Sungworld's Android MID fights the future
By Laura June 
posted January 24th 2010 12:47AM
posted January 24th 2010 12:47AM
We don't think we're over-reaching when we say that this device, Sungworld's just-unveiled 7-inch, Android touchscreen MID looks a bit... well, Apple-ish, and we hear that the UI (which we haven't yet seen in action) will take cues from the company as well. Regardless, this thickish-looking puppy will boast an ARM926 CPU, 128MB of memory, 2GB of storage, and two USB ports. It's also supposedly going to be available in pink, blue, green, purple and black, and though we don't know pricing yet, we assume that if that tablet we've heard so much about in recent weeks fails to materialize next Wednesday, well... okay, this won't be a great stand-in. Sorry.
iDon't Care...
@TheRogueFFAngel
If only down ranking actually did something useful.
@Teslanaut
It sends a message- "this man's opinion is shit"
@Special Agent Steve
but it doesn't help his mental state of awareness, where the most attention needs to be paid, *tut tut*.. if only he was hugged by his parents, such a difference that would have made...
@glenskey or perhaps touched less by a certain uncle.
This actually looks quite nice. I want to see the screen on! Don't see an HDMI port there. That would be awesome. Double the RAM would be nice. SD Slot? I love the look of the hardware though.
Those spec's fail.
Put in Tegra2, 512mb of memory, and a 32gb SSD. Then we can talk.
And it better be a capacitive touchscreen and have great battery life.
@CJisohsocool Why internal storage?
Internal storage sucks hard, what they need to put in all portable devices are SDXC slots, or for low-end things like this even SDHC would do.
This is too low-end anyway, ARM9? Seriously?
@Blacklight WORD, Where TF is the ARM11 action? and I also hate on Apple and others for not putting micro-sd card slots on their gear! Stick that in your I-Touch Apple- where is the Micro SD, I along with millions of others find your failure to put memory expansion slots on you Ipods; almost a sour enough taste to go elsewhere with our $. Hey Apple, Sealed Batteries can also suck my gadget, that is not environmentally friendly to embed your batteries so deep that one has to perform battery gadget surgery to get their run times back up to electro snuff. If you are going to Tout EPEAT and RoHS, then get with the program and engineer a smarter battery compartment on your macbooks. Iphones, Ipods.... and for heaven's sake, PUT A FREAKING MEMORY EXPANSION SLOT ON YOUR MOBIL devices!
In a world where mobile phones are the point of convergence and where much hype is at (besides the rumoured Apple tablet), are MID's still relevant? I seldom see people hold one while on the go, so I'm unsure.
@Yanguang plenty of people rock an ipod touch as mid at wifi spots and use a normal cell that doesn't have a stuff it in your brown hole required data plan... considering that the volume of the Touch was in the tens of millions, I wonder where you have been looking, but agree that smartphone's are in essence cell phone mid's, so what is the point right? The point of a mid is to enable someone like me to save 12x$40 per year on pointless data plans when many like myself have access to wifi spots 95% of the time that we are awake.
@cosmicinglewood I see. So it's either cost savings by shaving off data plans and carry two devices, or effectively pay more for a single device.
@Yanguang discrete capital cost for two devices vs higher reoccurring cost structure for the single device; I want my phone to make phone calls and text, and my mid/pmp/pda to do everything else. There are times when you only need a phone, and others where only a Touch is required; but I carry both to avoid getting railed in the rear by the ripoff shyster and fleece cell phone network people for (crap speed mobil internet)....... keeps the 13inch macbook handy in the briefcase too for real internet access!
@cosmicinglewood Until the day we get the perfect device, that is. =D
@cosmicinglewood and lets also remember; keeping the two separate mean you can upgrade the pmp,pda,mid action without signing a two year contract, or likewise upgrade your phone dingle new every two without having to learn a new OS for the pmp,pda,mid action. Now I agree that smartphones offer some really interesting and unique features because the break the mid/pmp/pda free to access the internet more often then not as long as you dont have drop my signal ATT service. Has friends with droids and iphones that get raped every month by the service provider to have access to this nifty trick features they use, ummm, not very often. Oh and lets not forget the GPS dingle- that single purpose deal is sweet without being locked into an A-GPS service requirement. VZ-navigator can suck my gadget- cause that is a rip off too. Smart people pay more up front to save even more in the long run. Over the life of these smart phones, their costs vastly exceed the price of a normal phone, touch and gps unit purchased separately. It is sorta like the difference between using a very expensive Slow Self Discharge NiMH AA rather than an Alkaline; upfront the SSD NiMH with charging infrastructure might be $30, but add up what most people spend to buy hundreds of Alkaline batteries over time and it should become perfectly clear what I mean about the difference between upfront capital cost penalty for long term recurring cost savings; smart people think ahead more than a few months~
@Yanguang ^^ I hope so, but am skeptical to the point of doubting that humans (considering our history up until this moment) have never produced anything perfect, and more than likely never will~
We cant even figure out how to move on from COAL to Wind Power, when the Dutch have been using wind since the 1400's. LOL
Apple would never style their tablet like this. When you say 'cue' do you actually mean 'black faced touch screen device' ? (nothing racist intended...honestly...)
@New Reformation
dang. I could sworn you used the phrase 'design cue' in the above article. Oh well my point remains, now I just look a tad foolish.
The writer did say cue in a similar sense that you interpreted. You're good, mang.
@Mapex
This is clearly a case for the ability to edit our posts. I posted my second post only to *facedesk* seconds later. I will probably do the same after hitting submit this time as well...
Ah yes well I hope Apple sues the pants of these people since Apple has obviously trademarked and patented brushed metal and the colour black.
Funny this actually looks like the classic Braun appliances that Mr. Ive pays homage to.
@fourthletter Yeah I'm not sure what kind of insane bent engadget is on, but having an LCD screen and rounded corners isn't some exclusive domain of Apple design.
Not bad, just a tad thick & needs a little more space. Other that that, I don't see why it wouldn't sell....
@Wil2Win it won't sell if it has those wimpy specs listed in this blog, especially if the price is anything more than the $299 price point. I hope the Apple tablet busts in with some uber sic super tight Itunes syncing App store pimping, SOC battery thrify, spec heavy, slinky kinky slut master hard ware pimp action to smash on these sissy saucy dingle berries~
128MB of memory, come on! the 2G Ipod touch has that much! Lets get with the times and go for at least 256 or 512 or God for bid a 1GB, as if a gig of ram cost that much~ WTF
This thing is absolute shit! Is that a fucking Kensington lock on the top? What the hell?
wait...
It's seven inches. There might be something here...
@Jeff I know girls that say same the same thing about size *wait there is seven inches, hmmm, perhaps this is something worth playing with~
@cosmicinglewood
Haha, exactly! I started typing before reading, then was like ohh its seven inches, not five.
a quick google search for "sungworld mid" has results all saying it has 512 mb RAM and an HDMI port. of course, they all seem to be copied from the same source, and I'm not sure exactly what that source is.
How can it look "apple-ish" if Apple hasn't released a Tablet/MID yet?
Wouldn't it be the other way around Engadget?
@Solidstate89 Have you looked at an iphone or ipod touch or unibody macbook recently? Duh, thats how this looks Apple like~ not the other way around McFly~
It looks promising really, but i would have given it a silverish titaniium gloss finish on the front, rather than black...
@robindahoods can you say the words contrast and glare? Black is the best bezel color for any back lit surface for self evident and irrefutable reasons~ now gloss vs flat is the real issue; and flat black acts much less like a mirror than gloss black, especially if the uber greedy hardware makers throw some AR action on that gorilla glass touch interface.
Apple's tablet could be good for surgeons looking for a stylish way to explain procedures to patients in clinics. I might pick it up. My smartphone will be an Android, my laptop and desktop a PC... so this might be the only Apple product I buy. Even though I think a fashionable Windows 7 tablet would have more functionality for me than anything from the fruit company.
And yet you chose to start and end your brackish comment with the company. Get real -there is more to imitation!
Rkhosa
128mb of RAM? Really I dont know why these companys (Apple,Google,MSFT,Sony etc) always never give enough ram for their devices?
@Federaly Woot Woot, are these hardware dim wipes listening to us or what? Where TF is the ram in these things? They run like a wet donkey without more ram, and I can fully attest to the boost in performance from the 2G to the 3G Ipod Touch with a mild CPU boost and double the ram, from the lame 128 to the slightly acceptable 256 level. Yo hardware vendors, get you greed on the DL and give us some more freaking ram in this hard dingles~
upgrade the RAM (128MB!? ... at least 768MB, if not 1GB)
change the HDMI to DVI-I
change the screen to a 10" PixelQi display
and then I'd be interested.
Call me strange (wouldn't be the first time) but as a person who uses computers all day and also visits clients all day I am not sure 7 inch (17.5cm) is a sensible size. Too big to fit in a pocket and too small to be able to render a decent size on screen keyboard.
I would like something about A4 paper size and 1.5cm thick for my sort of use. Would love to see also the ability to plug into a wireless keyboard or even a standard keyboard. And of course memory is like money, one can never have too much !!!
2 gb storage?
No thanx I'll stick to my trendy 64gb iPod touch with 120,000 app store it's all about what a company gives the consumer.
So far apple gives the most.
All other brands r still following
Playing catch up.
@logic thinker that is some logical thinking: the touch is the ultimate mid, pmp, pda, accelerometer, touch screen, app accessible thing available to consumers and for the price it whips the llama's dongles that these other posers make and call mid.
Had Sungworld watched the Terminator trilogy, they'd have known that it's futile to fight the future; you can only delay the inevitable.
Guessing from gadget blogs apple has apparently patented minimalist design ...
@neonn
That's a damn good idea. They need to find some way to stop the copycats. I'm waiting for the day when apple growers everywhere have to pay royalties to Apple, Inc. for using the name.
It's good looking, maybe a bit too thick and the black border around the screen is wide enough to be kind of annoying.
But despite the round home button on the front, doesn't look like an Apple product at all. It has some hard lines in the design, and the ports and lights around the edge don't line up and aren't sorted by size (which is a shame when I think about it.)
An android mid tablet with some muscle, a SIM slot, agood camera /videocam and an HDMI port would fly off the shelves and I would stay in queue to grab one.
I don't think we're gonna see one any time soon anyway, coz such a device would risk to cannibalize sales of e-readers,PMPs, car DVD players/infotainement sets, GPS/ sat nav units, small videocams/point & shoot, digiframes, netbooks/culv netbooks and smartphones in a single stroke , specially if it would happen to work properly and don't look ridiculous.
And we all know someone would'nt like that, uh?
I love the styling of it!
@fac51 Agree, I would rather have a shape not dissimilar from this than a more beveled slate.. I want my tablet to feel solid in hand.
so, i see these things on ebay now - has anyone held one in their hands yet? It'd be great to see an actual review.