The amazing shrinking computer

Network World - The quest for smaller and smaller computing devices usually involves a tradeoff between processor power, battery life, communications features, memory and storage. While the product I'm looking at today is in some respects the result of the intersection of a vision with compromises, the WiMM One from WiMM Labs is one of the slickest miniature computing devices I've seen to date.

At a mere 1.26-inch by 1.42-inch by 0.49-inch and running a customized branch of Google's Android operating system on a 667MHz Samsung ARM11 processor with up to 32GB of memory, the WiMM One is definitely in the tiny computer category.

The front face features a really neat one inch square 160 by 160 pixel transflective TFT capacitive touchscreen with 18-bit color (the OS actually limits this to 16-bits). To increase battery life when applications aren't running, the display switches off the backlight and becomes purely reflective. Pretty cool, eh?

But wait! There's more! Along with all of the foregoing there's also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, an audio "peep" and a case vibrator.

There's apparently also a GPS receiver built-in to the WiMM One but due to some technical problems this has been disabled for the time being. I think that in terms of functionality, once WiMM gets this feature running, the WiMM One will be an incredible package of features instead of just amazing.

The case features a single button on the side to start the device, a proprietary 14-pin connector on the back for power and communications, and the entire device is splash-resistant to ISO 2281.

The WiMM One comes with a cradle that has a USB connector on the side that can be plugged into either the included charger or into a host computer for USB-based debugging and as a standard storage device.

The WiMM One has a pretty tough design and can operate at temperatures ranging from -10 degrees C to 40 degrees C and at altitudes from sea level to 35,000 feet.

WiMM claims a maximum battery life (obviously without external power) of around 30 hours, but my experience shows a real world battery life (with Bluetooth and WiFi running) of around eight hours. As application designs mature I'd expect to see this extended to something like 18 to 24 hours for optimized single applications.

The current WiMM One package includes a watch band into which the device fits but it's a kind of a big lump of plastic that only a real, hardcore geek would want or tolerate on their wrist (this must mean that I'm not a hardcore geek; I lasted five minutes and then had to take it off).