Cebit: Samsung Revamps Ultra-Mobile PC

One year after Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. introduced its first Q1 ultra-mobile PC, the company has revamped the device, making it lighter and more powerful.

The new device, called Q1 Ultra, will be unveiled Thursday during a press conference at the Cebit exhibition in Hanover, Germany.

Weighing in at 690 grams, the Q1 Ultra is 12 percent lighter than the original Q1, which weighs 780 grams. It's also slightly smaller. The Q1 Ultra measures 228 millimeters by 124mm by 24 mm, compared to the Q1, which measures 228 mm by 140mm by 27mm. The improvements will make the device easier to carry around.

Other changes include a sleeker overall look and a 7-inch touchscreen LCD (liquid crystal display) that offers 1,024-pixel by 600-pixel resolution, instead of the 800-pixel by 480-pixel resolution of the original. In addition, the touch-screen keypad on the Q1 has been replaced by a hardware keypad. The keypad is still divided in two parts, with half on each side of the device, so that users can type while holding the Q1 Ultra with both hands.

The Q1 Ultra ships with an 800MHz Intel Corp. microprocessor, 1G byte of DDR2 (double data rate 2) memory, and an external USB keyboard, and adds support for HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks and WiBro, a mobile version of WiMax, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Optional extras will include a fingerprint scanner, dual digital cameras and a navigation pack.

As expected, the Q1 Ultra also received a software upgrade, shipping with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista Home Premium operating system instead of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.

Pricing and availability of the Q1 Ultra were not immediately available. The Q1 is on sale from about US$1,300 to $2,000, depending on the processor.