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Handhelds Hardware

Linux Yopy Handheld Preview 96

Posted by timothy from the till-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes dept.
Isamu Noguchi writes: "The Samsung Linux-powered Yopy is coming back with a fliptop screen and an odd keyboard. A developer unit is previewed at infosync." After a series of design flip-flops, changing release dates, and nice-looking prototypes, could the Yopy actually be released?
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Linux Yopy Handheld Preview More

Linux Yopy Handheld Preview

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  • It will be a success (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jmerelo ( 216716 )
    If people does not have to care whether it's got Linux, PalmOS or symbian, that is, if it works well enough that people take it for whatever it is, disregarding the OS it's running.
    • if it works well enough that people take it for whatever it is, disregarding the OS it's running.

      This poster has a really good point -- usability is what really counts to the consumer. Does your mom really care what processor her cell phone uses? Does she care it can run Java? No. She cares that she can afford it, and it does what she requires. Therefore it is a successful product.

      Now, please mod the parent as insightful or something.

  • I hope it does... (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Phaze3 ( 197763 )
    I am so sick of my palm. Looking foward to a Linux powered hand held that is actually worth something. A keyboard would be a nice edition and a lot easier than toting around my happy hacking keyboard

  • slick (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @02:42PM (#2565518)
    That's one slick looking unit. Much better than the I-paq. Has anyone had any experience porting KDE apps to a portable like this (one that uses QT-embedded I assume)? The article didn't mention a JVM (at least not that I saw), but that could be a big way to drive application development for PDA's in general. If you could write one simple little app in java, and have it run on PocketPC 2002 (Via the Geode JVM), on the Yopy, and on the new unit from sharp. That's really the only stumbling block I see to Linux PDA's doing great things is applications. Nice pretty user-friendly applications, and lots of them.

    • Konqueror/Embedded [konqueror.org] should run quite nicely on this one. That wasn't too hard to port, I've heard.

      Of course, it looks like the Yopy already has a very nice web browser, Opera [infosync.no] (you see the icon?)

    • QT and KDE seem to run fine under the "Intimate" diistribution on the iPaq.
    • The article says that the Yopy uses X-Windows - one would suppose that the web browser is a port of the standard Opera for X-Windows. The Sharp device runs QT Palmtop Environment on QT-Embedded and runs Opera for QPE.
  • Simple idea: make me a PDA that includes the following:

    -A BIOS that handles power management and screen taps, as well as a fairly safe routine for handling flash functions
    -Easily swapped OS
    -Versatility of an iPaq, batteries of a Palm (rechargeable is best
    -USB cradle

    Put that out as an OEM device. You can even ship it with WinCE if you like (PalmOS 5/ARM would probably be a better choice of course), but make sure the world knows you can hack it.

    /Brian

    • Nice points, but what did you mean by this: Versatility of an iPaq, batteries of a Palm (rechargeable is best)/em>

      The Palms (and the Psion) use little power, that's why the batteries can last for months. And a PDA that can use standard AA/AAA batteries is a huge plus in my book, since I travel a lot. Of course I use rechargeable batteries, but when I sit on the boat/plane/bus/train and the batteries run out, I can just switch to a fresh set. When I'm abroad, I can buy batteries everywhere, but I can't plug in my charger everywhere.

      • The new HP Jornada 560 series pocket PC uses a removable, rechargeable Li-ion battery pack. A nice feature that I wish more handheld computers would use.

  • cool keyboard (Score:2, Funny)

    by shibut ( 208631 )
    especially if you have toothpicks for fingers. Maybe it's just me...
    • Presumably you will be holding the stylus in your hand, so yes, you have something with a sufficiently narrow, yet blunt end to poke the keys with. Considering it's not a QWERTY layout, your traditional touch typing skills are wasted anyway. Too bad they didn't license the Fitaly layout, though. That's more efficient, I think than a straight ABCDEFG... layout.

  • Tech specs (Score:3, Redundant)

    by mszeto ( 133525 ) <mszeto&scompton,ca> on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @02:45PM (#2565537)
    Some technical specs and more pictures are here [pdabuzz.com].

    Does that *really* say 206MHz ? Gah.

  • I couldn't purchase anything with a name like "Yopy". It reminds me of the Doctor Seuss book, "Horton Hears a Who."

    YOP! YOP! Yop! yop! ...

  • non qwerty (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sehryan ( 412731 )
    thats a dealbreaker right there. why go with a "calculator-style ABCDEFG" layout? odds are, anyone using a PDA is going to be familiar with normal sized computers, and normal sized computers usually have qwerty keyboards. i know personally that anything non-qwerty slows me down. sure, i could get used to it, but i am already used to qwerty, so why up the learning curve of the thing with something like that? just doesn't make sense
    • You've hit the nail on the head there. My purchasing plans for PDAs used to be "no keyboard, no sale". I never envisioned that someone would be so moronic as to go with something other than querty, so I guess I'll have to amend that.

      YOPY designers, listen to me. NO QUERTY, NO SALE!
      • What is this QUERTY keyboard? Is it better than the traditional QWERTY keyboard? I think it would be confusing to have the letters almost the same as a normal keyboard but not quite exactl. :)
      • What kind a keyboard are you useing that is laid out querty? Mine goes qwerty. Wasn't going to say nothing but you made the mistake twice and how can you do that when all you have to do is punch keys that are damn near connected to each other?
        • I said, no QUERTY, no sale! NO QUERTY!!!!!!!! What's the matter, you don't know what a QUERTY is? Go here!

          http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/aig/staff/toby/writing/P CW /dvorak.htm

          Seriously though, it was just a pronunciation -> typing thing ;)

    • Re:non qwerty (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dda ( 527064 )
      That's probably because of the shape of the keyboard, it would not be possible to fill completely the spqce offered by a PalmTop shaped PDA. That's probably why they prefered to use a user known layout (the alphabet), rather than creating a new one. After all, everybody's used to the GSM one (for the sms), which is even worse, so why not. Everybody knows it's really hard to find good compromise in this sector.

  • could it be released? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @02:51PM (#2565570)
    yeah it could but w/an ABCDEF keyboard I could not understand why anyone would want it.

    I live and die by my Landware keyboard for my Cassiopeia. I do all my note taking for research. I could NOT imagine using my TI85 for note taking
    -- cheating on tests is another story ;)

    It is a great idea and I most certainly like the serial port but the keyboard was not a good idea.
    • I live and die by the real HWR on my Newton. I don't need a keyboard. I take all of my school notes on it.

      When I first saw this, I got totally excited about the little keyboard. But ABCDEF? Wtf? But a new keymap will be released, probably hours within the device's release. But it'll still be annoying as hell to have the letters permanently painted on the kb. :-/

  • Company Links (Score:5, Informative)

    by A Commentor ( 459578 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @02:53PM (#2565583) Homepage
    You can also see it at:

    yopy.com [yopy.com]

    gmate.com [gmate.com]

    And the announced that it's shipping end of November on the 'gmate' site.

  • From the InforSync:

    Part of the surprise is also that the keyboard isn't in the QWERTY layout, but instead an ABCDEF "calculator-like" layout.

    This sucks. We all know why. Bleah.
  • If things haven't changed, there is a booth at the Las Vegas Comdex 2001 according to a pop-up spawned by this page [gmate.com]. You can read the details here [gmate.com].

    And also according to this announcement, the Yopy WILL be released, allegedly at the end of November!

  • Wrong approach (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DocSnyder ( 10755 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @03:06PM (#2565663)
    The Yopy would not only have been the first GNU/Linux-PDA, but also the coolest. Today, the Yopy still isn't there. Agenda VR3 and Compaq iPAQ have taken its place. The very reason for this is G.Mate not having focused on getting an external community around it.

    About a year ago when the Yopy was hyped, I really wanted to get one, or at least look at the distribution. The hardware has been delayed forever, and the distribution was still "under development" accessible (AFAIR) only with some sort of click-through NDA. That is, the distribution was non-free, though they promised to GPL it once it's ready.

    I ended up with a Compaq iPAQ H3660 which is basically the same hardware (16 MB flash and 64 MB RAM instead of 32/32 on the Yopy). The distribution ist entirely free-as-in-speech and quite easy to install. Compaq provides some infrastructure (the site "handhelds.org", the Skiff cluster, even some pieces of software like the bootloader or some kernel adjustments), and the rest is getting glued together by an independent developer community the same way Debian is being made (Familiar is widely derived from Debian and works quite similarly).

    The hardware - i. e. the case, the LCD, the cradle etc. have matured away their worst child diseases. Meanwhile the Yopy (as in hardware) is still under development...
    • I ended up with a Compaq iPAQ H3660 which is basically the same hardware...
      Which causes me to ask the same question I asked when the Agenda was announced. Why does this exist?

      I'm not arguing against Linux-based PDAs. Obviously we need something like this -- nobody wants to code for Windows CE, and PalmOS is starting to show its limitations.

      But you just don't need special hardware to run Linux. That's precisely why Linux is so big. Nobody's out there developing "Linux PCs". Why are they developing "Linux PDAs"?

  • People frequently say: "Why would I want Linux on a handheld?" "Why bother with X11?" "Why bother with bash?" I think it's pretty clear that if you designed a handheld OS from scratch, it wouldn't quite look like Linux with X11 and a bunch of command line apps sitting around.

    However, even something like the AgendaVR (66MHz MIPS) is powerful enough to run Linux 2.4 with XFree86 4.0 quite comfortably. And the benefits of having standard Linux running on it are significant. You may not want to actually use normal desktop linux applications or command line programs while tapping away on your machine. However, having a standard environment makes a lot of libraries and tools port very easily. And because you can log into your little handheld and even run X11 apps in both directions, debugging gets really eas.

    For the AgendaVR, it took me maybe an hour to set up the cross-compilation environment, get PPP up and running, and read the documentation. After that, porting applications and tools to the AgendaVR was a snap: it took maybe 10 minutes to get a web browser and a scripting engine cross-compiled for the AgendaVR.

    In that regard, I'm wondering whether the Yopy is doing the right thing by going with a different window system. If the AgendaVR can run XFree86 4.0 without problems, it should fly on the Yopy with its faster processor and bigger memory. I think the Yopy would be better off going with XFree86 4.0 as well. (And calling its window system the "W Window System" is nothing short of confusing, since X11's predecessor was called "W".)

  • The secret to sucess (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @03:07PM (#2565670) Homepage
    If they want linux people to adopt it fully, then open it fully. Tell me how to access the hardware from my software. tell me everything.

    Dont want full disclosure? ok then make it a super stable, easy to use, and powerful PDA.

    mpeg video playback? only good for "geee, that's neat" comments.

    and make it 100% open for people to write apps.
    Palm destroyed and continues to destroy windows CE (or whatever they label it today) is anyone can write apps for it, and the dev tools are 100% free to everyone.

    dont make development tools free or the info to write apps free? it's doomed for failure.
    • mpeg video playback? only good for "geee, that's neat" comments.

      Nah, that's for people who need to be able to access the videos with one hand (thus, handheld) while the other hand is otherwise occupied.
  • Remember next generation? Those neat little handhelds they had. Technology is certainly catching up. My sprint pcs phone looks just like a communicator from the original show. Be great to hit a pin on my coat and call home or where ever. http://www.sitchin.com/ off topic but a great site non the least. l8r
  • How long do you think it will take someone to remap the keyboard driver to produce QWERTY?

    Even if you can't swap the physical keys, you can more than likely reassign them in software - especially if its Linux based.

    I really don't see a problem here.
    • You can't 'remap' the physical locations of they buttons. The Yopy's keyboard has 6 columns and 6 rows. A qwerty keyboard has 3 rows and at least 9 columns. There is absolutly no way that you could 'remap' the keys to be qwerty.

      That's not to say you couldn't do something more efficiant, but in no way could you emulate a full qwerty keyboard with just 6 rows!

      Perhaps a half keyboard [halfkeyboard.com] type layout, but not a full thing.

  • Mini laptop (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rick the Red ( 307103 ) <Rick DOT The DOT Red AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday November 14, 2001 @03:24PM (#2565744) Journal
    I swear, that's what it looks like to me. I want a tablet PC -- basically a PDA with a very large screen -- and they give us yet another micro laptop. Remember the original Jornada? [hp.com]

    • Re:Mini laptop (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      you want a tablet pc? then buy one.
      I have a toshiba tablet that has a P-120 in it with 48 meg of ram and a 10 gig hard drive.
      runs linux, and is a blast.

      Search ebay for pen computer and start bidding.
      They've been around for over 15 years (Ignore the lies from bill gates at comdex that microsoft introduced tablet computing this year... I'ts been here for years.)
  • I like the YOPY design I saw at www.yopy.com [yopy.com]. But what would make it much cooler is to have a screen that flipped out, rotated 180 degrees, and then folded back, so that you could place it back over the keyboard.

    This way, the YOPY could operate as a flippable PDA, or a PALM-like screen in front (no keyboard) type PDA.

    Can't wait till one of their designers comes up with a sturdy enough design to make this feasible!

  • MMC's nice if you're looking for just storage in a palmtop, but if you're looking to do things like GPS tied to a database for GIS in a handheld unit, then you need PCMCIA or CF (because USB won't work as well in this case and makes it a LOT more clumsy...)

  • What I've seen earlier on Linux PDAs is often something like 'Look, I can run xclock on this!'. People tend to forget that a PDA's interface is something entirely different than on a desktop.

    Refreshing then, to see the well thought-out Qt/Embedded GUI on this one. And one of the images [infosync.no] even shows an Opera icon! I've used Opera a long time on my Psion 5mx, and it blindingly fast (this nice PDA only has a 36 MHz processor). The recent announcement [opera.com] of Opera on Sharp's Linux PDA Zaurus is another plus point for Opera. Way to go!

  • the wait for the yopy has been too long, even for me, a korean-american who taught several english conversation classes to regular workers and some middle / upper management at samsung electronics main manufacturing plant in suwon, korea.

    i've waited for the yopy for what seems like years. i studied every photograph, every news article, and every review, waiting for the consumer model. then, i finally woke up.

    now i have a new love, the sharp zaurus (linux, java, keyboard). the developer edition is supposed to be released soon (end of this month) and the consumer edition will hopefully be released in the spring.

    andrew park
    • i've waited for the yopy for what seems like years. i studied every photograph, every news article, and every review, waiting for the consumer model. then, i finally woke up

      now i have a new love, the sharp zaurus (linux, java, keyboard). the developer edition is supposed to be released soon (end of this month)

      The developer version of YOPY was released many months ago, and the consumer version will be released in a couple of weeks....about the time Zaurus is released to developers. There's a connection here, but if I express it for you the value of realizing it yourself will be lost.

      • g.mate may say that the yopy consumer edition will be available in weeks, but i won't believe it until i see it. they have been promising the consumer edition for over a year. the zaurus was already released as a consumer product in japan, except without linux and java. i can not say how long the japanese consumer edition has been available in japan, but it has been over six months. the same can not be said for the yopy.

        i'll be happy to see the consumer edition of the yopy for sale, but now the question is, should i wait for the zaurus?

        andrew
  • Keeping with the tradition of recursive Unix names:

    YOPY: Your Own Personal Yopy
  • If it just had an integrated cell phone.... with caller id... sync'ed into a mysql database... with...

  • MMCA :( (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    MMCA has a "secure" standard. AKA bullshit copy prevention. This really disheartens me. Why coulden't they go with compact flash or include PCMCIA? I want to buy a YOPY but since it has no CF or PCMCIA possibilities the only thing i could expand it with is with that... thing. No microdrive possibility either :( The look is nice tho and i'd like to load it up with a debian type distro as the YOPY's is still propriatary (and will probally stay that way regardless of claims)... I really like the look and all that RAM :) but no CF or PCMCIA or sleave or expantion :( :( :( i am sad. --MikeeUSA--
  • That is where the real power would lie. You would radically change the operating system for yourself.
  • It seems like a nice product. But after thinking about it for a while. I can't see it being that popular.

    If they wanted a clamshell type PDA, why not make it like a Jornada 680/700, or like a Psion?
    the screen would suit text better, and you would actualy be able to touchtype on the keyboard.

    It looks as if it's trying to get the best of both worlds, but has ended up getting the worst.

    And no CF slot? That's even more of a shocker considering it's a linux PDA.

    Oh well, the search goes on to find the holy grail of the PDAs. I think Handera are going in the right direction.

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