Slashdot Mirror
Motorola Timeport 270c Review
ioman1 writes: "Designtechnica does a review of Motorola's first ever cell phone to use the Bluetooth technology. "With a variety of features including speakerphone, voice recognition, and voice activation, the Timeport 270c pretty much allows you to have the conveniences of a pager, cell phone, and laptop all in one little device." 'Course, the problem is getting all your devices to communicate using Bluetooth, and passing the data in a readable format. I will say, the sooner it works the happier I'll be - having to input all my phone numbers into a new cell phone *sucks*.
Fortunately those of us with GSM phones haven't had to deal with this, since user data is stored on the SIM card.
Here is the Correct Link for the lazy. With some stuff on the end to get around the lameness filter...
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
After reading the review, I'm still unclear how they can make the claim that it incorporates the functions of a laptop. I can see phone and pager, and maybe PDA, but not laptop.
It's the old Chicken-and-Egg problem. Nobody feels particularly inclined to get their Bluetooth technology to market because there are no other devices to talk to.
I expect Bluetooth to be like USB. Pretty much useless for a couple of years except for the bleeding edge folks who don't mind buying technology before it's really ready. Have you seen the current bluetooth PCMCIA cards and their related software? Talk about a work in progress! I have one piece of software which will remain nameless where the Outlook like gui has widgets for all sorts of useful applications (LAN and Dial up access for instance) that don't actually work. If you dig aroudn on their site for awhile you discover that they don't work because they are implemented yet, the rest of the software crashes frequency and busywaits (I just love watching my OGR rate drop to 0 when the stupid BTEvents daemon starts up).
Still, until companies start biting the bullet and releasing these devices you won't reach critical mass and they will never come down in price. Fortunatly companies aren't doing this, they're going ahead and realeasing their devices now even if they are uselese so that in a couple of years you will be able to use your cell phone to sync your PDA and print out slides for a meeting. Just remember the old jokes about how USB used to be "Useless Serial Bus", and now people are looking at getting rid of PS/2.
I read the internet for the articles.
Bleagh.... When I first saw the headline, I thought they'd come out with a TARDIS extension.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My qualicomm and Verizon made this easy.
Go to my.verizon website, enter numbers and info.
send.
phone is now updated.
Oh and I can beam them from my palm to the qualicomm and vicea versa.
I assumed all advanced cellphones had this capability.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The Dial-Up Networking Profile is exactly what your thinking of. Any other Bluetooth device that knows how to use the Dial-Up Networking Profile (which is all PCMCIA cards at this time) will be able to use the phone just like any other modem.
"Profiles" is the Bluetooth name for standardized functionalities. So when you're looking at Bluetooth devices, check to see which profiles are implemented.
On the more general note of Bluetooth as wireless serial: yes, it is. Bluetooth is capable of emulating--not that you'd ever want to--62 simultaneous serial ports. So if there isn't a profile that does what you want, you can implement it yourself over simulated serial links. Also, existing apps that know how to use a serial port will be very, very easy to retrofit to use Bluetooth.