Making time at the Holiday Spectacular! tech media event
posted September 21st 2004 7:04AM
Last night Ryan and I hit peppy Pepcom's Holiday Spectacular! media event which had some vague Hawaiian theme that
pretty much everyone attending immediately ignored upon arrival. But we won't waste your time blathering on about what
the atmosphere was like; what you really want to hear about is what we saw there, right? Here are some highlights:
The people at the HP booth didn’t seem very happy about us snapping pics of these Bluetooth wireless stereo headphones
that don’t officially exist and are for “research purposes” only or something like that. So forget we mentioned it.
There aren’t that many original ideas in the cellphone biz, but Wildseed has one: swappable Smart Skins for handsets
that load new wallpapers, games, and ringtones onto the phone when you pop it on. The phones have been available for a
few months now (no major carriers have signed on yet) and they have a few different skins out already, but the new one
to look out for (if you’re looking out, that is) one that comes with Mortal Kombat on it and comes bundled with a
special game pad attachment.
In case you wondering how RIM’s new BlackBerry 7100t compared to the Treo 600 and an older BlackBerry…
We already knew that Casio’s new three megapixel EX-S100
digital camera was small, but you gotta actually hold it in your hand to really get it.
They still won’t commit to a release date (except to say that it’ll probably come out overseas first), but Motorola
definitely improved the keyboard on their MPx Pocket PC Phone.
Moto might be tinkering with the keyboard on the MPx, but Sony Ericsson appears to be ready to let loose their P910
smartphone, which is basically the P900 with the addition of mini QWERTY keyboard that folds out. Not exactly as easy
to use as you’d like, but not as bad as we thought it’d be, either.
Then again, the real surprise of the show was that as a teaser Sony Ericsson had one of their Japan-only cellphones,
the SO213, aka the premini, aka the most absolutely miniscule cellphone we’ve seen.
This photo didn’t turn out so well, but this is Siemens’ new S66 1.3 megapixel cameraphone, which has a 65,000 color
LCD screen, an RS-MMC memory card slot, and built-in Bluetooth. Should be out next month, but they wouldn’t say which
carrier(s) will offer it.
Like we said before, it’s not much to look at, but
ViewSonic’s new WMG120 Wireless Media Gateway combines a
wireless 802.11g router with 120GB of networkable storage.
At the ViewSonic booth they were wireless streaming video from the WMG120 to ViewSonic’s new 32-inch LCD TV. (Please
also note the presence of a lei, which proves that there was a Hawaiian theme.)
There seem to be some pics that are just a few pixels high in there...
Looks like they have a clone of a 1st gen ipod's controls built into the ear