, it's wide screen; so, it's a WXGA display.

[blahblah @ May 15th 2006 11:50AM]

So, no markup allowed in Engadget posts. Nice...

[tek @ May 15th 2006 2:27PM]

Why have VGA as well as HDMI? You can convert HDMI to DVI easily and use a VGA adapter.

[Joe @ May 15th 2006 2:28PM]

The price is $1700.