Optima OP5-E MID first non-Nokia MID to run Maemo
By Nilay Patel 
posted July 16th 2009 3:51PM
posted July 16th 2009 3:51PM
[Via Pocketables]
posted July 16th 2009 3:51PM
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Challenge accepted! Let us engage in fisticuffs at noon of the morrow. Afterwards we may feast upon tea and a myriad of crumpets.
Good, the cool breeze from one of your swings will feel most cooling on my handlebar mustache you see.
My thoughts exactly old chum! And when we're all done we can ride away on our bicycles with obnoxiously large front wheels.
"now that Nokia's hooked up with Intel we didn't think we'd ever see any more straight Maemo devices"
silly engadget, hating on maemo just because it's by Nokia.
Who's hating on Maemo? I just expect it to look a lot different after it's ported to Intel -- I have a feeling it'll pick up some Moblin cues.
Bring Nokia N97 to AT&T for discount price of $199
Yes, it doesn't look like an iPhone.
-blind fanboy
Why do people continue to rip off Apple? Some people don't understand the meaning of shame!
From the screen shot we can see a China Telecom logo on the desktop, which could mean it has a EV-DO 3G radio in it. China Telecom is running cdma2000 / EV-DO 3G network in China.
It certainly does look like an iphone, but only because Apple's clout means they've basically cornered the market in 'black rectangle with a screen'. Okay, this also has metal edges, but even if they were plastic, it would still look pretty much like an iphone.
Iphone looks a little nicer... somehow I think Apple spent more money on the industrial design.
(Oh, and the white version of this looks nicer, incidentally.)
IMHO, this little toy's got more in common with an N810 than it does with an iphone, save for the glossy, non-beveled screen and lack of a keyboard . It runs maemo, has 256mb flash, supports a removable SD card (though the n810 uses mini--not microSD), etc.
As an n810 owner, I'm naturally compelled to size it up with what I've already got. It has the same amount of RAM, roughly the same size, and virtually all of the same features--including noticably better specs on the CPU and camera. But it lacks the slide-out keyboard, which, though it's small, is still much better than a screen-hogging, display-based keyboard. Additionally, the OP5-E has the same, meager 128MB of RAM. When the N810 was released, this wasn't (and still isn't) too bad; but shouldn't a newer device like this sport something more like 256MB?)
Regarding the "future telephony" support what does that mean exactly? Are the initial models going to be fitted with GSM/CDMA-capable hardware, or are the manufacturers going to expect you to buy another model to get this? It's possible that this could be included by some type of internal expansion module, but not only does that seem unlikely (without boosting the cost of production), but it also means you'll just have to shell out more cash to get the functionality.
Unless this new toy is planning to have a sub-$250 price tag (which you can easily get an N810 for), I honestly don't see where this thing is going to find a market.
Sure, the processor and camera specs are noticeably nicer, but is the OP5-E camera going to to support video functionality as well? (The n810's video cam isn't spectacular by any means, but it has one.) Secondly, not including a keyboard on this gadget is a serious mistake. I'm not enthusiastic about thumbing around my n810's slidable, but it's leaps & bounds better than having to do this same thing on a flat, screen-hogging equivalent. Thirdly, 128MB is ok for a MID nowadays if you're looking to buy one in the sub-$200 market, but what's the OP-5 going to cost? You can find an N810 for under $200 easily now
Every article that I've found on the OP5 says that this device is going to have some kind of future telephony support. Does that mean that the initially released model will have the appropriate cellular hardware to be used as a phone on cdma/gsm services? Will it be in the form of a pluggable hardware module? Or is this thing essentially no different than being an N810 without a keyboard?
How much is the OP5 going to cost? Unless the new device has something else spectacular--like well-supported video/hardware acceleration, completely open-sourced drivers from top-to-bottom, or a sub-$250 pricetag (like the current n810s), the OP5 isn't offering much more than what's already been on the market for over a year.