First Centrino Atom portable coming to Japan in June

SHARP WILL BE FIRST off the mark to offer a mobile computer based on Intel's Centrino Atom chip. Its D4 is to be released and distributed by Japanese mobile operator Willcom, as early as June. The device, however, sadly doesn’t quite live up to expectations of small sizes or ‘small’ prices according to MacWorld.

Willcom, Japan's fourth largest mobile service operator, will purportedly sell the D4 for ¥39,800 (US$395) on a two-year service plan that comes to ¥2,100 ($20) a month. This means that the overall cost of the device is a rather expensive ¥90,200 ($893). When Intel had previously talked about their upcoming Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), the firm had tentatively priced them at only about $500. So it seems that the price is upwardly mobile too.

The first devices to be based on Chipzilla’s Centrino Atom were unveiled at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai recently. The Centrino Atom was developed by the chip behemoth for small, pocketable devices based on Linux,. The firm has showed laptop prototypes of just such devices. But Chipzilla had also announced that about 20 other devices based on the diminutive chip would be released soon, and it appears that the D4 is one of them.

At 84 mm by 192mm by 26mm and weighing in at 470 grams, the D4 isn’t exactly the most comfortable thing to shove in your pocket, but it is portable. To make up for the fact that nobody really wants to carry a brick around as a handset all day, Willcom has decided to offer a smaller cell phone to go with it. The cell phone will have a Bluetooth connection to the D4, which you can dump in your bag or on the nearest table. Sounds practical, eh?

As for the device’s specs, Sharp’s little portable brick does come with a 1.33GHz Atom processor, a five-inch widescreen display, 1G byte of RAM, 40G-byte of hard disk, a two-megapixel camera and of course Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It also boasts a slide-out 64-key keyboard and a tilty-uppy monitor. Instead of running Linux though, the D4 runs Vista, and therefore includes the Vole’s 2007 Office set. So an expensive brick running Vista then. Bet the Japanese can’t wait. µ

See Also
Pioneer pioneers Centrino 2 in Oz

L’Inq
MacWorld