Comments on: Open-Plug Confirms What We Knew: Intel MIDs to be Smartphones

By: Patrick Moorhead

Patrick Moorhead — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:00:09 +0000

Battery life will be a very interesting thing to measure here.

While “talk time” and “standby time” are standards for phones, what about internet, video, audio, streaming, webcasting be on a MID?

My thoughts here: http://budurl.com/SPBattLife

By: Scotty

Scotty — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 01:15:41 +0000

I think Intel is missing the future here.

Consider, a MID with a Broadband 3G capability needs a broadband contract. If you then run Skype or Vonage (or some other SIP soft phone) that’s all you need. I’m currently doing this with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 on my Sony Vaio P and it’s Verizon Wireless Broadband Connect card.

If you add a silly cell phone stack then you need a voice contract and minutes plan.

I think where Intel should put their R&D $$$ is into a broadband card stack that has a low power standby mode that lets it wake when SIP traffic etc comes in.

I’d much rather have my Vaio P wake and buzz my HBH-IS800′s to let me know I have an incoming SIP call than need to buy cellphone voice service.

And if you say the Vaio P weighs too much, I’ve carried cellphones that weighed more than the Vaio P and did far less and with less battery life. :-)

By: tal

tal — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:26:41 +0000

Its kind of silly of Intel to think that they can be the 7th OS (and the 4th open OS) for smartphones (counting pre, iphone, android, rim, symbian and winmo). Not that MIDs were so hot either without the phone capability.
Just saying that regardless of the hardware, atom or not, low cost netbook like architectures will get into the smartphone landscape as we all notice already, and then Android and Windows (7?) will have better chances.
In fact this blend is the one thing in my view that can save Android at its current miserable state.