The SmartQ V7 is now available at Allpmp for $238.90/€159.60 and is dubbed an ‘HDMID’, which basically means it now also supports HD video up to 1080p. Ofcourse, watching hi def movies on a 800×480 screen wouldn’t be tremendously useful, so Smart Devices decided to drop the USB OTG port and replace it with an HDMI port. They also decided to double the RAM and built-in flash memory to respectively 256MB and 2GB, so the device should work a bit more snappy. Sadly, all this comes at a rather steep 25% price increase, which almost places this device in the netbook price range. Luckily the SmartQ 7 is still available for $189.10/€126.33 for those who don’t need HD video playback.
It doesn’t happen too often that a company from China releases a device that immediately sparks a buzz amongst tech enthusiasts around the globe. Meizu managed to do it with their products, and now it’s Smart Devices’ turn with their Linux based SmartQ 5 and SmartQ 7 Mobile Internet Devices(MIDs). The SmartQ 5 is the smallest of the two, but unlike the term MID suggests, this pocket sized device is capable of doing much more than just some simple web browsing, mailing and instant messaging. Driven by a Ubuntu based Linux OS, the SmartQ 5 is perfectly capable of performing tasks like running e-book/comic book readers, remote desktop apps, torrent clients and some light multimedia playback. (more…)
Everybody’s favorite 7″ mobile internet device is now available in pink for $204.90/€143.35 at Allpmp. Besides the new color, nothing has changed. It’s still the same MID we all love with it’s 7″ 800×480 touchscreen, wifi, bluetooth, multiple operating systems and tons of free applications.
While the default software keyboard of the SmartQ 5 / 7 functions pretty well, there were some things I just didn’t like. The cursor keys had a horrible layout (up, down, left, right on one line), you couldn’t enter any special characters, it didn’t have function keys and the backspace key was just too small. I decided to make my own keyboard layout…
So far, so good. The SmartQ 5 arrived in a slick and solid box. Nothing too fancy, but it will make sure the device will survive a long flight from China. Build quality of the MID is quite decent. The SmartQ 5 doesn’t sport the chrome edges pictured on the box, so it doesn’t have that iPod Touch knockoff look. The default OS is a bit sluggish, but is still pretty usable for most tasks. I ordered it from Allpmp.com for $154.90/€109. Full review coming soon and some photos after the break.
