We loved our pint-sized Toshiba Libretto when it came out way back in 1997, and it looks like its spirit will live on in NEC’s new Windows CE-based device for Japan’s NTT DoCoMo – the N-08B.
Like a lot of people, we find it hard to get too excited about a Windows CE device, but NEC N-08B’s dinky style is making us go all nostalgic for our old Tosh.
What is it, exactly?
We’re not really sure what to call this device – it’s a sort of MID (Mobile Internet Device), but also a bit like a mini PC and a bit smartphoney too, although there’s no touchscreen on board.
Whatever it is, the Nokia E90-styled thingy manages to pack in a widescreen 4.6-inch display sporting an impressive 854×480 pixels resolution, backed by a QWERTY keyboard for some two finger pecking action.
Trackpoint
With space at a premium, there’s no chance of wedging in a proper trackpad, so NEC have slapped in a trackpoint on the spacebar.
The acres of plastic either side of the screen make the NEC look a dead ringer for the old Libretto, but with far more modern specs, including a microSDHC slot, 3.1MP camera, Wi-Fi and 3G.
Calls
It can make phone calls too – check out the call/end call buttons under the screen – with NEC claiming around 1000 minutes standby time or 350 minutes of talk time.
Weighing in at 300 gms it seems to be a sturdily built affair, but the device is set for a Japan-only release at present and we’re not entirely confident that it’ll ever make its way to the handbags and manbags of Blighty.
Rather than Libretto I suggest this is a lot closer to the Sigmarion 3
http://www.nttdocomo.com/pr/2003/000950.html
The Sigmarion 3 was built by NEC for NttDoCoMo. It was a CE .net 4.1 handheld PC with 5″ 800×480 semi-transflective touch screen. CF slot, SD slot, USB sync and host, good qwerty keyboard, 64Mb Ram, 400Mhz Xscale, 8Mb Ati Imageon GPU, Wolfson DAC chip (and through good schenheiser phones audio output is better than a lot of MP3 players).
I still use mine regularly (opera 8.65 can be made to run on it) and thanks to the GPU I was able to watch films scaled to 800×480 on divx with bit rates around 800 video and 192 stereo audio which is very good on something as old as this.
In fact I would Say the Sig3 is without doubt the daddy of this device.
I still wish someone would make something like this with a slightly larger screen (look at the size of the bezel on the N-08B it could happily fit a larger widescreen in that space).
John
Oh and here is an image of Sig 3 for media playback duties
http://comwee.net/blog/images/DVC00092.jpg