By LG Nilsson
10 Jul, 2009 7:51 pm
The UK has just been given an interesting option when it comes to internet access on the move, although we have a feeling that the device itself won’t set anyone’s heart on fire in terms of design, as the UbiSurfer from Datawind is anything but a cool looking piece of hardware.
Despite its dated looks, the UbiSurfer has a lot of interesting features, least not that a lot of its specifications haven’t been revealed by Datawind. The 7-inch display is unlikely to wow anyone, nor its 800×480 resolution. From what we’ve managed to dig out, the UbiSurfer uses a 900MHz ARM processor from Samsung (there’s no mention of the CPU at all on the product pages) and this has been paired up with a mere 128MB of RAM and 1GB of flash storage.
You also get 50GB of online storage space as part of the package and as the UbiSurfer has an SD card slot, you should at least be able to take advantage of some of it. There’s also three USB 2.0 ports, a 10Mbit (yes, you read that correctly) Ethernet port, 802.11b/g WiFi and a pair of audio jacks. It also has a track pad with side mounted buttons and it has a full QWERTY keyboard which could do with some tweaking of its key layout.
But what sets the UbiSurfer apart from every other device out there, is Datawind’s patented system for delivering web pages over GPRS. The UbiSurfer has a built in GPRS modem (no 3G here) which works on 900 and 1,800MHz networks. Datawind claims that it takes them seven seconds to download any web page onto the device thanks to their special compression technologies.
Sadly it seems like Datawind has skimped on the one thing that really would’ve allowed the UbiSurfer to “make the Internet truly ubiquitous” as it’ll run out after a mere 4h of usage which just isn’t good enough for a device like this. At 700grams the UbiSurfer is quite light and it measures 222 x 165 x 29.5 mm (WxDxH) which also makes it quite portable.
The UbiSurfer is running a custom Linux OS and it comes with a range of pre-installed applications that allows you to do word processing etc. It also has the custom Datawind web browser which is what allows it to use fairly limited bandwidth to download web pages at high speed.
The good news is that the UbiSurfer will set you back an affordable £159.99 (€186/$260) (Maplins has it listed for £149.99) and it comes with 30h of internet usage every month for the first year. Unlimited usage will set you back an additional £5.99 a month. You can use it outside of the UK as well, but then you’ll have to pay roaming fees.
We’re not sold on this product, as it’s too bulky compared to Datawind’s previous products, yet expensive enough to make it more worthwhile to get a proper netbook, especially as you can get deals that gives you a 3G contract and generally includes a subsidised netbook. Until Datawind comes out with a device with a better design, we think they’ll have a hard time pushing this onto the general public.
You can find the press release here
