jetway
Latest
Jetway, maker of motherboards, is prepping its first smartphone, the Alfar 560
We'll be honest: we originally made our way over to Jetway's booth here at Computex because we had heard scuttlebutt that a KIRF Samsung Galaxy Note was on display. Turns out, that wasn't true -- this thing doesn't even support pen input! -- but as it happens, Jetway had an interesting story to tell nonetheless. Jetway, based in Taiwan, has until now been designing motherboards, but is now releasing its first phone. What you see there is the Alfar 560, a reference design that various OEMs can rebadge under their own names. Based on the specs, it's clear that whatever brand picks this up, it's going to be a low-to-mid-range device: vitals include a 650MHz MTK6575 CPU, a 5.1-inch (800 x 480) display, 512MB of RAM, Bluetooth 2.1, a pair of 0.3- and 5-megapixel cameras. Additionally, it's dual-SIM-capable, with support for both WCDMA and GSM. If all that sounds ho-hum, we'll remind you that we haven't seen that many low-end phones with screens this huge, and the design here is actually decent, aside from the fact that the phone is chunkier than whatever flagships HTC and Samsung have to offer. If you're reading this in the US, you probably won't ever get to see it in person, but you just might get to handle it if you live in Asia, the Middle East or South America -- Jetway says it expects the 560 to eventually arrive in those three regions. Wherever you are, feel free to rubberneck at the photos below, and check out our quickie video after the break.
Jetway JBC600C99-52W is a long name for a little nettop with Atom D525 power
ASUS has yet to make the EeeBox EB1501P official, with its new dual-core Atom D525 internals, and the price for being tarrying is being beaten to the punch. Jetway (who previously took a little inspiration from the Wii in its case designs), is launching the sensually titled JBC600C99-52W nettop, with a D525 processor running at 1.8GHz, ION2 graphics, gigabit Ethernet, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. No memory whatsoever is included, so it's BYO DDR2 and storage, but a price of $270 should leave at least a little room in your budget to meet those needs.
Keepin' it real fake, part LX: JetWay's mini-ITX PC strikes a Wii pose
It doesn't take a blatant knockoff to land you a KIRF badge, sometimes it just takes a bit of "inspiration." In this case, it's pretty clear where JetWay was getting its ideas for its latest VIA and AMD-based mini-ITX PCs over at Computex 2007. No shame in the game, we can imagine worse form factors for those parts to end up in.
