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Pipe Dream: Tablet Running Windows Phone 7

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Well, that didn’t take long. Details for Windows Phone 7 Series aren’t fully revealed yet, but already there’s someone thinking about running it on a slate tablet. Looks pretty slick. However, given what we know, it’s something we won’t be seeing, at least for a while.

Designer Umang Dokey envisions taking the “three screens” of WP7S and unrolling them across an 8-inch tablet with capacitive touchscreen. It would also have dual webcams for 3D videoconferencing and two joysticks on the back for gaming and scrolling. To make it tabletop friendly, there’s also a stand that folds out from the back and can rotate to the front as a keyboard.

There are some design problems that need to be worked out, like how that hinge must be right up against the LCD frame and how to stabilize it when the keyboard is flipped forward. Also, I’m always wary of running an OS designed for a certain screen size on something much larger or smaller without seeing how it will be modified. But given the strict hardware limits on WP7S, we won’t see something like this any time soon anyway. Still, it’s nice to dream.

Via Gizmodo

Tablet Concept – running Windows Phone 7 Series from umang on Vimeo.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. SAM

    03/18/2010 at 10:53 am

    Without copy/paste, how good is it?

  2. Dan

    03/18/2010 at 11:40 am

    Interesting…is this not what the Courier is? A dual screen set of slate tablets, hinged together, running WP7?

    Dan

    • Sumocat

      03/18/2010 at 12:00 pm

      To an extent, but WP7S uses a “three screen” system while Courier will be “two page”. Courier will also use pen and touch, while WP7S is touch only (a bigger difference than many realize). The underlying OS may be the same, but the interfaces should be very different.

      • Dan

        03/19/2010 at 7:47 am

        Yup, I understand, however, the limitations of using an OS based on a ‘phone’ will not be appealing to me. I have used PDA’s since the early ’90’s for my ‘journal’ or light duty document management, and the emphasis has to be on light duty with devices like this. With Win Mobile devices there are a host of software add-ons that make the PDA very usable for short term things, but the dependence on a real computer to sync this information to is still very clear.

        With my TabletPC I have been able to take my PC with me and use it as a device somewhere between the PDA and the full laptop, but it still has the power of a full PC. The downside to the TabletPC is size when compared to a PDA. My point is that if I want a device to do light duty work that will still rely on a home computer to sync to, or the terrible idea of storing everything through wireless in the ‘cloud’, then I can use my PDA and have even better portability. I do not need to buy a device nearly as large as my TabletPC to have the functionality of my much smaller PDA.

        I am not sure I understand the desire for devices that are large print phones. Maybe it is because of my power use of the PDA that I used for so many years while others bought them and left them in desk drawers. I see the limitations being discovered by the thousands of new iPad and similar device buyers and the overall disappointment coming. The ‘tablet’ computer, as a whole, may one day be relegated to the same trash heap as the PDA, ruining it for the rest of us who use electronic systems in our daily lives. Just as the ‘smartphone’ usurped the PDA, I feel the ‘tablet’ will usurp the TabletPC.

        I think the future of these touch screen big print phones is heading down the same path as the PDA; they look cool, people will buy them in droves, and then they will be relegated to the drawer where they will show up on ebay some day as a 5 year old ‘nearly new’ device. The manufacturers, responding to the drop in sales, will move on to some other device because the ‘tablet’ idea will be declared dead.

        I, personally, would like to see a nice small device like the HP Slate or what looks like a gorgeous package with the Courier, include an OS that allows the nifty navigational features like what is shown in the videos of the Courier. I would like it to run a full copy of MS Office, however, as well as have an active digitizer for writing, drawing, and the power to run a real CAD program. So far, nothing fits this desired device.

        If I want to settle for a touch screen device that only runs Office Mobile I can just keep my smaller device, my HP PocketPC, for free!

        Dan

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