n9ik’s radio blog

I have read several times during this past year that the volume of sales of personal computers in Japan has declined, and that this trend is expected to continue and spread to other markets, the US and Europe included.  One of the (many) reasons for this is the continuing increase in functionality, processing power and speed of cellular phones – especially “smart” phones.

More and more, cellular phones have sufficient processing power and memory to run not just email and web browsing app’s, but also full-fledged word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications, not to mention games, mp3 and video players, and still- and video-cameras, and oh yes, the GPS.  There is still a long way to go before the hand-held device will completely replace the desktop or laptop PC for those home and business users that need more “oomph”, to do photo and video editing, for example.

Having said all of this, it is still obvious that sometimes the small screen real estate and tiny keyboards are just not sufficient.  With this in mind, Celio Technology Company recently developed and released what they are calling the “REDFLY Mobile Companion” that “extends the the Smartphone with the most valuable features of a laptop.  This is a 1″x6″x9″, two-pound device that looks like a small laptop, but does not have a processor, storage, or RAM.  Instead, it is essentially a clam-shell combination of keyboard and video monitor, with a touchpad mouse, a VGA port to plug in an external monitor or projector, Bluetooth, and two USB ports.

At roughly $500 per, these are a bit pricey considering that you can buy a full-fledged laptop for less that that.  As far as I can tell, the REDFLY is being marketed directly only to businesses – specifically sales forces, but it’s only a matter of time before something like this is marketed as an inexpensive companion device for consumers.

I bought a Nokia 6620 when it was newly on the market here in the US from Cingular (now AT&T Wireless) and, for the most part, I liked it.  It had a camera, which was relatively new – at least at an affordable price – at the time; had Bluetooth connectivity which was important to me; had good send & receive audio; it’s receiver circuit was sensitive enough, and transmitter strong enough to maintain a good connection to the cellular network when some other phones could not; and it was the first “smart” phone available in the US that supported the new high speed EDGE network.  And also, I’ve been using a Palm PDA for years now, and I didn’t want to combine a PDA and phone into one unit, one point of failure.  Besides, Palm-based cellular “smart” phones just didn’t have an adequate screen size or resolution for my jaded “requirements”, and I’d used a Compaq WindowsCE PDA for a while before I got my first PalmPilot, and felt the Palm OS was superior.  Following the Pilot, I used the Palm III, V, and finally the Palm Tungsten T3, which I’ve had  the past few years and which spoiled me – all that screen real estate!

For the past couple of years now, we’ve all seen the power and functionality of cell phones, especially “smart” phones, evolve.  In the business world, the “Crackberry” was king (sorry Ring, of course I mean Blackberry!).  We’ve also seen some real improvements in Microsoft’s portable operating system, now known as Windows Mobile – enough so that I’ve been considering giving Microsoft another shot. 

And then, a few months ago, I fell in lust!  One day, while browsing the available offerings from AT&T Wireless to upgrade that I might upgrade to, there was this new “cool tool” that seemed to have every feature a tech junky like me could want: a phone; a high resolution camera (3 Megapixels!); a slide-out, full QWERTY keyboard for texting & email; .mp3 player with stereo audio; stereo Bluetooth; 3G high-speed data network support; WiFi; a GPS; full PDA functionality; and a touch screen with full 240×320-pixel display.  This new object of my techno-lust?  The AT&T Tilt, a branded version of the TyTN II manufactured by HTC.

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