Submitted by In this day and age, it’s really hard to stand out in the smartphone world. There’s only so much you can do with the default slab design, and despite all the talk, iOS and Android are petty much the same thing in the grand scheme of things. Thank god for Japan, though. At least those guys have the sheer determination to build a smartphone which dual boots Symbian and… Windows 7. No, not Windows Phone 7. Windows 7.
Thank you Fujitsu, for being bat-shit bonkers enough to actually build this device and bring it to market. It’s called the Fujitsu F-07C, and it’s billed as the world’s smallest PC. It sports an Intel Atom Z600 1.2Ghz (running at 50%, they claim, which seems far too slow to run Windows 7), 1GB DDR-400 RAM, 32GB SSD for storage, and a 4″ touchscreen with a 1024×600 resolution.
With the push of a button, you can switch between Windows 7 SP1 32bit on the one hand, and Symbian on the other. While in Symbian mode, it has a standby time of about 600 hours, and a talk time of about 370 minutes. In Windows 7 mode, however, it will only last for a measly 2 hours. Epic trade off is epic.
Still, this thing is so incredibly awesome I just don’t know where to start. It’s completely idiotic, and it’s hard to imagine this being anywhere near as pleasant to use as Windows Phone 7 or whatever, but still… It’s so geeky!
Fujitsu will officially launch this phone tomorrow, and sadly, only in Japan. There’s no word on pricing, but I can’t imagine this thing being cheap, especially if you factor in shipping it over.
The article is light on details and begs several questions. Can it send and receive calls in Windows 7 mode? Does it synchronize contacts, email, bookmarks, SMS, call history, music, videos, photos, etc. between Symbian and Windows 7? Can it run any software developed for Windows 7?
As cool as this seems, I have a feeling that there is very little interest in using a phone with two different operating systems, but maybe this phone will prove me wrong.
In Windows 7 mode you can´t use phone functions like make or recive calls.
What about Meego?
Can you cite the source where Symbian is mentioned?
My N900, which I do consider a PC, is just a little smaller then this thing.
EDIT: Bragging about who has the smallest, how very unnatural
Edited 2011-07-22 22:17 UTC
A dual-booting smartphone? What next?
Wait a momen, I know what I want: a car which drives itsef
well dual booting phones are not new. thanks to xda most windows mobile phones can boot to andriod. in fact my phone boots to windows mobile then i can choose to kill windows and start andriod. or let windows go on.
So.. it’s an Atom? Running Symbian gives you 300x battery life?
When can we start dual-booting Symbian on netbooks?
Right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_netBook
Oh wait.
Waiting for the Hackintosh version….
The windows 7 screenshot does not look anything like… uh, windows 7, besides a giant windows 7 logo.
Would this not be better as a tablet? I would prefer it booting to something like Haiku, personally. (Although, if I had the phone, I might try to get Hackintosh working on it…) Still, cool!
*Three* (count them) different application launching mechanisms on the Windows 7 screenshot. How awesome. Like, this phone would never getting annoying.
Who gives a crap. The vendor-supplied Windows 7 is the first go go.
i’ve never used windows 7, but are you sure the bottom one isn’t showing currently running applications?
I liked PDA phones when back when they were, you know, PDA phones, geeky and niche. Just when I thought phones were getting too mainstream to be interesting, this thing comes along. It’s completely pointless, probably not very practical, and utterly cool. Way to go Fujitsu.
Edited 2011-07-23 14:34 UTC
Guys, really, do something about the Unicode support. I’m sick of seeing weird characters on the site.
I give up and abandon my delusions of being a geek. Why? Because when I realized that the mention of Windows 7 was not a typo, I asked myself why anyone would want such a thing.
A few years ago I might’ve gushed over how cool it would be to have a fully capable computer in your pocket like this–except I’ve been there and realized this sort of thing just doesn’t work in practice.
Two years ago I might’ve pointed out that this is nothing new really and $CompanyName did it before, complete with link to their website and product page.
Last year I might’ve even smiled bemusedly as I tried to pretend to be impressed with it as a technology demonstration of how much power could be packed into such a small space.
Trying to do real work on such a tiny screen is for the birds. It just isn’t worth it.
–bornagainpenguin
Mostly because you are not thinking 1 word.
Dock.
I will bet the device will come with a dock so it can use full size screen and keyboard.
I can’t imagine windows7 on 600Mhz atom, as it is barely usable even on full-speed 1.6Ghz one.
Pure troll dude…
Take it from someone who actually tried it: XP, Vista and Win 7 runs perfectly ok on a single core 600MHz Atom / 1GB Ram.
Even Vista does so better than any current version of Ubuntu (8.04 or higher).
LOL. What did you tried to do? Stare at desktop icons?
I have HP Mini210 – atom [email protected] with HT and 2GB.
Windows7 with Chrome running slow like hell.
Even Vista does so better than any current version of Ubuntu (8.04 or higher).
Yes, so what?
HP has SplashTop or whatever it is called.
It is so slow what it can’t even accept keyboard input in realtime =)
Edited 2011-07-25 11:51 UTC
Uh. That makes no sense. My server is an Atom-based machine running Windows 7 and it can run a Minecraft server with several players comfortably. It can do live conversion and streaming of video to my iPad.
Me thinks you’re trolling.
That has got to be the ugliest UI I’ve ever seen. It looks like Ubuntu Unity with a Mac OSX dock. Why is the dock 3D, while the other, ummm, dock, isn’t. It doesn’t even make sense.
Even if someone wants to buy it, they will probably won’t remember the name.
What’s with Japanese and Korean companies and weird code-like names?