Samsung Q1 UMPC supports rotation?

Kevin Tofel has been pursuing the rotation issue on the Samsung Q1, and an eagle eye reader found evidence that it does in fact support rotation. As I’ve mentioned before, rotation on the UMPC is inherently supported since it has Tablet PC functionality built-in, but the ability to do it is dependent on the video card that the OEM puts in. The word I got from Microsoft was that none of the OEMs were shipping UMPCs that supported rotation. Now that doesn’t appear to be the case.

On the specs page for Samsung Q1, they list the 915 GMS Internal GFX graphics card, which is the same card that my LS800 uses, which supports rotation all the way around. In addition, on the features page, they have this to say:

Use portrait orientation for taking notes, just like you would write on a pad of paper. Use landscape orientation to view presentations, graphs, or charts..

My guess is that all of the product shots we see of the Q1 were with a graphics card that didn’t support rotation. It would appear that they have now decided to go with the 915 GMS card that does support rotation — and they might be the only UMPC OEM that will be supporting this out of the box. They need to update their product shots to include this functionality That is a very good thing and it will be another feature match with the LS800. I love using portrait mode, and the UMPC is a perfect device for viewing documents and books in portrait mode.

Update: Engadget points to the FCC listing of the Q1, as well as the PDFs of the user manual ( Part 1, Part 2)