Viliv S7 is Your 3rd Device?
For years, the high-tech industry has been trying to give you a 3rd device that you would carry around along with your cell phone and laptop. Viliv might be the closest yet to being your 3rd device.
- Intel Atom 1.33/1.86 GHz
- 7” WSVGA touch screen
- 1GB Memory
- WiMAX; HSDPA
- 802.11b/g
- Integrated GPS receiver
- Bluetooth 2.0
- 1.3MPixel Camera
- 7 hours of battery life with continuous use; 200 hours standby.
- Windows XP
Wow, the S7 is small and light yet powerful. Its unique swivel design and touch capabilities give it a leg up among its competitors. We’d be pretty impressed if its battery life claims hold true.
How To Improve the S7?
Well, we said that the S7 is close to being your 3rd device, but we don’t think it’s quite there yet. Here are some things that can improve its chances:
- Put Windows 7 on it instead of Win XP. This is a no-brainer. We are sure Viliv will do that once Win7 becomes available.
- Make the screen larger. 7” is too dinky. There is still a lot of room to grow the screen before the overall unit size needs to increase.
- E-Book Support. We’d like to have this thing replace our beloved Kindle. If we can buy books from Amazon.com from the S7 as smoothly as we can with the Kindle, this will be a winner.
- Always Connected. Other than the e-book experience of the Kindle, we also love its always-on connectivity without subscription fees. Can we have that with the S7 too? (We can dream, can’t we?)
- First-class Navigation Experience. Ya, it’d be great if we can get rid of our Garmin navigation device too. We know you have a GPS built-in, but it doesn’t mean you will have turn-by-turn software with the ability to speak street names. Surprise us!
The Korean company is keeping us in the dark so far about the pricing, but they did say the S7 will ship in Q1 2009, presumably in Korea first. Who knows when it will make it to North America. In the meantime, the hands-on review video from UMPC Portal below is the closest we will get to the S7.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:17 am
With the rapid expansion of smartphone functions, perhaps keyboard docks can incorporate more memory and disk space and become useful 3rd devices too.
January 19th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Do you mean you can transform the docks and accessories into something useful?
January 20th, 2009 at 8:26 am
I mean perhaps a universal docking device can be made to turn any smartphone into a mini-netbook, by using the smartphone screen for display and its 3G connection to access the net. Just a thought.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Yes, yes! I would love to use my phone as a netbook. I just need it to be hooked up to a screen and keyboard, which are lying around everywhere, and I’m good. Could someone please manufacture a sceenboard which folds into a pocketable size? Just a keyboard like the Igo Stowaway together with an 8 inch screen…
January 28th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Martin, we are totally with you on that! Make my phone look and feel like a phone, but make it capable of running as a full PC. Let me just dock it into a screen/keyboard combo, and let me run full Windows or Mac OS!