Gotive H41 Ruggedised PDA
They may be entirely irrelevant to the majority of people, but
there's something inherently appealing about ruggedised gadgets nonetheless.
Maybe it's the bright colours, or the rubbery exteriors, or maybe it's just the
promise that you can bash them about with no recriminations. Whatever it is,
we're feeling enthusiastic about Gotive's H41 ruggedised PDA. As well as the
GSM/GPRS data and voice capabilities, the H41 comes with a GPS function and a
Bar Code Reader (again, something we'd never need yet somehow hanker after).
There's also an MMC and CF card slot for adding memory or extra features like
WiFi.
A large onscreen keyboard and a screen that works in either portrait or landscape orientation should make this easy for ham fisted outdoor types or warehouse workers to use - as should the easy grip rubber edging. It's weather and drop resistant and the connectors are described as "unbreakable" which is asking for trouble, surely. It runs on the WinCE NET OS and includes all the usual PIM software as well as Pocket Word and all those other apps. It's pricey though - £990 excluding VAT.
March 21, 2005 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CeBIT: Navman's GPS PDA
Navman, one of a small but interesting contingent
of exhibitors from New Zealand at CeBit, has new GPS product in the guise of the
PIN 57, a Windows based PDA. It uses Navman’s SmartST
navigation software to display 3d or 2d maps and deliver turn by turn
instructions. Another new-ish feature is points of interest which allows the
user to customise individual POI and download other POI databases.
Other features include Microsoft® Windows Mobile 2003 operating system, a Samsung 266MHz processor with 64MB of internal RAM, a 3.5-inch transflective LCD touch screen (with 65,000 colours and a 240 x 320 resolution) and an MMC/ SD (SDIO) expansion slot. It will be available for £349 from May.
Navman is also displaying the X300, the latest in its series of sports devices, which uses GPS satellites to tell joggers, skiers or cyclists how far and fast they are going.
March 10, 2005 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft's voice command for PDAs
Window's Mobile Pocket PC users in the UK can now control their PDAs using Microsoft's Voice Command software. The application, which has been available in the US for a while now, has been launched in the UK. This follows a number of tweaks that now enable it to recognise and understand the many regional accents and dialects from around Britain. Handsfree calling lets you make and take calls and the app will let you know who's ringing you. You can ask your smartphone questions such as "what calls did I miss?". You can get it to look up appointments in your diary and fill you in one what you've got to do that day. You can pick songs to play on Windows Media Player and start tunes with spoken instructions. And you can start up any program and get information on battery level and time all by talking to your digital assistant. There's no pre-recording to do and the sofware doesn't need to "learn" any specific speech traits. It'll cost you £20 from Handango.
March 8, 2005 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Jazz up your Treo 650
These guys don't waste any time. No sooner do we put up a story
about the new Treo 650 coming to the UK then we get a press release about some
new cases for it from Innova
Cases.
They're available in several different colours, including pink, green, orange and red-ish and they look OK - if you're the sort of person who feels the need to accessorise your smart phone. But with prices starting at around £50 they're not exactly cheap. Here are the features:
* Semi-rigid flip cover
* SD cards slot
* Charge and sync cutout
*
Optional ultra clip
* Headphone access
* Easy re-set access
Compare
PalmOne Treo prices
Innova Cases
Vaja
February 15, 2005 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Mio's GPS units with MP3
Mio, the company
responsible for providing countless UK laptop companies with re-badged PDA
offerings, has been dipping its toes into the Sat Nav market once more. The Mio
168 PDA/GPS hybrid went down pretty well, and now the company has branched out
with 2 new GPS handhelds. This time the satellite navigation products are
standalone devices, offering portable navigation for less than £300. The Mio268
(pictured) is the cheaper option, while the Mio269 comes pre-installed with all
the European mapping software, which bumps its price up to £399.
Both units are designed for multi-purpose use, with settings for car, motorbike, bicycle and pedestrian. This means you can use them for straightforward navigation, or you can get them to tell you the location of the nearest pub or petrol station. What's more, an MP3 player comes built into both units. The Mio268 relies on memory card storage as it doesn't have a hard disk. This means you can have up to a gigabyte's worth of music, but you'll need to get another memory card for the maps if you want a lot of tunes. The Mio269, meanwhile, is a 2.5GB hard disk unit. With all the maps preloaded, you'll have 500MB of free space to save the music onto.
January 28, 2005 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BlackBerry 7100X released
Obviously BlackBerry decided to ignore those negative reviews of
its redesigned QWERTY keypad (the TD team was split, with some of us hating it
and some of us rather liking it) and plough on with another handset sporting the
same doubled up key design. This time the company's 7100x will be released in
partnership with O2, the company that usually specialises in the more businessy
side of smartphone/emailer devices (like the Xdas and the chunkier BlackBerry
handsets). This time, however, O2's in pursuit of a more consumery market
(presumably in response to Orange's SPV c500 and Vodafone's 7100v BlackBerry).
The 7100x looks similar to the 7100v, but comes in a 'piano black' chassis, with
a slightly different styling to Vodafone's grey handset. It's got 32MB flash
memory and 4MB SRAM. Like the Voda unit, the phone can be used without RIM's
dedicated BlackBerry email server so it can be used straight out of the box, but
business users can also get it set up with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server if
they want immediate push email and all the other benefits that come with it. Out
this month.
January 12, 2005 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Eten M500 Smartphone
We're back at last, refreshed
and ready to tell you about all the lastest gadgets we think might tickle your
fancy. We hope you had a nice Christmas and New Year and all that business.
We're still buzzing off the sugar in that tin of Roses we devoured over the
holidays.
Cast your minds back to last year and you may remember us telling you about Eten's P300 and P700 smarphones. Availble from Peripheral Corner, these handsets offered slightly more affordable alternatives to your Xdas and your SPVs and while the P700 was on the wrong side of boxy, we were rather partial to the very small P300 - though the screen wasn't up to much. So we're looking forward to seeing how the M500, Eten's latest smartphone, has turned out. The quad band handset comes with Bluetooth, a 1.3-megapixel camera, SDIO slot, 130MB of flash memory and a 65k colour display.
January 4, 2005 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
HP iPAQ h6340 on T-Mobile
You can now get
HP's hunky chunky super-connected PDA on
T-Mobile with a special little connection pack full of goodies.
The iPAQ h6340 leaves you spoilt for choice on the connectivity
front, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPRS, GSM and infrared. The T-Mobile deal
means you start using all the connectivity options straight out of the box. The
£9.99 package includes 2 hours of Wi-Fi access (ie. 2 T-Mobile vouchers for
T-Mobile hotspots), 30 days unlimited GPRS and £5 of voice and text messaging
included with the SIM card. After that you'll have to go back to top up cards or
a monthly tariff, but it's a good way of getting the customers on board.
The only slight downside is that the h6340 is a big ugly brick of a thing. Still, if you can live with that (and can afford the £479-odd you'll have to pay for it) it does offer an alternative to the Nokia Communicator.
December 2, 2004 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nokia Communicator on Sale
Nokia's 9500 Communicator, the phone
maker's first handset with built in Wi-Fi, has gone on
sale in the UK. The handset is far less brick-like than the original
Communicator handsets, and now comes with a built in VGA camera and a 16-bit
colour display. The Symbian 7 platform is present and correct, while there's
80GB MB (oops!) of memory for your application-adding pleasure (along
with a MultiMediaCard slot for adding more, transferring pics etc). There's
Bluetooth and Nokia's Pop Port USB connection for connecting to a PC. You can
get it SIM-Free for £529.95 or on contract for around £294.95.
[Edit: We forgot to mention its killer feature! How careless of us. It's also got Wi-Fi connection,l making it a highly attractive prospect indeed.]
November 17, 2004 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Fossil's PDA watches make a come back
It feels like
we've been writing Fossil PDA watch stories for most of our adult lives. The
company has announced the launch of a Palm OS-based watch pretty much every year
since we can remember (well, since Nov 2002 - we have short memories) only to
slink quietly away again without actually releasing the watches. The Register
has been keeping a beady eye on the company website, however, and it seems that
the PDA watches are back. The three Wrist PDA designs are Sport, Dress and
Casual and the specs include 2MB of RAM, 2MB of Flash memory, 33MHz Motorola
Dragonball VZ processor and 160 x 160-pixel greyscale LCD.
As The Reg points out, the blurb on the site says that the next line of PDA and PDA/PC watches will be arriving later this year.
Fossil [Via The Register]
November 9, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
BenQ P30 smartphone
We
somehow managed to miss this one off last week. BenQ's
continuing its spate of innovative gadget releases with the launch of the P30,
the company's first Symbian-based smartphone. The handset, just 17mm thick,
comes with a 262K-colour TFT touchscreen, built-in VGA digital camera with 3X
digital zoom, an application bundle that includes Picsel Viewer for MS Word,
Excel, Powerpoint and Adobe PDFs, and PhotoBase photo editing software. The
excellent Opera Browser comes already installed, and users can synch via USB,
Bluetooth or infrared. There's also a music player supporting MP3, AU, AMR, WAV
and MIDI file formats.
November 1, 2004 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
Treo 650 not heading our way soon
The Treo 650 is launching in the US
today, but there's no news of when it's likely to reach these shores just yet.
No carriers have been announced in the UK so we'll have to wait our turn to see
the new handset. According to reports, the 650 will be similar to its
predecessor, the 600, but will have rounder edges and a flatter keyboard. A high
resolution (320 x 320 pixels) will accompany the VGA digtial camera (not 1.3
megapixels as rumoured). There will also be a faster processor on board and
Bluetooth capabilities.
October 25, 2004 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
T-Mobile's latest smartphone
We
haven't had a new Pocket PC-based smartphone out for a while, so it's nice to
have a bit of a break from all those Symbians and Smartphones for T-Mobile's
latest addition to its smartphone handsets. The i-mate Jam (to
be called the MDA Compact under T-Mobile's branding) is reminiscent of the Eten
P300 in that it's a smaller-than-usual Windows Mobile device. In fact, it's
even smaller than the P300, measuring 108 x 58 x 18mm. It's got a 1.3-megpixel
camera 64MB of ROM and 64MB of SDRAM. There's also Bluetooth (though it sounds
like this could be an optional addition for carriers) and SD(IO)/MMC expansion.
All that's missing is wireless and you'd have a perfect little smartphone.
Pricing from T-Mobile is still to be confirmed, but you can buy it unlocked and
SIM-Free from Expansys for £399.95
right now.
October 25, 2004 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
Dell's new PDAs hit Europe
While Dell has been very busy Stateside launching
all kinds of iPod rivals and consumer electronics goodies it has been a little
more lethargic in Europe.
We are however at least seeing some new product including a trio of new Microsoft PDA handhelds and its first ever LCD TV.
Set to launch in November the Axim X50, X50v and X50 416MHz are the latest in fairly successful Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition based Pocket PCs.
The top model (the Axim X50V) in particular looks like reasonable bet if you can still find a use for a PDA. It includes a 624Mhz Intel PXA270 processor, 3.7inch screen, 128MB of memory and both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The price of around £350 is fairly reasonable too.
The £300 Axim X50 has a slightly slower 512Mhz processor and a 3.5, as opposed to 3.7 inch display.
At the bottom end the Axim X50 416MHz has, surprise surprise, a 416MHz processor and no Wi-Fi
Dell’s debut TV is a 26inch widescreen LCD model called the W2600. The set, which is finished in satin chrome and sports piano black speakers, is on sale now for £1207.82.
October 20, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
Is this Mio's new GPS handheld?
Interesting pics have surfaced that are supposedly of Mitac's
latest Mio PDA. The pictures apparently show Mio's second-generation GPS-enabled
PDA, which will replace the company's Mio 168 (sold via Evesham). The new model, which everyone's
calling the 188, looks similar to Navman's range of standalone portable GPS
units, and seems to be similarly designed for use in landscape mode - switching
back to portrait when in use as a PDA.
October 5, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
Tungsten T5 announced
Palm has announced its latest handheld, the
Tungsten T5. The PDA, which bears more than a passing
resemblance to the Tungsten E, offers no big surprises and just includes more
ramped up specs than its predecessors. These include 256MB of memory storage,
416MHz XScale processor and a 320x480-pixel colour display. On the downside,
there's no Wi-Fi and no Palm OS 6 (codenamed Cobalt ). Infosync has a review
of the handheld up already. General feeling seems to be that this is unlikely to
cause much of a stir when it comes to features, but that it offers the same good
design and usability you'd expect from a Palm device. It's priced at $399 in the
US, but there's no info on UK pricing yet.
October 4, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
OQO October launch set
OQO has been threatening to release its Model
01 Windows XP palmtop device for what seems like forever now. The company has
finally come up with something a bit more specific than ‘soon’, and has
announced that the handheld will be launched in the USA on 14th October.
We’ve yet to see if the Model 01 will be following in the great tradition of handheld hybrid devices that sink without trace shortly after their release. It’s based on a 1GHz Transmeta processor with 256MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive. Other features include a 5-inch widescreen panel and both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
September 14, 2004 in Computers, PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
New Xdas announced from O2
O2 has announced that it will be releasing an
updated version of its Xda II later this year – the Xda IIs.
The smartphone is to include a slide out QWERTY keyboard as well as the
long-awaited 802.11b wireless connectivity.
Although it won’t be available immediately, O2 has revealed that the handset will also feature BlackBerry push email service. O2 is suggesting that RIM’s Connect software should be added to handsets at the start of next year (and presumably you’ll be able to download the software for free if you’ve already forked out for the new handset).
Expect to see the updated phone over here in November for around £449. A further model, the Xda IIi, will follow the upgraded model. This will include a faster 520MHz Intel PXA270 processor and a 1.3-megapixel camera. Pricing for the Xda IIi is still to be set.
Xda IIs specs:
• Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition Software for Pocket PCs
• 3.5”
Transflective TFT-LCD 240 x 320 pixels, 65K Colour,
• Size: 125(L) x 72(W) x
19(T) mm
• Processor - Intel PXA263 400 MHz, memory - 96MB ROM, 128MB SDRAM
• GSM/GPRS
• Internal antenna, Quad band, 850/900/1800/1900
• GPRS
class 10
• Infrared, USB, Bluetooth and Wireless LAN (802.11b)
• Colour
CMOS 0.3Megapixel camera, with mirror
• 205 grams with battery, expansion:
MMC/SDIO
• 12 buttons, 5-way rocker, slide-out 39-key QWERTY keyboard
•
1490mAH LP battery
• Standby/PDA/Recover/Talk: 168/17/72/4
September 10, 2004 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
The new BlackBerry 7100t finally surfaces
Those lucky enough to have caught our short-lived RIM BlackBerry
“Charm” story a few weeks back (for which we got a sound ticking off) will
already have an idea of what to expect. For anyone else, the latest BlackBerry
is likely to come as something of a surprise.
The 7100t is a bit of a departure for the previously chubby-loving designers over at RIM. The handset is far thinner than its predecessors having ditched the QWERTY keypad in favour of one that has two letters per key. A new predictive text app should speed things up a bit.
The phone is quad-band GSM/GPRS, with Bluetooth, PIM applications, web browsing and, of course, BlackBerry’s push email service. The handset is available in the USA with T-Mobile. There’s no news yet of a UK launch.
September 9, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
The Darkness believe in a thing called BlackBerry
You’ll
no doubt be rushing out to emulate your heroes when we tell you that The
Darkness have chosen to take BlackBerry 7230s from
O2 on tour with them. According to O2’s press release on the
matter, the handhelds are perfect for helping the band keep in touch with their
friends and family as well as their management.
All this seems a bit too rock-lite for us. We love the BlackBerry as much as
the next hirsute metal fan, but that doesn’t mean we want to see bands waving
them about the place. You wouldn’t catch Led Zeppelin packing Nokia 7650s along
with the Red Snappers, would you now.
September 1, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
First Treo 650 pictures appear
First pics of the Treo 650 (not the 610 as
rumoured) have emerged. A poster on the Treo Central forums has come up with the
goods, and it looks like the Palm smartphone has a removable battery, new
backlit keyboard and Bluetooth. There's also a 1.3-megapixel camera and a high
resolution screen.
Apparently none of the 600 peripherals will work with the new handset.
August 27, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
Blackberry for Mac users
Mac devotees should be pleased to hear that a third party app has been developed that allows OS X to synchronise with Blackberry handsets.
Developed by Information Appliance Associates (IAA), the iSync plug-in, PocketMac Blackberry Edition, allows Mac owners to upload and download information to and from their Blackberry devices. The software is compatible with Microsoft Entourage, the Mac OS X address book, Now Contact, iCal and Now Up-To-Date.
Available now for $29.95 on IAA’s website, the software will allow Blackberrys (Blackberries?) to connect via either USB or serial ports.
Read [Via The Register]
August 23, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
iPod PDA inevitable?
Interesting article in the FT about the inevitability of an iPod PDA. Analyst Jakob Nielson insists that, "as the pods go up in gigabytes, it's inevitable that they will become general purpose storage devices. Add a colour screen and they become photo viewers." From there he believes it's a small step for music hard drives to add PDA functionality: "all a PDA needs to become a music player is a higher quality chip and a headset plug."
So Apple CEO Steve Jobs can insist all he likes about the iPod's only raison d'etre being the music, but as hard drives become smaller and cheaper, an all-singing all-dancing music player-PDA hybrid is apparently the obvious conclusion.
iRiver certainly seems to think so. Marketing manager, Carsten Bickhoff, expects that "within 12 to 15 months there will be a hard drive-based player with true PDA functionality."
August 18, 2004 in MP3 players, PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
Not cool to BSquare
After
posting a $5.1million loss, BSquare has announced that it is withdrawing its
handheld PC. The handheld had been available in the UK through Vodafone and was
sold mainly to business users as an alternative to smartphones and PDAs.
While the handheld PC market died a death a few years back, it has seen something of a comeback in recent years, with the likes of OQO, Tiqit and Dana all offering devices that offer something different to normal PDAs. BSquare simply couldn't sell enough handhelds to cover the costs of developing and launching the device. It will now offer the Windows XP-based wireless PDA to other manufacturers under licence.
Brian Crowley, president and chief executive officer of BSQUARE, explained:
"Ultimately, decreasing order volumes in the second quarter from our largest customer and concerns regarding the market life of the current Power Handheld device caused interested parties to pass on the Power Handheld hardware opportunity, causing the company to decide to end manufacturing of the device and, instead, focus its resources on the enabling software included in the Power Handheld device."
August 2, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
No upgrades for Dell and HP PDAs
The recent announcement
from HP and Dell that they wouldn’t be
supplying Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition upgrades for their older devices
has left a number of people feeling justifiably peeved. Two online petitions
have been started in a bid to change the minds of the manufacturers. The HP petition
currently has around 6837 signatures, while the Dell version has
just over 3000.
The petitions refer to the HP iPAQ h19xx, h22xx, h38xx, h39xx, h41xx, and h5xxx series, and the Dell Axim X5 and X3 handhelds. Since a simple software upgrade is all that is needed, the petitioners feel that Dell and HP are obliging them to buy new handhelds when their old ones are easily upgradeable. Possibly something to do with the fact that HP has just announced a new range of handhelds across the price range, while Dell only recently launched its X30 range (in the same chassis as the X3) all running 2003 SE.
August 2, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
HP goes launch crazy
HP has announced four new iPAQ models, the
most interesting of which is the company’s h6340 smartphone.
The Pocket PC-based smartphone is obviously designed to be a direct competitor
for O2’s xda II, and comes with quad-band GSM/GPRS, WLAN and Bluetooth.
Judging by the pics, we’re not convinced that the h6340 is going to be good enough to loosen the xda II’s grasp on the smartphone market – especially not if the rumours about the xda III are to believed.
The design is pretty boxy - and that protruding aerial leaves a lot to be desired. It uses a 200 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 1510 processor, compared to the 400MHz Intel PXA263 processor on the xda. The 64MB of memory can't compete with the xda II's 128MB, but the VGA camera and 16-bit TFT display match the xda II's.
The other PDAs announced are the high-end iPAQ hx4700, the
consumer-friendly iPAQ rx3000 series, and the entry-level
rz1710. Expect to see them in the UK in September. The h6340
should cost around £470 SIM-Free.
July 28, 2004 in Mobile phones, PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
Wi-Fi cards for Palm PDAs?
Some interesting goss for PalmOne top-end PDA owners. According to Brighthand and Engadget a Wi-Fi card that sits in the PDA’s SD/IO slot could be on its way.
Simialar cards for Microsft based PDAs went on sale in the UK a couple of months back.
The story runs that the card will only be compatible with the company’s
flagship models the Tungsten T3 and the newly launched Zire 72.
May 26, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | TrackBack
New Palm Zire
We could spend hours debating whether there’s a future for the low-end PDA. After all aren’t we all going to be using smartphones?
That said we kind of like the look of the latest £200-ish Zire 72 multimedia style PDA from PalmOne.
It looks cool – it is finished in a funky blue. It has a 1.2 mega pixel camera, MP3 player, Bluetooth and of course Palm One’s wonderfully easy to use 5.2.8 operating system. The 65k 320x320 pixel screen looks pretty good too and the processor (its is an Intel 312 Mhz ARM) seems pretty whizzy.
Not sure we’d swap it for a Treo or an XDA 2 though.
We’ll have a review for you next week. In the meantime here’s what Forbes had to say about it.
April 28, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Pocket PC Wi-Fi cards arrive at last
After a series of delays lasting the best part of a year, SD/IO Wi-Fi cards for Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2002 and 2003 PDAs have finally gone on sale in the UK reports The Guardian.
The £110 card from SanDisk, and £125 card from Socket, enable owners of non Wi-Fi-equipped PDAs to harness wireless (802.11b) connections to access the internet, and send email at broadband speeds via hotspots and home networks.
However, the cards are not compatible with all PDAs and smartphones running
Microsoft platforms. Check with retailers such as http://www.expansys.com/and http://www.blueunplugged.com/.
April 15, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Skype delivers free voice calls on the move
We must admit to have not been too caught up in the hype surrounding the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) software Skype.
Devised by the team that brought you the peer to peer file sharing software KaZaa Skype, once it installed on your PC, enables you to make free, unlimited call via the net to anyone anywhere else in the world provided they too have Skype on their PC.
The company claims that the software has now been downloaded over 9.5 million times since its launch in summer 2003, and given the number of techies we know using it we have no reason to query those figures.
Its fans say that unlike rival VoIP systems the voice quality is as good as most mobiles.
Now Skype has taken the concept a step further and introduced PocketSkype software that enables users to make free voice calls over wireless networks using Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2003 PDAs.
Users download PocketSkype, from its website and transfer it to their handheld PC. They then use the PDA to make free, unlimited voice calls on the move using Wi-Fi hot spots or at home via their own wireless network.
As with the PC version the only limitation is that calls can only be made to others using the Skype software. (both on PC and Windows Mobile device)
We’ll certainly be having a play with it next week.
April 7, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Navman's PIN GPS PDA
The PDA with GPS market is continuing to expand. We hear that Halfords apparently already sold out of its Medion Windows Mobile based device.
Coming in early summer is the first PDA with integrated GPS facilities from Navman. The £500 Navman PIN uses Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2003 operating system and features a GPS receiver that flips up from the back of the device.
Also on board is Navman’s SmartST V2 software which display s3D maps of 16 European countries on the PIN’s 3.5inch LCD screen.
Like its rival the device also offers turn-by turn voice instructions between stated destinations.
The PIN runs using an Intel PXA-256 300mHz processor, features 64Mb RAM and has an expansion slot for SD, SD/IO and MMC cards.
April 7, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Sat Nav PDA on the cheap
Interesting spot on the Halfords website. The car accessory company is offering a Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC PDA with integrated GPS for just £400 – much cheaper than rival GPS/PDA combis.
The device, the Medion Satellite Navigation System, includes all the usual Pocket PC stuff (Outlook, e-mail, Pocket Internet Explorer, Windows Media) as well as UK mapping data pre-installed on an MMC card.
Just like other GPS systems it offers turn-buy turn guiding via voice and automatic re-routing.
Seems like we aren’t the only ones who reckon it is a bit of a bargain as the
Halford website was out of stock when we looked on Tuesday March 16th.
March 16, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Top-end PDA from Sony
Sony has unveiled a new high-end PDA for the UK - the
Clie PEG-TH55. It features the upright form factor of Sony’s
Palm OS based models and boasts a 320x480 pixel, 65k colour screen. The TH55
uses Palm OS 5.2 operating system and has 32MB of ROM and 32MB of RAM for
storage. Connectivity options include integrated Wi-Fi (802.11b) and
Bluetooth.
It also features a raft of entertainment facilities including a built, in
camera, video and image viewing software and an MP3/ATRAC music player. Sony has
also upgraded the organiser's interface which it claims makes it easier to
access the PDA’s applications. It goes on sale now for around £300.
February 20, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wi-Fi wait for Palm T3 owners
Bad news for Palm Tungsten T3 owners who want to add Wi-Fi to their PDA. Seems like the long-promised SanDisk Wi-Fi card that fits into the device’s SDIO slot has been delayed again. According to Brighthand we won’t actually see one until April 2004.
February 2, 2004 in PDAs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
