MIDs will prevail in the portable device battle

RUMOURS THAT APPLE is about to launch a tablet, similar to the Ipod Touch but larger, have been big on excitement and short on detail. One thing is for sure - if Apple does not come up with one, it risks falling behind in what could become the most important transition in hardware since the late seventies when microprocessors brought nearly mainframe-like power to the desktop.

Thirty years on, that power is coming for the first time to truly portable computers, that is, machines small enough to be carried by choice rather than necessity. They are already changing the industry and they will surely evolve into the definitive platform of the early 21st century.

The enabling technologies, particularly battery-friendly processors and screens, impose few serious constraints on the format of machines, allowing designers to concentrate on the relatively primitive ergonomics.

Even so basic an issue as the optimum size for a general-purpose portable has yet to be decided. The mobile phone and PC industries have been groping towards the answer from different directions for half a decade, with handsets becoming increasingly like mini-computers and notebooks shrinking to netbooks and smaller.

The two industries are now competing head on with the emergence of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), which are thinner and lighter than a netbook but generally larger, if not heavier, than a smart phone.

Apple’s Iphone and Ipod Touch, essentially content delivery platforms, show the connected handheld pushing towards the MID format. Interest in the rumoured larger tablet reflects a common view that they are too small for lengthy reading or viewing. And beyond their innovative gesture control, their input facilities are rudimentary. A larger format could facilitate handwriting recognition, which is now well usable.

Significantly the Apple devices use the ARM processor architecture that dominates mobile phones and which, with the advent of MIDs, is competing directly with the Intel x86 dynasty used in PCs and Macs. Several companies plan to release ARM-based portables this year.

This rivalry has ramifications far beyond ARM and Intel. ARM, which was spun off from UK computing pioneer Acorn in 1990, does not make processors. It licenses core designs to manufacturers who bolt on peripheral modules to create system-on-a-chip (SOC) devices.

ARM-based SOC makers include Samsung, NVidia, Freescale, IBM, Philips, and Texas Instruments; Qualcomm licenses ARM’s instruction set for use in its own core designs, on the same basis that AMD and Via make x86 chips. Rumours that Apple too is developing an ARM SOC make sense because the chip could be optimised for a particular device.

Intel is moving into SOCs using x86 cores, partly as a way of utilising extra transistors produced by increasing miniaturisation. It has also been paring down the power consumption of its Atom processors but they have yet to reach the frugality of ARM chips.

Intel claims big advantages in that its chips power all classes of machine from MID to mega-server, and run the wealth of Windows applications. Yet any MID can use Windows as a web service or by front-ending a networked PC over a wireless link, given suitable client software.

But not the least exciting aspect of the new mobiles is that they offer a chance for new working platforms to become established. Windows is not short of challengers for a corner of what within a few years could become the dominant computing platform.

Apple’s rumoured tablet is said to use an adapted Ipod Touch interface. Nokia has Symbian, used on mobile phones but originally envisaged for larger devices too. Then there are the various Linux-based contenders, including Nokia’s Maemo, used on its N8xx tablets and the new N900, Google’s Android and Chrome, Canonical’s Ubuntu, and Intel’s Moblin.

Desktop computers took more than 20 years to reach maturity and true portables have at least as far to go. They will come in many sizes but it’s a fair bet that the dominant format will fit into a handbag or jacket pocket. This will not necessarily define the screen size: they could fold like a book or scroll out like a roll-top desk.

They will be used far more than today’s notebooks for reading and viewing content, which makes them crucial to the future of the publishing and TV industries, both reeling from a drift of advertising to the web. Almost certainly, some will be sold heavily discounted or ‘given away’ as part of a subscription package like mobile phones.

Recent low-cost e-book readers, like the £189 Cool-er give an indication of what is to come. These use slow bi-stable eInk screens that draw power only when changing state, and can have a battery life running into days. Their low energy use reduces the need for cooling, allowing them to be thinner: the Cool-er is about the size of a slim paperback, easy to pocket and easy to read.

This kind of size should be possible with faster, more powerful colour devices, especially as screens and power efficiency improve. The market will be the final arbiter of which format dominates. Whichever, these mobiles present one of the most fascinating design exercises around. µ