SmartQ 7 MID Prototypes Spotted: $189 But Same Old CPU

SmartQ's 7 MID has shown up in a live photo, together with a price and more complete spec sheet.  There's good news and bad: the good is that, at $189, the 7-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen SmartQ 7 is pretty much as cheap as we were hoping; the bad, unfortunately, is that it uses the same 667MHz ARM11 processor as the SmartQ 5, which leads us to wonder whether it will suffer the same ponderous performance.

The SmartQ 5 showed great promise on paper – a 4.3-inch touchscreen device with browser and PMP functionality, plus a bargain price tag – but failed to live up to expectations by virtue of its under-performing CPU.  The new 7 MID, meanwhile, has a bigger display and USB 2.0 Host support, as well as WiFi b/g and Bluetooth.

According to retailer EletroWorld, the first sample unit will be arriving on May 12th, and a "limited" production run kicking off in the next month or two.  We'll be watching the first reviews with interest, to see if SmartQ have made another processor blunder.

Update: Steve from UMPC Portal has ordered a SmartQ 7 from EletroWorld, paying around $240 inclusive of delivery (to Germany).  We'll be interested to hear his thoughts on the MID when it arrives; it's expected to ship soon after May 12th.

[via Pocketables]