Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Wireless

Proving that corporate agendas sometimes can’t be put aside long enough to create a unified computing platform for the world’s poor, Microsoft has unveiled “FonePlus,” a concept device making good on its proposal to use smartphones as the basis for sending computers deep into emerging markets. Unfortunately we’ve been unable to dig up any eye candy, but FonePlus looks to follow Gates’ formula pretty closely: you get a CE-based smartphone (likely watered down from the full Windows Mobile package) with TV out and an external keyboard connection. The logic behind FonePlus suggests that phones and televisions are pervasive even in some of the world’s poorest regions, making the product an easy sell — plus, Internet access is part and parcel with the phone, something OLPC doesn’t provide out of the box. Whether FonePlus will see production remains to be seen, but Microsoft’s studying the idea closely — and when you get snubbed by OLPC in favor of Linux, well, it’s no surprise to see them come out swinging.

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Filed under: Culture, Handsets, Others, Misc

Proving that corporate agendas sometimes can’t be put aside long enough to create a unified computing platform for the world’s poor, Microsoft has unveiled “FonePlus,” a concept device making good on its proposal to use smartphones as the basis for sending computers deep into emerging markets. Unfortunately we’ve been unable to dig up any eye candy, but FonePlus looks to follow Gates’ formula pretty closely: you get a CE-based smartphone (likely watered down from the full Windows Mobile package) with TV out and an external keyboard connection. The logic behind FonePlus suggests that phones and televisions are pervasive even in some of the world’s poorest regions, making the product an easy sell — plus, Internet access is part and parcel with the phone, something OLPC doesn’t provide out of the box. Whether FonePlus will see production remains to be seen, but Microsoft’s studying the idea closely — and when you get snubbed by OLPC in favor of Linux, well, it’s no surprise to see them come out swinging.

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Filed under: Culture, Handsets, Others

Thought we admire diamond encruster extraordinaire Peter Aloisson and his previous work, it suffered the same problem as other million-dollar cellphones have in the past: not enough cryptography. Happily, Russian firm JSC Ancort has developed a Windows CE-based smartphone ready for Aloisson’s bejeweling that employs “powerful encryption technology” to “provide secure protection of information against kidnapping, technological blackmail, financial racketeers and corrupted state officials” — sounds like marketing speak for a password-protected wallet app, but who are we to judge? Of course, with its $1.3 million price tag and 50 diamonds (10 of which are blue) we think you might start to have more trouble with mugging than with “technological blackmail,” but there’s only one way to find out for certain — anyone want to donate the cash for a hands-on?

[Via textually.org]

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Filed under: GPS, Portable Audio, Transportation

Personal Tech Pipeline got a chance to tour around with Mio's C310 portable GPS receiver with built-in DAP that we first spotted at CES, and claim that although the unit is a pretty good value, its performance is a bit underwhelming. Rather than building a product from the ground up like the Garmins and Magellans of the world, Mio has assembled a Windows CE-powered unit featuring software from Destinator Technologies and maps from TeleAtlas -- which, while not necessarily a bad thing, means some of the features aren't as polished as they are on vertically-integrated products. For example, PTP found that many important options were buried under several sub-menus, which made simple tasks like changing to night mode or selecting a new destination while driving more difficult than they should be, and probably more dangerous. The C310 seemed to perform its navigation duties fairly well, though, and even ships with ActiveSync for loading up your Outlook contacts' addresses, but little annoyances like a cluttered 3.5-inch screen and awful built-in speakers might be enough to convince most folks to put their $600 towards a more expensive model that operates a little more smoothly.

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops, Tablet PCs

It's been almost a year since the Clio NXT was supposed to ship -- so long ago in fact, that we sense the dull fog of disinterest descending upon you. See, the Clio NXT was (is?) the successor to the cult 1998-released WinCE laptop/tablet which is said to feature Windows CE.NET 5.0 (yes, CE), a 10.4-inch, 800 x 600 touchscreen LCD with 180-degree pivot, 802.11 WiFi, 64MB SDRAM / 64MB Flash ROM, near full-size QWERTY keyboard, and smattering of connectivity and expansion options including SD card slots, PCMCIA, USB, a headphone jack, mic, and video out. Well, out of the blue this morning we received a press release stating that Duke University's Fuqua School of Business will serve as "beta site" for the NXT and Data Evolution's other CE computing device, the Cathena ultra-light laptop. That's it -- no price (although we last heard $999 for the NXT), no expected start to this beta program let alone revised ship date... nothin'. In a market now flooded with reasonably priced tablets, UMPCs, and dirt cheap laptops, we're feeling, well, a bit jaded ourselves.

Filed under: GPS, Transportation

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French site
caraudiovideo, whose specialty is pretty self-evident, have information on a new Windows CE-powered Pioneer GPS
receiver that is supposedly one of the first from the company to include built-in Bluetooth. The AVIC-S1 is a
"portable" model (meaning you can port it from vehicle to vehicle, but not on your geocaching expeditions)
that features a 320 x 240 touchscreen, SiRF III chip for greater accuracy, and what seems to be 2GB of flash memory
preloaded with European maps. Any of the included points-of-interest can be dialed on your cellphone via Bluetooth, and
a choice of 17 guidance languages will help you brush up on the native tongues as you travel around the continent. It’s
not really clear when this product will be released (if it’s not out already), or how much it will go for, but until a
US version is announced, those details are a moot point to the majority of you anyway.

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