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Simputer Available?
Anonymous Coward writes "The Simputer (marketed by PicoPeta, the inventors and manufactured by the Defence Electronics PSU - BEL) has a website now and is available for sale (including outside India). Some pics can be found at the picture gallery. This story has been discussed a few times before here at /. here, here and here. Of particular note are some of the features, notably the device goes beyond the typical handheld/PDA and has some brand new innovations. For instance, it uses accelerometers to sense motion and this is used to give commands to the computer (for instance, to zoom a picture, you just have to move the Simputer towards you and to turn a page, you flick it like you would turn a page for a book. Also has an integrated smart card reader plus writer, very useful for several business applications."
accelerometers. seems like an over-engineered solution to trivial problems, and it's easy to imagine it being more annoying than useful e.g. when looking something up while walking.
look at the modern mobile phones e.g. Sony Ericsson P900 5-way jog-wheel, that's an excellent example of innovation - very simple and very effective.
I was thinking the same thing, but I also had another concern ...how much did it cost to implement that feature? I have done some robot building in my day and pretty crappy accelerometer costs 25 - 40$.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I tried to contact the simputer folk on 3 different occasions to license the design to no responce. For being an "open" platform, the docs and schematics are similarly locked-down making it impossible to even do a review.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Why is this the right type of computer for India? What is wrong with desktop PC's? We all know that a laptop costs way more then a desktop, and a tablet PC costs way more than that. This simputer sounds alot more like a tablet PC than a desktop, so I would guess it's cost would be similar.
Shouldn't the overriding factor for underdeveloped countries be the cost? Not portability and gee-whiz features like zooming by acceleratometers?
bluetooth certainly adds cost to the computer, but i wonder why such technology wasn't built in, or capabilities for it added--card slot of some sort. if i recall correctly the cost was supposed to come in around 4-5 hundred dollars, which isn't bad at all. i'd love to see a review of the software--and hardware. it looks pretty polished.
The feature may have some interesting effects, with the optical zoom interacting with the on-screen zoom.
But as someone mentioned, a jolt on a bus could appear to jiggle the view window over an unmoving "document" -- the same could be done with the Z-axis, so a jolt toward you could reduce the image so as to keep the apparent size the same. (not that the screen has enough resolution to make the reduction optically perfect)
However, motion sickness is caused when the visual movement does not match that of the inner ear. I wonder how an unmoving object would be interpreted; maybe those with head-worn displays have some experience. (The reaction apparently is because many poisons cause visual distortions, so the resulting nausea is intended to trigger vomiting and remove any poisonous material which is still in the stomach.)
About 200 Bharti computer engineers will be transferred to IBM's Indian unit. However, some of the work will be transfered to the US and elsewhere.
Most of that work will still be done in India.
Just you. It feels really natural for scrolling, for example - just tilt the device a bit to scroll (note that I am not talking about the simputer specifically, but a research device I built, but I imagine unless the simputer folk _really_ screwed up, it would feel much the same).
On a small display like a PDA or mobile phone, it makes viewing and reading pretty much "normal sized" web pages possible - while it's basically impossible to put up with reading a 100 page pdf when you have to use a stylus to move a scroll bar around or scroll around with a directional pad, tilting the device to pan around a large virtual page is fast and intuitive (I wouldn't use it for flipping pages, better to use back/fwd buttons for that).
On the minus side, I think nokia have fucking patented the idea in the US and Europe (despite it being blitheringly obvious to one skilled in the art... if the patent office isn't going to do patents properly, they should just stop granting patents...), so you won't see it any time soon unless you do it yourself noncommercially.
Well sir, I am understanding why they would not be wanting their daughter to marry an uninformed Anglo-Desi like you (the emphasizing is being my own):
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?