Samsung gives a sneak peek at its second generation UMPC

Samsung is set to pull the wraps off its new Q1 Ultra UMPC this Thursday at CeBIT 2007. Thursday will the one-year anniversary of the launch of the UMPC platform, so Samsungs Q1 Ultra should serve as a fine starting point for second generation UMPC devices. According to Engadget, the Q1 Ultra will feature a 7" touch screen (1024x600), 1GB of memory and a 60GB hard drive (expect a Flash-SSD variant in the future as witnessed by the Q1 SSD). The Q1 Ultra also features a split QWERTY thumb pad, 0.3MP webcam on the front of the device, 1.3MP digital camera on the back, fingerprint sensor, 802.11b/g, HSDPA/WiBRO, 10/100 NIC, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and Windows Vista Home Premium.Microsoft first promised that second generation “Vistagami” UMPCs would be on the way in late May 2006. Hopefully, the Vistagami UMPCs will also come at price points much more palatable for the buying public than the first generation devices. Microsoft originally planned for the first generation UMPCs to retail for $599 to $999. Samsung’s current Q1 retails roughly $980 with a 900MHz Celeron-M processor and 512MB of RAM or $1,200 with a 1.0GHz Pentium-M processor and 1GB of RAM. Asus’ R2H can be found for around $900 online.