Ben Nanonote Now On Sale

[klikklak]

TuxBrain is selling the Ben NanoNote in Europe for 99€. Ben is basically an Dingoo equivalent when it comes to the specs, but it has a full keyboard instead of gaming controls. This hasn't stopped some games from being ported to it. It's main claim to fame is that it's free hardware, meaning that all schematics and code is freely available. The distro they use is OpenWRT, 'famous' from running on Linksys routers.

Nanonote
Specifications:
336 MHz XBurst Jz4720 MIPS-compatible CPU
display: 3.0” color TFT
resolution: 320 x 240, 16.7M color
dimension (mm): 99 x 75 x 17.5 (lid closed)
weight: 126 g (incl. battery)
DRAM: 32MB Synchronous DRAM
headphone jack (3.5 mm)
SDHC microSD
850mAh Li-ion battery
2GB NAND flash memory
mini-USB: USB 2.0 High-Speed Device
speaker and microphone

 

[quote]

Wow! Craig will just have to get some of these in stock!

 

[cbox]

Is it just me or is the specs on that pretty underwhelming, considering there are ARM and Atom based netbooks for about the same price or a little more?

 

[craigix]

Wow! Craig will just have to get some of these in stock!

I'm tired of these devices, the last bunch of them we got were just too bad quality wise to sell. This constant quest for the lowest priced device is really destroying what could have been an interesting time.

 

[klikklak]

CBOX, it's dingoo sized and dingoo priced. Also they're not aiming for super high end specs, but rather are looking forward to underclocking it for batterylife. I won't go in to the netbook vs. pandora debate as that's been talked to death, this one doesn't have gaming controls but is pocketable.

Craigix, this isn't an unknown chinese ripoff but rather some devs from OpenMoko splitting off to try an incremental approach to the free handheld issue. Also their site Copyleft hardware planet lists pandora news on it too, so you could think of it as an sister project to pandora. Of course pandora doesn't take such an hardcore approach to hardware & software freedom as the qi-hardware people do.

 

[cbox]

Well for palmtop computing, I don't think 320 x 240 and around 300 mhz will cut it. Plus only 850 mah battery? Probably won't last more than an hour or two. Pretty disappointing specs.

 

[klikklak]

I saw a mention of 9hrs battery life, but I can't find the link anywhere. 9h is pretty good and if they get some suspend love then it should do for a full days use of wikipedia or whatever that thing could do.

Frankly I've got a bit of a dilemma here, I've already got a wiz and I'm supposed to pay for a pandora preorder next week. But I don't have money to let sit as an 'investment' somewhere and I do like the copyleft hardware side of the NanoNote. But it's also profoundly useless. A portable wikipedia, ok, got a phone already, media playback, ok, got a wiz already, no amiga emulation as there is no touchscreen, same for many other gaming applications. Then again, use cases could materialize when people get their hands on them. Meh, I say, Meh. I probably should delay everything and just save money for a phone.

 

[Exophase]

I saw a mention of 9hrs battery life, but I can't find the link anywhere. 9h is pretty good and if they get some suspend love then it should do for a full days use of wikipedia or whatever that thing could do.

Yeah and I've got a 9V battery that keeps my house lit all night

Think about this claim for a minute. They're selling you a device that's roughly the same hardware as the Dingoo, but with a battery that's half the capacity. Dingoo lasts about 7 hours doing the usual things, ie games and emulators and whatever. So you'd expect this to last 3.5 hours when doing similar things. 9 hours is nearly three times that. Maybe it's true that you'd be doing less intensive things on this device, but that can go for anything. I doubt you'll sustain 9 hours doing ANYTHING useful.

I know I've voiced my opinion on this in another thread about it, but I just don't see the appeal. There is not a single thing about it that something else can't do much better, it fails on every single count. Yes, it's "open hardware", but I don't see what that has to do with the quality of the device. They'd may as well be trying to sell me based on their mission work in Africa. The only thing I'm really getting from this is that open source hardware sucks. I hope I'm eventually proven wrong.

 

[DrAltaica]

Hay. cbox stop trolling this Just because you're a idiot and want a palmtop web browser appliance;You are never going to get a a palmtop web browser appliance. At least not until you get 8 inch hands or about 4X vision. You can't go above about 150dpi as MS found out with their VGA winCE devices.


320x240 color & 300mhz is plenty for palmtop COMPUTING(Palm's only had 160x160 monochrome 1bit oficaly but hackable for 2bit) and even palmtop gaming (All Xbox games are only 544x408(MicroSoft requires that all games run in the middle 544x408))

 

[DrAltaica]

Yeah and I've got a 9V battery that keeps my house lit all night

Think about this claim for a minute. They're selling you a device that's roughly the same hardware as the Dingoo,

roughly may ass
The only thing we know that roughly the same power usage wise in the CPU. The screen and RAM we know nothing about. Besides that we don't know the if they are using the same battery chemistry or about the power regulator. So we don't know the watts per hour the Dingoo or the Nen Nanonote use and we don't know the user usable watt-hours that the power supply. IS Dingoo used what ever what cheapist and the NanoNote folks use lower power componits it easy to explain the difference in the run-time per maH ratios.

and remember the Dingoo folks didn't even bother to fully wire the display to the controller.

 

[Exophase]

roughly may ass
The only thing we know that roughly the same power usage wise in the CPU. The screen and RAM we know nothing about. Besides that we don't know the if they are using the same battery chemistry or about the power regulator. So we don't know the watts per hour the Dingoo or the Nen Nanonote use and we don't know the user usable watt-hours that the power supply. IS Dingoo used what ever what cheapist and the NanoNote folks use lower power componits it easy to explain the difference in the run-time per maH ratios.

and remember the Dingoo folks didn't even bother to fully wire the display to the controller.

Dude, get real. Okay, I don't know what you mean by the Dingoo folks "not fully wiring the controller." But we know plenty about those items. 320x240 TFT LCD screen? Check. 32MB SDRAM? Check. microSD slot? Check. It's the same damn thing in almost every way except controls. Any possible differences in these items would be splitting hairs at best. It's not using that 320x240 TFT LCD that's 3x better (Dingoo's is already fine), it's not using that single-rate SDRAM that's 5x faster (there's no speed variance like this), and the exact same SoC defines the vast majority of its functionality otherwise.

Also, the SoC and screen will utterly dominate the power consumption. You think the battery chemistry means the real capacity is different? We're talking about two lithium-ion batteries; with the Nanonote's one at much lower capacity you're assuming that Dingoo are the ones cutting corners? Fact is that Dingoo has very good battery life; the 9 hour Nanonote claim is just a fantasy. The explanation is not electrical, it's that it's made up (or at best, under very very different runtime loads, where if you put the Dingoo under similar loads it'd last 15+ hours). That is, unless Dingoo's power regulator is 80% efficient and Nanonote's is 300% efficient.

Face it, even if there really are substantial differences in these details it's still grasping at straws. This is a Dingoo with a lame keyboard instead of gaming controls, and a higher price tag. And no USB, can't forget that.

 

[lulzfish]

Can't remember, does this have Wi-Fi or not?

 

[Exophase]

Can't remember, does this have Wi-Fi or not?

Guess.

(the answer is no)

 

[cbox]

I'm the one trolling? You're the one trying to sell a crappy device.

 

[Firefox]

I really want to like this device, but it's difficult not to compare it to the Zipit Z2 which does the same thing much better for less money. And has wifi.

 

[OrR]

Hay. cbox stop trolling this Just because you're a idiot and want a palmtop web browser appliance;You are never going to get a a palmtop web browser appliance. At least not until you get 8 inch hands or about 4X vision. You can't go above about 150dpi as MS found out with their VGA winCE devices.


320x240 color & 300mhz is plenty for palmtop COMPUTING(Palm's only had 160x160 monochrome 1bit oficaly but hackable for 2bit) and even palmtop gaming (All Xbox games are only 544x408(MicroSoft requires that all games run in the middle 544x408))

You're wrong.
Web browsing with a capacitive multitouch screen works very well on Pre and iPhone. With good eyes, I imagine the N900 browser even works without much zooming and horizontal scrolling although I haven't tried it, yet.
Sure, you can do gaming on a 48*32 Game King, and it's actually fun. But wouldn't you rather have a resolution where you can't see the individual pixels? Same is true for reading (which is a big part of computing and web browsing). 320*240 is rather limited, and without fast zooming and scrolling even more so.
Sure, a horse was a great transport method. Back when they hadn't invented the car, yet.
I don't really see the appeal of this device, either. Of course, that's also because I have a modern smartphone and a Pandora on preorder. It could be pretty cool for someone without much money, who doesn't own any modern handheld but without net connection and touchscreen, it is too limited IMO.

About the runtime claim: Maybe that's with the LCD backlight turned off?

 

[baybal]

For this price, on European market, pretty impressive! Next step would be placing something A5 or A8 based pocketable for the same price and bigger display. I think it's possible, as there are internet capable electronic vocabularies based on A8 based imxes within 150$ range already on the market.

 

[klikklak]

They've got an incremental strategy, so they'll be financing their future revisions on the funds from this. The specs are still being decided on and they're doing that pandora style on their pages. I wish they'd put a pixel-qi screen on the next one, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[quote]

Wow! Craig will just have to get some of these in stock!

I'm tired of these devices, the last bunch of them we got were just too bad quality wise to sell. This constant quest for the lowest priced device is really destroying what could have been an interesting time.

Sorry if I offended you in any way, btw. And yeah, I think we got lucky with the JXD301 and the Dingoo. Shame that the JXD just didn't last long enough, hopefully the dingoo will do a bit better.

 

[trooper]

Wow! Craig will just have to get some of these in stock!

I'm tired of these devices, the last bunch of them we got were just too bad quality wise to sell. This constant quest for the lowest priced device is really destroying what could have been an interesting time.

Sorry if I offended you in any way, btw. And yeah, I think we got lucky with the JXD301 and the Dingoo. Shame that the JXD just didn't last long enough, hopefully the dingoo will do a bit better.

In my honest opinion, The Dingoo has been one of the most successful "Cheap MP4" devices, With regards to homebrew and community support, Outside of the Gamepark/GPH line of devices. The JXD 301 (of which i still have mine (working)), Never had the chance to be successful. Mainly for two reasons, 1) It was pretty hard to hack for homebrew (nigh-on impossible), 2) The manufactures stopped producing it a short while after people started the task of trying to hack the device. Which put the final nail in the JXD 301`s coffin, As there was no point in trying to hack a device that was not produced anymore.

It was still a pretty popular device, As-far-as "Cheap MP4 players`s" go, And there will be plenty more for them to follow, As competition can only be a good thing.

Trooper