Specs

Here are some new facts I gathered from the meeting. First, the device runs a 1.6GHz Atom processor with 1GB RAM. The guys at JooJoo said they weren't ready to reveal specs yet, but I saw the bootup sequence—a standard BIOS setup that displayed what it was booting to—and saw the specs. Chandra, CEO of Fusion Garage, says that the demo hardware was basically the final hardware, so it's easy to put two and two together.

As for the graphics card + CPU combination, it's probably an Nvidia Ion chipset. They claim that it handles 1080p YouTube video fine—we only got to see a few seconds of 720p and 1080p HD YouTube video because the internet connection was acting up—so it's probably an Ion. But the HD video we tested looked just fine on its 12-inch, 1366x768 resolution screen. Again, the Ion chipset is just an educated guess, but there are few other hardware options that can handle 1080p video smoothly, and an Atom CPU by itself (which we did see) can't do it on its own.

There is a headphone jack, a microphone jack, a built-in webcam at 1.3 megapixels, a charging port and a USB slot. The external card slot present in the prototype isn't going to make it to the final version, but they are thinking of making it available to put a 3G card in there in the future. No TV out/HDMI out yet, but they are thinking about that. There are built-in speakers for playing back audio without headphones, and they're decent enough that you can actually listen to them, but you'll want to plug them in to speakers for any kind of extended video consumption.

Performance

The tablet actually handled pretty well, with browsing web pages, transitioning between tabs (windows) and opening up new web pages working fine. There's an accelerometer in there to detect between vertical and horizontal orientations.

The body is solid, sturdy and graced with a bright 12-inch screen. The back is curved and made of a plastic that feels nice in your hand, and the whole thing doesn't seem too heavy to prop up on a bed or a toilet.

In short, it's an actual web browsing tablet that you'd be perfectly fine using.

The software

The entire system is basically a gateway to your browser, which is based off WebKit, the same code that powers Safari and Google's Chrome. It's fast, and handles gestures (pinching to go back a level, swiping to move up and down) just fine. There are other gestures that will be included in the final build, like two finger swiping for going back and forth in history and a bookmark swipe, but we didn't get to see that. But, you can't zoom into text. That's partially because the pinching is already used for going in and out of your windows into the home screen, but also partially because the screen is 12 inches. You don't need to really zoom into text on a laptop-sized screen of 12 inches. And they also said they may make LARGER sized tablets as well, with 12 being their smallest size.

JooJoo's keyboard looks like this, and takes up only a portion of the screen. It's usable, but you don't want to use it to bang out a blog post; this is mainly for consuming media.

Fusion Garage's concept for the product is that the "internet is the application", which means you can't save photos or files locally and you can't access any of the 4GB of storage to do any user level stuff. The most you can dictate is how much each internet application (e.g. Gmail or Google Wave) can have for a local cache.

It does support Flash as usual, except when you play HD Flash it'll force you into fullscreen mode to render better/faster. And if you want to read PDFs, it'll force you into Google's web-based PDF doc reader. So it handles PDFs, but not "natively".

Your home screen is composed almost entirely of icons—shortcuts—to web applications. The screen is customizable with your own applications, eventually, and has a weird feature where it displays a different color background whenever you go back to it. Fusion Garage is thinking of taking this out, or swapping it with some other feature.

As for multitasking, Fusion Garage says that they will have specific APIs available to webapps to incorporate in order to pass notifications up to the user. For example, if Twitter refreshes in another window and you're watching a YouTube video, a popup will show and tell you you have something else going on. The APIs will be available at launch, but it's up to websites to support them.

How good is it?

Despite its weird birth issues this past week with all the Arrington trouble, the JooJoo is surprisingly solid. You can tell Fusion Garage spent a good deal of time polishing the hardware, by the fact that they managed to include a 12-inch screen that's decent enough to not have lousy viewing angles, plus support 1080p HD video playback.

The only trouble right now is software, which is only about 75% done. Fusion Garage plans to ship devices about 8-10 weeks after preorders, which start this friday. If FG can manage to finish the software and get it to a point where it's transparent to the user who just wants to get online, $500 isn't too outrageous a price to pay. Decent netbooks are around that price, and it's about the price you'd expect Apple to charge for their tablet, if not even more. We'd of course be very happy if it were down at $300 or $400, but it's basically a new device in a new market, and you'll have to hand over a little extra for being an early adopter.

So right now we're at a wait and see status. The JooJoo seems good, from our time with it, but it really needs to be taken home and thoroughly tested with different webapps, watching a lot of HD video and streaming music. At the very least, we'll see how much of that 5-hour battery life stands up to constant use. You can pre-order it yourself this Friday, but, since there's some legal troubles on the horizon, you probably want to wait until the whole thing clears up first before putting any money down. [JooJoo]

A MyDellMini forum member by the name of Rob is the man responsible for this elegant mod, turning his Del Vostro A9 (business version of the Mini 9) into a Windows 7 touchscreen with a 16GB SSD, WiFi, Bluetooth, 1GB of RAM and an Intel Atom N270 processor. Rob is also planning to add an accelerometer to automatically adjust the screen orientation and a small USB fan to help keep the temperature down. If you think you are up to doing a similar conversion, Rob has laid out details of the build in his forum post. [MyDellMini via Slashgear]

Accordingy to Current.com.au, Danny Bejanoff of local distributor C.R. Kennedy says that iRiver hopes to launch an Android-based iPod Touch rival next year. Dubbed the K2, the device would have a 3.5-inch display, touch screen, Wi-Fi, built-in browser, accelerometer, Bluetooth, and even a digital TV tuner. The catch? Apparently the project is not yet 100 percent signed off.

Bejanoff went on to say that he also hopes to soon test a new iRiver e-book reader and Internet tablet. Is a three-way Web Tablet Battlemodo between iRiver, the possible Apple tablet and the CrunchPad looming? Did Current.com.au get Bejanoff drunk for that interview? If so, I'm Australian, why wasn't I invited?

[Current.com.au via Gizmodo Australia]

Superfically, not much has changed from the previous prototype, except the updated CrunchPad now has an aluminum case and is 18mm thinner. The software has been updated too—as you can see in the video below—and boots directly into its Linux/Webkit-based browser. As for when you can get your hands on one of these, TechCrunch is currently working with partners to bring the $300 web tablet to the market. [TechCrunch]

"In the longer perspective, Linux will become a serious alternative for our high-end phones," Ukko Lappalainen, vice president at Nokia's markets unit, told Reuters.

"I don't see anything in Android which would make it better than Linux maemo," Lappalainen said."

These statements aren't necessarily a surprise, because with any mention of Linux, Nokians tend to shout Maemo like a reflex action.

One thing that came to mind when playing with the new N97 is that it is pretty close to the Internet Tablet Phone I wanted—the desktop widgets heralded as a grounbreaking way for users to customize their phones are incredibly similar to what Maemo has had since the beginning, and the hardware is very similar to the current top-end tablet, the N810. The only difference is Symbian, of course—Nokia's prize horse that they won't be giving up on any time soon.

So it makes sense they would dis Android. Nokia (or, at least, certain teams within Nokia) has been huge proponents of open source software long before Android was a twinkle in Larry and Sergey's eye. But where's the Maemophone? [Reuters]

Well, it sure looks like a camera at least. How great would such a device be if coupled with a super powerful image search engine?

Really great. That's how great. Really great. [anythingbutipod]

The interface on an N800 tablet:

And the video:

[Nokia Smart Spaces Lab via Reg Hardware]

It also adds GPS capability with tons of preloaded maps complete with points of interest to get you where you want to go. It has 2GB of internal storage, but when you stick a 10GB memory card in there, you can be well stocked with music, too, or view videos on its 4.13-inch 800x480 wide touchscreen.

While that's the same rez as its Nokia N800 predecessor, the N810 improves upon that with a 20% brighter screen and a 400MHz processor. Shipping in November, it's a pretty good deal at $479. [Nokia]

Nokia N810 Specifications
General
Operating Frequency
* Volume: 128 cc
* Weight: 226 g
* Length: 72 mm
* Width: 128 mm
* Thickness: 14 mm

Display
* High-resolution 4.13" WVGA display (800 x 480 pixels) with up to 65,000 colors

Processor
* TI OMAP 2420, 400Mhz

Memory
* DDR RAM 128MB
* Flash 256MB

Storage
* Up to 2GB internal memory
* Support for compatible miniSD and microSD memory cards (with extender). Supports cards up to 8GB. (SD cards over 2GB must be SDHC compatible.)

Operating times*
* Battery: Nokia Maps BP-4L
* Continuous usage (display on, wireless LAN active): up to 4 hours
* Music playback: up to 10 hours
* Always online time: up to 5 days
* Standby time: up to 14 days

*Operating times may vary depending on the radio access technology used, configuration and usage. The availability of the product and its features depend on your area and service providers, so please contact them and your Nokia dealer for further information.

Other characteristics
* Smooth slide with integrated QWERTY keyboard
* Built-in GPS receiver
* High quality stereo speakers and sensitive microphone
* High-resolution widescreen display
* Integrated desk stand
* Integrated VGA web camera
* HW key to lock touch screen and keys
* Ambient light sensor

Connectivity
* WLAN standard: IEEE 802.11b/g
* Bluetooth specification v. 2.0. +EDR
o Profiles supported: HID, FTP, DUN, GAP, SPP, HSP, SAP and OPP
* USB 2.0 high speed
* 3.5 mm stereo headphone plug (Nokia AV Connector)

Language support
* HW keyboard variants: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish-Portuguese, Scandinavian and Russian
* User interface languages: British English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, American English, Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Latin American Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese
* User guide languages: British English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, American English, Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Latin American Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Arabic

Internet Tablet OS: maemo Linux based OS2008
General
* Easy install for new applications, applets, and personalization
* Operating system updates available over the Internet

Web Browsing
* Browser based on Mozilla technology with state-of-the-art web standard support including AJAX
* Page navigation with scrolling, panning or using hardware buttons, zooming in and out of web sites.
* Full desktop Adobe® Flash® 9 plugin, including video and audio streaming

Media
* In-built media player for viewing and listening to downloaded, transfered or streamed media content and easy-on-device management of media library
* Direct access to shared media over Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)
* Supported video formats: 3GP, AVI, WMV, MP4, H263, H.264, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, RV (RealVideo)
* Supported audio formats: MP3, WMA, AAC, AMR, AWB, M4A, MP2, RA (RealAudio), WAV
* Supported playlist formats: M3U, PLS, ASX, WAX, WVX, WPL

Communications
* Internet messaging and calling with video
* Effortless and automated presence and contacts application for centralizing communication tasks
* SIP support and interoperability with industry standard services

Map
* Map application with pre-loaded maps including points of interests
* Premium services available on purchase including Wayfinder navigation

E-mail
* Browser access to familiar webmail services
* E-mail application for personal e-mail usage with IMAP, STMP, and POP3 support

Images
* Full-screen image viewing and slideshow functionality
* Supported Image formats: BMP, GIF, ICI, JPE, JPEG, PNG, TIF/TIFF, SVG, Tiny, WBMP

RSS Reader
* Reader for subscribing, managing and keeping up-to date with web feeds
* Support for RSS 1.0/2.0 and Atom 1.0

Utilities
* File manager
* PDF reader
* Clock
* Games chess, blocks, mahjong and marbles
* Backup and restore

Input Methods
* HW keyboard, full screen finger keyboard and on-screen keyboard
[NSeries]

The 4.1-inch display is great, thanks to its 800 x 480 resolution and unlike the 770 which choked on certain websites...

the N800 is capable of feeding your MySpace addiction with no troubles, thanks to its speedier CPU. Battery life is respectable at 5 to 6 hours, but where it could use improvement is with its selection of apps. The N800 lacks some sort of Office suite. Pre-formatted movies that support the device's screen/resolution would also be a welcome addition. Otherwise, the N800 is a clear winner. – Louis Ramirez

Product Page [via MobileCrunch]

A New Product Category [Internet Table Talk]