Hands-on with iLuv's i399 and i1255

Posts with tag Bluetooth2.0


In the quest to continue driving down the size of cellphone handsets these days, the quest to make the tiniest (and hopefully most usable) Bluetooth headset is not far behind. Remember when the Nextlink Bluespoon was claimed to be the world's smallest Bluetooth headset? Those days are long gone and Sagem has announced that it now has the world's smallest Bluetooth headset. We better call the Guiness Book of World Records (at least for today), as the Sagem G4 claims that it "could be" the world's smallest (nice cop out), at 35 x 18 x 12.5mm -- and weighing just 8 grams as well. Performance, you ask? Sagem claims 5 hours of talktime and 100 hours of standby, and charging time is only 1.5 hours to boot. Cost? 53 British pounds, or about $103 greenbacks in U.S. currency, but right now, there's only a teaser at Sagem's website -- and it's supposed to be available some time this week.
We're not sure who's still snatching up these old-fashioned "personal digital assistants" (or PDAs -- for you kids out there, they're like smartphones without the phone; weird, right?), but apparently some people are still interested in do-it-all devices that don't really do it all, so Spanish manufacturer Airis has broken off two new GPS-equipped models on the cheap. As far as cellular-free handhelds go, the Windows Mobile 5-powered T610 and T620 are pretty feature-packed, each sporting a 400MHz Samsung CPU, 3.5-inch QVGA display, 64MB RAM / 128MB ROM, Bluetooth 2.0, SiRFStar III satellite receiver, and a regular SD slot to hold your maps and various multimedia swag. On top of all that, the T620 also throws down an 802.11b/g radio, making it even more attractive than some of the pricier Garmin iQue models that we've seen. Best of all, either unit can be picked up for a song, with the T610 priced at €220 ($278) and its big brother going for a very reasonable €289 ($365). Still, without the ability to pull in live traffic updates like a PocketPC phone loaded up with TomTom, we'd probably take a pass here (man, are we spoiled).
We wouldn't even think of buying a cellphone that didn't incorporate both WiFi and Bluetooth, so you better believe we were excited to learn of semiconductor manufacturer Marvell's new combo 802.11a/b/g - BT chip for portables, which is supposedly the first of its kind. The so-called 88W8688 -- which supports Bluetooth 2.0 and hardware acceleration for UMA, IMS, etc. -- has a footprint of less than 80-square-millimeters, or about half the size of current two-chip combinations. For consumers, this will mean smaller versions of all the gadgets we love, and most importantly for us, those super-functional-but-chunky smartphones that we feel naked without. Although the chip is currently shipping to select Marvell OEM partners, it has yet to announced which specific device categories will see the first implementations; our plea: get these puppies to HTC as quickly as possible!
At a San Francisco press
briefing and product demonstration that hopefully went better than its disastrous Korean
counterpart last month, executives from Samsung, Microsoft, and Intel jointly announced pricing and availability
details for the official U.S. release of the Q1 UMPC. Starting on May 7th, early-adopters will be able to pick up a
Q1 -- along with all the high-profit-margin accessories -- at Best Buy's e-tail location for $1,100, with an in-store
rollout planned for "later this summer." As you're probably already aware, the Q1, along with models from Asus, Founder, and TabletKiosk, is among the first generation of so-called Ultra
Mobile PCs designed to enhance your on-the-go lifestyle, and sports a 7-inch touchscreen, Celeron M ULV processor, 40GB
hard drive, 512MB RAM, 802.11b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0.







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