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Review Of Yopy 3700 Linux PDA
SecondToughest writes "Gizmodo has a recent post referring to a review of the new Yopy 3700 Linux-based PDA. The reviewer seems to like it: 'Overall, this is beautiful hardware. The design is compact when not in use, but when opened the Yopy is quite user friendly. The really great thing about this PDA is the presence of both MC and CF card slots. To me, this is almost the perfect PDA design.'"
Isn't a PDA OS better suited to be a low-footprint gem like QNX?
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Short but, well, short.
Here's the full text, 'cause ya never know.
Apart from Sharp's Zaurus line, you don't hear too much about Linux-based PDAs - Pocket PCs and Palms tend to receive the bulk of the attention. We'd never heard of the company before, but G.Mate has a new Linux-powered PDA out, the Yopy 3700, which has a 206MHz processor, 128MB of RAM, a CompactFlash expansion slot, a 65,000 color screen, and a built-in keyboard. William Hungerford gives it high marks:
The Yopy is based on an eye-pleasing clamshell design. With the screen down the Yopy is about the same depth as a paperback book, making it about twice as thick as the normal PDA. Most of the depth comes from the well designed, built-in keyboard. In fact, this keyboard is much more agreeable to my fat fingers than other keyboards I've used. When you flip open the cover you're presented with a good looking TFT LCD screen. Overall, this is beautiful hardware. The design is compact when not in use, but when opened the Yopy is quite user friendly. The really great thing about this PDA is the presence of both MC and CF card slots. To me, this is almost the perfect PDA design.
--
The reviewer does like the Yopy, but for an expected retail price of $499, you could get a Zaurus SL-5600 that has essentially all the same functionality, with a better processor (400MHz XScale as opposed to the older 206MHz). Granted, the 5600 only has 96MB RAM, but since they both have expansion slots, that's not really an issue.
Also, the Zaurus already has a large developer community, and has drivers for things like wireless cards, and has plenty of software.
I certainly don't want to see Yopy fail (competition is generally good, and having more Linux PDAs is good), but IMHO they should be offering a little more if they want to be competitive.
libertarianswag.com
...They've finally ported Linux to the GBA:SP. 'Bout damn time, too...
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
MMC and CF not MC and CF iirc
It packs more RAM and more battery life than the Z-5500, but the Z still has equivalent features - MMC/SD slot (that does NOT honor the DRM of SD cards, btw), a CF slot, plus IR. The Zaurus is under very active development at OpenZaurus.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
From the review: "The really great thing about this PDA is the presence of both MC and CF card slots."
Considering how small my 8-in-1 reader is, I'm surprised they didn't just integrate in one of those and be able to read CompactFlash Type I (CF-I), CompactFlash Type II (CF-II), CompactFlash USB (CF-USB), CompactFlash Ultra (CF-Ultra), MultiMedia Card (MMC), Secure Digital Card (SD), Micro Drive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Switch, Magic Gate Memory Stick, and Magic Gate Memory Stick Duo memory cards.
Besides, this guy is easily impressed if all he cares about is being able to read data from a couple of different formats.
Why do I h8 apple?
Is this a joke:
"At this point the Yopy is only designed to sync with the Windows Operating System."
So I am supposed to dual-boot, first developing my own software in Linux, then boot into windows just to load it onto the device. NO THANK YOU. Zaurus it is.
but some Pepto and Kim Chee should clear that up.
does it run Windows CE?
That's all we needed now....PDA's that hum. Just build in a fan and heat sink, and we'll have people saying: "Hey, is that a Yopy 3700 in your pocket or are you really really really really happy to see me".
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
There's gotta be a cheaper way to make a good Linux PDA. That's what's keeping me from buying a PDA... I'd rather carry around my custom ITX system with a 5" LCD.... Sorry.
im looking for one that would allow ssh access {slogin} to my server computers
i cant seem to find any details on this
anyone have any info?
back in the day we didnt have no old school
With the screen down the Yopy is about the same depth as a paperback book
I'm sorry, but 69 × 103 × 24.7mm means that this pda is about 14.7mm too thick for me. IMHO a pda should easily fit in a pocket.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
It looks like the buttons would be small and hard to use. Then again, a linux-based pda without a full keyboard doesn't make much sense.
200mhz is a teensy slow for a pda now, 128 megs is great.
Anyone know anything about the battery life on that? CF is great also. My pda is stuck with sdio, and no wifi for it yet, just bluetooth.
Not super compelling in my opinion, but it's great that the the selection of Linux PDAs is increasing. It will be better for everyone in the longs run, even users of PocketPC, because a Linux-based pda actually stands a chance of competing and competition sparks innovation(Palm is great, but in my opinion, Palms are a different kind of product and don't compete as directly with PocketPC as the Zaurus and this does)
For your information, the Yopy machines are distributed in Europe by "TuXMedia" which I can really recommend, smart and efficient people. They also do Linux development/hack for the Yopy. Here is the URL: http://www.tuxmedia.com/ .
sounds like a bad design for a PDA. Memory cards are cheap and people would rather buy whatever kind than have bigger, fatter device. CompactFlash port, in particular is very bulky. As for plugins like a camera, USB would be a better interface. Doesn't it already have a USB port for the desktop?
IRDA is also not really good for anything. People have to wiggle their devices for minutes just to send a business card. Forget about trying to HotSync with a laptop. Save that space for bluetooth or 802.11.
So I turn to my buddies while we were watching the game, and say "Ok, stop me if you've heard this one."
"At this point the Yopy..." I paused and look at them, setting myself up the funny bomb... "is only designed to sync with the Windows Operating System."
Well sir, I have never seen a group of grown men reduced to laugh spasms so quickly. We were all only half-drunk too, yet our but gusting chortling resonated across the suburbs.
Yes sir, someone set you up for a funny night of PDA sync jokes and we are all invited.
For them:
- It must do all the general PIM stuff well
- It must be stable
- It must be feature rich
- It must support whatever media they currently use (MMC, SD etc.etc)
- It must sync with their computer (note they say "computer" when they generally mean "windows").
The fact that it's Linux based is not going to be a major selling point. When your data is on MC and CF cards, thats a major selling point.A story: One of my co-workers asked me what I thought about the up and coming Linux based Motorola phone. My comment was that the fact it was running Linux makes absolutely no difference. If Motorola implement the same horribly awkward , difficult to use and ugly interface that they have then nothing will have really changed.
The underlying OS is largely irrelevant, it's what runs on top that makes all the difference.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
This thing has been in development a looooong time, here's a mention of it in an April 2000 Slashdot article: (No release date announced indeed)
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
Because I'm an American and I don't know how thick a milimeter is without picturing an inch and then trying to picture something that goes into that 2.54 times and then taking a tenth of that.
Considering their size, and the fact that they have a 206MHz processor, you could maybe fit more in...that wouldn't be such a ridiculous idea... Of course, the 400MHz Zaurus would probably be a better choice. I always thought that a bunch of custom Linux-On-A-Chips connected together in a really tight form factor would make for the ultimate in Clustering...
Joe
Until someone can give me some really compelling reasons to upgrade from my old Handspring, I will continue to use my money to purchase more reasonable hardware upgrades: that is to say, more RAM for the laptop, bigger drives for the desktop, etc.
...about three years ago.
Now that Linux runs on the Axim and the new Sharp toys are out, big deal.
$500? No way.
This is somewhat off topic... What do all the worlds geeks DO with their PDA's? Aside from email, notes, adresses? Seems to be an expensive use of my already premium pocket space. Is it just the "gadget factor" or are there folks who really rely on this type of device? BTW this one does sound cool, just hard to justify.
SDG Systems is taking pre-orders, expecting units by the end of July.
From the article, re: reasons linux on PDA's hasn't caught on.
"And probably the biggest drawback is the Lack of Software compared to Palm and Pocket PC"
What?!? What?!! How can they say this. My zaurus has so much software I don't know what to do with it. Since it's linux, stuff gets ports very quickly and there is a world of software at your fingertips. Just cause it's all free doesn't make it not there.
The 5600 only has 32MB of RAM for runtime memory, the rest is builtin flash RAM for storage. The 5500 had 64MB of RAM, with 32MB being battery-backed. With OpenZaurus or other third party images, you can actually use all 64MB of RAM in the 5500 for runtime, and just use an SD/MMC or CF card for long-term storage.
The 400mhz XScale used in the 5600 and the C700 isn't a whole lot faster than the 200mhz CPU used in the 5500, but the CPU contributes to the much better battery life of the 5600 vs the 5500.
But yes, I have a feeling the 5600 or even the 5500 would be a better choice for most due to the existing user/dev base, though some might like the form factor or the newness of the Yopy.
Personally, I'm using a 5500 while waiting for prices on the new Zaurus C760s to come down -- they're evidentally about 70000yen (US$600) in Japan right now, and about $800 from importers like Dynamism.
Considering how the Yopy runs X11 as it's display layer, it's a bit of a fudge to say that the Zaurus has a larger developer community than the Yopy. There are more Z-specific developers than there are Yopy-specific, considering how something close to the majority of Zaurus apps are somewhat clumsily adapted from X11/Qt, no reason one can't simply count a clumsily adapted X11 app as a Yopy app. :P
:D
That said, the Yopy will likely fail. It's expensive and it doesn't do that much that anything else does. If you need the occasional remote X session, you can do that already with Windows CE or PocketPC (via XFree86 for CE) or on the Zaurus under a QPE or FB X server.
The 400 MHz XScale (which is a PXA 250) in the 5600 isn't really faster than the 206 MHz in the Yopy or SL-5500. The 5600 probably gets a bit better battery life for it, though. There's been a lot of misinformation about the PXA-250, and the speed of it in comparison to the 206 MHz StrongARM isn't just some retarded move by MS, which a lot of folks seem to think here and elsewhere. Seems stupid Sharp would switch the 5600 to a PXA 255, but they probably have a lot of manufactured and unsold units with the 250 preventing such a switch.
IIRC, Dell did that with their Axims- switched from the PXA 250 to the 255 rather quietly. Granted, they sell a lot more Axims than Sharp does SL-5x00s.
as for me, I just got a SL-C760...
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
teach it the words. Or isn't 128 megs of RAM enough to learn them?
Not to sound like trolling but interesting to note that the price is not 499 units is any of the currencies of countries where it is sold !!
The Yopy 3700 is developed in South Korea and is currently available in France, Austria and the UK for a MSRP of $499 US .
I would love to have a true Linux PDA that allows me to run my current Linux software. Unfortunately, the Zaurus does not satisfy my needs, because the Zaurus isn't really a Linux platform.
The Zaurus is a Qtopia platform.
Qtopia is a GUI front-end that runs on top of Linux.
Software written for the Zaurus is written for Qtopia. It will not run on a non-Qtopia distribution of Linux.
Qtopia is proprietary. It is owned and maintained by Trolltech. It cannot be forked, at least, not if you hope to be able to run any non-GPLed software on your Zaurus.
To say that the Zaurus is a Linux platform, is like saying that the Macintosh is a BSD platform. In both cases, it is technically correct, yet wrong in practise. In both cases, your software requires an additional front-end (Qtopia or OS/X) in order to run. In both cases, you are locked in to one company's platform, because your software will not run on other versions of Linux or BSD.
Now I don't care if people want to buy the Qtopia-based Zaurus, anymore than I care if they want to buy the OS/X-based Macintosh.
But people should be aware of what they are getting.
Okay, now let's talk about the areas for improvement. Once I mastered the built in software, I was pretty much stuck. There are a few games included but that's about it. Until Yopy gets some Linux developers to help them out, there is very little software available. I also wasn't able to use my wireless card because of the lack of drivers. As I mentioned earlier, the lack of software isn't strictly a Yopy issue. Linux Operating systems for PDAs will only be as strong as the development community behind it. That brings up the next issue: at this point the Yopy is only designed to sync with the Windows Operating System.
So to sum up:
Very little software available
Needs drivers
Only syncs with Windows
So what is the company hoping for?
- Linux geeks buy Yopy because it runs Linux
- Said geeks churn out software and drivers for it, because that's how it works in the open source world
- Sales increase because the Yopy is now attractive to the masses
- Profit!!!
Why would the average PDA user purchase this instead of a Palm or Windows PDA? What can the Yopy do that existing systems can't? I am interested to see how this turns out..."Overall, I'm quite impressed with this PDA. If this was a Palm or Pocket PC PDA, I'd say this is close to my perfect PDA."
So everything is good about it except for the OS.
He also says its "almost as stable" as the Palm OS.
If this is such a great piece of hardware then why not go all out and put Palm OS on there?
There target market obviosly is not linux users (lack of linux desktop support). what gives?
I have been using my Psion 3a for over eight years now. The hinges have broken twice in that time, necessitating trips to Pinnock Organiser Services for a new case. However, I keep persevering with it because of its phenomenal battery life. Eight-year old technology, does everything I need in a PIM and it runs for three months on a couple of AA cells.
I did try an Agenda VR3 (no url as Agenda Computing seem to have gone bust and the Softfield site seems only to link to 10.1.1.1!) but couldn't be bothered to change the batteries every few hours. I would be prepared to sacrifice some battery life for features such as colour screens, wireless connectivity etc. but surely it's possible to get a week or so out of a set of batteries? How do things like the Zaurus perfom in normal use?
Incidentally, while checking the url above I noticed that POS (yeh I know - unfortunate acronym) also sell a linux PDA, the Filewalker. Anyone have any experience of this?
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
Nice BricK(tm) design.
TheYopy is based on an eye-pleasingclamshell design.With the screen down the Yopy is about thesame depthas a paperback book, making it about twice as thick as the normal PDA.
This is just too large. PDAs have been shrinking in size over the past five years or so, and this thing's just too big.Along with the lack of software, I see it as another linux hobbyist device.
Not just an app launcher. The Zaurus multitasks, can export or mount NFS or SMB shares, play MP3s, MPEGs, does handwriting recognition, everything that you can compile code for. Apache? MySQL? OpenSSH? yes. I've done it. The Z (stock or running OZ) also uses RAM as filesystem buffer cache, so your 'free' memory may vary. If you need memory, you can make swapspace. (Parodoxically, you can make swapspace in your RAMdrive, to increase the amount of RAM you have!). This is why you can configure OpenZaurus with a variety of storage/RAM splits, esp. if you slap in an SD card as your 'hard drive'. How many PDA's give you a bash prompt?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I have no comment; I just like saying "Yopy."
This is not my sandwich.
Does anyone recall the facts about the XScale processor at 400Mhz vs the 200Mhz older model?
It's not that the clock speed is giving you double the performance. Anyone saying that 200Mhz is too slow for a PDA just isn't getting it.
The 400Mhz processor for PDAs from Intel gives you pretty much the same performance as the 200Mhz previous model (might even be slightly less performance, I don't remember that clearly), the difference being the *power usage* is much better on the 400Mhz chip, giving you better battery life in your PDA.
16-17 hours of normal usage life out of the Yopi is pretty good, and it might be that the Yopi is superior to the Zaurus on that score, and might widen the distance given the XScale processor, but that's just speculation on my part.
one two three four five ?!! That's the combination on my luggage!
Be careful with this PDA - the CPU is in it's EOL (End Of Life).
Intel Announced that the "206 MHz Intel Strong ARM 32 bits RISC Processor" is terminated. Actually it's DIGITAL SA1110.
This is not a new design. A new design should rely on Intel Xscale CPU 200 or 400Mhz.
Just about every PDA around today has the specs of a high-end UNIX workstation of a few years ago. Your average PDA today has a 200MHz RISC chip, 64Mbytes of RAM, hundreds of megabytes of Compact Flash storage, etc. Many UNIX workstation had 1/10th the compute power, memory, and disk storage.
Furthermore, Linux and X11 aren't "high-footprint" at all by modern standards. Sure, on your desktop machine, they use lots of memory; that's because they can: people configure every feature into them and then they go on using lots of cache. On a PDA, you can squeeze a Linux kernel (I don't know about 2.4, but certainly older kernels) into a few hundred kbytes, and the X11 server and toolkit into less than a Mbyte. That's less than Windows CE or Qt/Embedded. It probably is even less than PalmOS 5. In fact, if you really want a small footprint OS, ucLinux is another option; it can even run on old Palm hardware (no MMU).
I'm still waiting for a PDA with a hard drive. To me, storing contact information isn't enough. And 128MB doesn't store enough to do much of anything else. I could get a few songs on there, an ebook or two, and maybe a really tiny little video, and contact information.
Really, I don't see PDAs as a killer app until they can store large amounts of data without having to carry around a gazillion memory sticks. Then the usefulness becomes clear. Store and display every ebook I want to read. Store and play my music collection. Store and play a significant amount of video. Store whatever other data I want so that I can get at it wherever I happen to be. Oh, and store contact information.
Yeah, I know, much larger (1GB+) memory sticks are on the horizon. But I see a lot of problems with those, such as very high initial cost and tremendous incompatibility issues. Portable hard drives are here now, they work reliably, and they are relatively cheap. Just add one to a PDA. Change to a bigger rechargeable battery if necessary.
That, to me, would be worth shelling out some cash for. These PDAs with the bitty memory sticks? Toys.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
Am I the only one who looks at this and thinks: "Captain, I am picking up dangerous levels of methane and carbon monoxide, but no signs of intelligent life."
Spec-wise, I'd still go for a Zaurus SL-5600 though.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Desktop linux syncing that works. Easily.
I actually use the Qtopia Desktop sync program with my Z-5500 on my RedHat 7.3 box. Took some serious mojo to get this together, I pulled info from about 4 different sites each of which was incomplete and improvised certain things based on error messages to get it working. Screws up if I change the kernel, but I know how to fix that.
Oh and USB host rather than gadget status if needed so you can plug keyboards, Zip drives whatever into it. (yes I know about interpocket, make it built in!)