Chris De Herrera has posted pictures and videos showing the impressive graphical capabilities of the Dell Axim X50v (thought by many as the most powerful PDA to date) running the upgrade to Windows Mobile 5.0 (Dell will sell the upgrade in the next few months). The impressive part here is that the x50v was never meant to be a 3D games device, but the addition of a better DirectX infrastructure in the recent Windows Mobile releases and the 16 MBs 3D card from Intel accompanying the 624 Mhz XScale CPU can make this a reality, even on a regular PDA. Please note that because of the way Windows Mobile 5 “sees” the memory (not as storage anymore) it will be like the device just had a memory upgrade after the user upgrades the OS (the x50v has 64MB RAM, 128MB ROM and a VGA screen).
Intel 3D Graphics and Video Demonstration on the x50v
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Eugenia Loli
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waiting for the battery to charge up so i can play withit at work tomorrow. got it free with a large hardware purchase
With hardward like that I doubt that thing would last the drive from home to work…Theres a point where this just gets rediculous, you dont need that much power in a pda, if you do, use a laptop.
It has 3.5 hours of battery if all the stuff are ON, and up to 5 hours of battery if you turn off BT/Wifi and use low backlight.
>Theres a point where this just gets rediculous,
>you dont need that much power in a pda, if you do, use a laptop.
It’s way smaller than a laptop. This does have a value for some.
Dell also sells a bigger battery for the x50v, which can do between 6-7 hours.
Dell also sells a bigger battery for the x50v, which can do between 6-7 hours.
Well, but the larger battery is not going to make the X50v even bulkier and less like a _PDA_.
It’s way smaller than a laptop. This does have a value for some.
Those group already got their device: PSP.
The x50v is smaller than most PDAs, exspecially if you count only the powerful ones. PSP is WAY bigger than the x50v and it doesn’t even fit in your regular pocket and I dare you to put it in your shirt pocket. The PSP has no better battery life.
>Those group already got their device: PSP.
Sorry, but this is not true. The PSP can only do a fraction of the things a real OS does, like Windows Mobile. The PDA is a full computer, just smaller and without a real keyboard. The PSP only does very few, pre-arranged things by the software. The PSP does not even have a touchscreen.
MobileUser also gave a good answer too.
The x50v is smaller than most PDAs, exspecially if you count only the powerful ones.
Hmm, I have a X30 (the 624 MHz one, with IEEE 802.11b), and the X50v is definitively bigger and heavier than X30, while not faster except for multimedia.
PSP is WAY bigger than the x50v and it doesn’t even fit in your regular pocket and I dare you to put it in your shirt pocket. The PSP has no better battery life.
If your purpose is to play games and watch video, you probably do not care about this difference. But given the market, I have serious doublt that X50v can compete with PSP for the named applications: video games and video.
Sorry, but this is not true. The PSP can only do a fraction of the things a real OS does,
This is rather irrelevant for the applications of interest here: video games and video playback. These two applications will remain a niche for PDA.
>I have serious doublt that X50v can compete
> with PSP for the named applications: video games and video.
No, it can’t. But this does NOT mean that it’s not “good enough” for most people playing a few games as an ADDED capabilities, 3D or not. Because it is.
Why people need to shoot down this very impressive performance of the x50v? IT IS impressive given the history of plain PDAs so far that could not do this sort of stuff! x50v DOES bring a NEW world into PDAs with its capabilities and this must be seen with enjoyment, not grumpy comments “boohoo, the PSP is better” or “boohoo, who cares?”.
ylai what about users like me? I want what you mentioned PLUS everything else. Why only have half the package when you can have it all? I hope game development for Windows Mobile will become serious with WM5 and XNA as this is becomming very capable platform.
Have you seen those pathetic projects going on trying to boot hacked software on PSPs? Why hack it when there is a alternative that doesn’t require hacking for homebrew. I play videos in higher resolution than the PSP even supports and there are many capable emulators, such as SCUMM and then for almost any major classic major gaming platform.
>This is rather irrelevant for the applications of
>interest here: video games and video playback.
NO, it is NOT irrelevant. The x50v is for and foremost a *PDA*, not a gaming machine. BUT, having the ability to do what it can do compared to *other PDAs* (not compared to the PSP, this is apples and oranges), it can do a GREAT job. THIS is what this story tries to show, not that “it kicks PSPs ass in performance”. It doesn’t. Please stop changing the subject.
Why people need to shoot down this very impressive performance of the x50v?
And who did this? I didn’t. It was a comment on the situation of the market and not the technology. It is not that there is pure vacuum between PDA and a laptop, as some comments might suggested.
or “boohoo, who cares?”.
I guess you should not “interprete” people’s comments to the extremes. I do not have the impression that this has been my statement.
ylai what about users like me? I want what you mentioned PLUS everything else.
This is a different issue. Most people do not necessarily care if they carry another device for gaming. You simply should not interprete that I want to marginalize the platform simply because I do not explicitly praise it.
It is simply not like that there is plainly nothing between a PDA and a laptop. And for a PDA, I think X50v remains as the device of extreme.
>This is rather irrelevant for the applications of
>interest here: video games and video playback.
NO, it is NOT irrelevant. The x50v is for and foremost a *PDA*, not a gaming machine.
Sorry, I think you are conducting a completely different discussion here. The need for such a device just for the gaming and video playback purpose is simply marginal, as impressive as it might be technically. You should not interprete my sentences as a technical evaluation.
And by the way: the foremost purpose of a PDA is not get an even bulkier battery upgrade.
I don’t have the battery upgrade, I am very happy with my x50v playing back video and playing some games.
There doesn’t appear to be enough standard ram in the device.
How much did you pay for it?
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/pda?c=us&cs=1…
At least for the US.
You are very wrong! With Windows Mobile 5, 64 MBs of RAM is like having 128 MBs of RAM on a PPC2002/2003 device! Read my article where I explain that WM5 does not use the RAM as storage anymore, but as real RAM. Upgrading the x50v to WM5 is LIKE upgrading your RAM (of course the storage will still occur in the ROM, but the x50v has 128 MBs of it!).
Windows Mobile can function just fine even with 16 MBs of RAM btw and it’s getting really comfortable at 32 MBs of real RAM (I am not talking about storage). At 64 MBs of the x50v, it’s gonna fly!
while we’re still talking about good pdas, its a shame Sony shut down their clie line, they had the most innovative company hardware design out there. i have yet to see any company come out with any new designs. Just like the Dell axim, they stick to the plain jane tablet and stuff more battery sucking, heavy hardware into the machine. Bigger numbers! 3D! whoop dee doo. Better personal digital assistant? err… .
Contrast to Sony’s swiveling screen, tablet-cum-clamshell, twistable camera, jog dialled innovations. Sony was to PDAs, like Apple is to PCs. Dell to PDAs is, well, Dell to PCs.
couple of clie pictures to mourn over …
http://www.hebig.org/blogs/archives/main/sony_clie.jpg
http://www.webtechgeek.com/NewYorkPics/Sony-clienr70v.jpg
If HP cannot offer something similiar (upgrade to 5.0) for my almost new PDA, it will be the last HP product I buy. I am sick of their appalling product support.
I’ve played 3D games on my Toshiba e310 and I can’t understand why a faster 3D graphics engine will make 3D PDA gaming any better.
First, a PDA is just too small. Its screen is small, its controls are small, it doesn’t have a mouse or a decent analog joystick.
Can you imagine playing Doom 3 on a 4″ display?
3D effects in 2D-oriented games will be definetly nice however. Eyecandy is a must-have for any game, after all it’s meant for fun and shouldn’t look like boring productivity software.
Once Dell offers the x50v with a real operating system e.g. Linux I might actually buy one.
That racing game isn’t very impressive. It’s stunt racer 3d. The Tapwave Zodiac has had that game since day one
I suppose the playstation emulator can run really well on this PDA. Anyone know if it supports all the axims extra features?
Sony Clie had the most innovative design. Not hardware design. I have both Axim X50v and Sony Clie NX73V (second picture) and you just can’t compare two of them. Clie is lacking Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, has only partial support for CF cards and you have to use hacks to make it support CF storage cards. Sony was always behind on hardware features with exception of screens. Battery life on my Clie is actually worse then on X50v. And there was total of one update for Clie, just to add better support for Sony Memory Stick. No OS updates, no fixes.
i still prefer a palm
Windows Mobile 5 is real enough mate. Linux does not even support the 2D or 3D accelerator on this device (neither it has apps for it), why would I ever wanna use the crashy QPE or GPE in there??
Because its “LINUX” !!!11
😉
>Sony Clie had the most innovative design. Not hardware design.
What do you mean? The innovative design is the hardware. The swivel screen is hardware. The swivel camera is hardware. The jogdial is hardware. It also had the highest res palm screen with collapsable graffiti pad, hardware/software innovations. Sony had many new and exciting ideas for the stale market. Without sony, it ends up like the axim, just an excercise of stuffing more and more power, instead of coming out with creative usability enhancements.
For its time, it was an the NX series were innovative machines, remember we’re talking about a 2-3 year old machine here. Yet you still can’t find those features in the current crop of pda. The Sony UX series were even better including the wifi, and bluetooth if i’m not mistaken. Had sony stayed in the market, they would have come out with models with equal to the power to the axim, plus fresh new hardware designs.
But the arguments’ moot now. Sony is out, and we’ve lost the Apple of the PDA scene.
BetaPlayer for PocketPC has a built-in 2700G Mpeg4 decoder, so you can play divx/xvid videos already on it. And I once had the WW2 plane 3d demo installed (forgot where I got it from), so you can do all that neat stuff with your x50v now.
the jogdial thingy wasnt a sony inovation iirc. I believe the handera 330 had it first. Best old school palm imo
33mhz dragonball vz cpu
8mb ram
320×240 greyscale screen with AWESOME glue glow backlight
cfio slot
sd slot
took either a massive removable battery pack or a few double AAs ( iu think it was 2 AA’s, mightve been 4 AAA’s, mines in storage so i cant check)
built in MIC
good speaker
jogdial
virtual grafitti area that showed what you inputed and could be customized. it also would calapse to allow full use of the screen.. this was before the CLIEs had it.
oh how i loved that machine! I had wifi cf card and a 256mb sd card in mine. was perfect for emails, web browsing and reading ebooks. and most programs scaled wonderfully on the screen. even games.
er, that should be BLUE glow backlight..
I need to proof read.
Heres some 3d demos..
Fixed-Point demo seems to be the one they played
http://www.powervr.com/Downloads/Demos/index.asp
not really a big issue, but sony did have the jogdial way before handera, since their first clie, the s300. In fact, they’ve been using jogdials in their other products (videocam, computers) even before they came out with their clie pda line.
dunno about virtual graffiti, tho.
I was dissapointed tho when handera was absorbed by palm. They made came out with some pertty good ideas too, like the expansion slot in the TRG.
3.5 hours of battery is a total joke. My Palm IIIxe can last 2 weeks with pretty heavy usage, and my mp3 player lasts a week. Sorry, but this is a joke. And it runs a proprietary Microseft system, LOL.
oh ok. I wasnt sure on that
And it runs a proprietary Microseft system,
Neither is Palm OS exactly an free OS.
Do you have bogo on your brain? 3.5 hours is of continuous usage, not overtime normal usage. The Palms don’t do much better either. And it goes up to 4.5 hours if the wireless addons are turned off.
my palm m500 gets about 10 hours of continuous use
course this is an old palm .. most new pda’s dont get much. My Netbook gets between 10-12 hours of continuous use and my e125 gets about 7..
Well the 3d capabilities of the x50v are not thanks to Intel, but to PowerVR, Intel just licenced it.