Fujitsu U820, meet the FCC. FCC, meet Fujitsu's newest UMPC

Fujitsu's refresh of the U810 UMPC will hit the U.S. with the monniker of.... wait for it.... the U820. The diminutive mobile device is showing off for the F.C.C., so assuming there's no testing issues, we'll see the U820 sooner rather than later. It has the same 5.6-inch display at an eyeball popping 1024 x 600 resolution, but as we already knew, Fujitsu has reworked the small keyboard with an extra row of keys. Last we heard, this would be Atom-based and it looks like the Intel Atom Z530 is paired with the 945GU Express.

JKK pored through the documentation and found mention of an FM transmitter on the inside. Definitely a nice feature, but I'm not sure I'd personally pipe tunes to a radio through the U820: I'd rather use a device that has a longer battery life to do that so I can use the U820 for mobile computing. Still, could be handy for some. I see that the unit will be available with either Vista or XP Tablet Edition if the manual is accurate. Hey, there's also 802.11n in the gooey center as well, which complements the 802.11 a/b/g support. Nice!

Update: a little more perusing of the manual shows this interesting display tidbit. Since the display is SVGA, I'm wondering if you can natively display WXGA and pan?

Comments

[Travis]

In your narrative you state the resolution as 1024 X 600 but in the .jpg it says 1280 X 800 as the internal res.

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Correct. After the post was written, I clearly labeled an update and added a JPG from the manual. However, it's still not clear as it says WSVGA in one spot and 1280 x 800 in another. WSVGA is 1024 x 600 and I suspect that's still the native panel resolution. I'd be hard pressed to believe that Fujitsu would try to cram 1280 x 800 in the same 5.6-inches as the 1024 x 600 predecessor.

[HG]

I wonder if it really is going to be 1280x800 which would be very hard to read on a 5.6 screen. I have the U810 now and the 1024x600 is not bad at all to read, but 1280x800 hmm.

[Jenn]

945GU Express? Some of the old U810 specs must've slipped past the guards because the U2010/U820 swapped that chipset for Poulsbo (SCH US15W w/GMA500). It was the only way it could get its Centrino Atom (Menlow) badge. :-)

Hands-on reports have confirmed the 1280 x 800 resolution. There was also word that the touchscreen calibration was fixed at 1280 x 800, even when the resolution was set to something else, but that's gotta be the work of a software bug.