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New Ultra-Mobile Smartphone Neonode N1
luigi writes "Swedish startup Neonode announced its Neonode N1 Smartphone. The touch screen phone runs Microsoft Windows CE.NET v4.1 with a custom user interface. The Neonode N1 includes a digital camera, MMS, eMail, mp3 player and games. The handset is only 52 x 88 x 21mm small and weighs 90 grams. It should be available on the market february 2003. I4U has hi-res images of the device."
Dump it like Nokia did? Nokia never used any of the Microsoft mobile software... I wonder why I am even explaining this: Nokia is a major force behind the Symbian initiative. None of the Nokia phones ever used any of the Microsoft software. Not only that: none of Nokia's terminals or wireless devices or routers (yep, Nokia now sells some interesting routers/firewalls, too) uses anything by Microsoft. They use Symbian, Linux or *BSD.
Sigged!
OK it's running WinCE.net 4. something can do all these fun things and hrm it's running windows CE it's tiny CE is still a pig so the proc must run this thing down in what a few hours of use. I'm sorry I'm waiting for something that I can talk on etc for at least a normal 9 hour work day before recharging and not under a tower. I have a Nextel now 180 minutes of talk time not to bad but if your in a bad spot for range for a long time 48 hours of batter life on standby turns to 10.
No sir I dont like it.
For all of us lazy US folks, the phone is approx 3.5" by 2" by about 13/16" thick, and weighs around 3.2oz (for reference, an alkaline AA battery weighs about 0.85oz, so this thing weighs less than four AA batteries, 3.75 or so.)
Infosync has a pretty picture of this phone.
The small size is very tempting but I'm afraid that this is a case where small is too small. There is no physical keyboard or keypad -- one or the other is necessary for a real phone. The phone is also running Windows CE with a proprietary shell which means that it won't run PocketPC applications. In fact, little or no third-party applications are likely to be available unless it becomes very popular. It's storage (16MB with an SD slot) and battery life are nice.
I think I'll keep my Treo for now. But the Kyocera 7135 is a very nice alternative with a more traditional form factor.
Does this
The hardware spec below was posted in Neonodes forum FAQ section. It has a 1100mAh battery that will get you 10h of MP3 time which sounds great but the talktime is only 4h. My fully charged T68 claims 11h talktime whit it's 700mAh battery so the radio part is probably not the most efficient in the word. A couple of other interesting flaws has come up in the forum. It has no vibrator function and apparently the touch screen is more like a glidepad, it has no per pixel sensitivity so handwriting recognition is probably out of the question.
All in all it looks like an almost perfect phone that will be out in limited release in february (only about 1000 units!). After that the plan is that the phone will be marketed by the service providers since Neonode is a very small company (only 15 people) that don't have the resources themselves.
We probably have not seen the real camera phones from the big manufaturers yet, just communicator models like the Nokia 7650 and SonyEricsson P800. I'm expecting something like the N1 from all of them. They at least has to compete with the Panasonic GD87 and similar.
But I would be extatic if the little guy would suceed, it's allways fun with new competition to shake things up.
GSM features:
GSM dual band mode 900/1800 MHz or 900/1900 MHz (US). GPRS Class 10. SIM card can be accessed without removing the battery.
Operating system:
Windows CE.NET version 4.1 running our own shell called "neoshell". We do not use Pocket PC or Smartphone 2002. Pocket PC use a minimum 240x320 pixel resolution and Smartphone 2002 requires a numerical keypad.
CPU:
96 MHz ARM 7
Display:
2.2" TFT LCD with 262140 colors (18 bit mode), 65535 colors (16 bit mode), 70 Hz frame rate, 176 (H)x 220 (V) pixels, 96 kb video ram. Touch screen with 4 navigation keys + YES and NO (Power on/off) buttons.
Memory:
16 Mb SDRAM, 73 MHz, 64 MB SD-Card included in price. Avaliable today: 512 MB.
Camera:
Built in camera with 640 x 480 pixels and 16M colors. QQVGA(160x120)/QVGA(320x240) and VGA mode(640x480). Continous recording 160x120 pixels at 15 frames per second to SDCard.
Audio:
Built in 1W speaker (for ring tones, conference calls etc) and receiver and microphone (for GSM talk). Built in connector for a stereo headset and microphone.
Audio Codec:
48/44/22/11 or 8 Khz, sampling rate, 8 or 16 bit stereo or mono. Mixer for GSM audio(input and output) and internal audio stream(input and output).
Communication:
12 Mbit USB Host function capable of 100mA/5V output to low power devices such as mouses, keyboards, joysticks..
12 Mbit USB Function communicating with PC or other Host simulating a serial port up to 12 MBit/sec (appears as a COM10 on PC). This port can also be used for Microsoft Acivesync 3.6.
115k, 1,1M and 4 Mbit multi mode IRDA port (This port can be used for Microsoft Activesync 3.6)
Remote Control Ir function for 36-44 KHz modulation mode simulating a TV Remote control up to 10 m.
Battery: 1100 mAh, 3.7V. Charge-time 2.5 hrs
Operating parameters:
Operating up to 10 hours for games/mp3 (Radio in standby), Talk time 4 hours and standby time up to 250 hours.
Size:
88x52x21 Weight: 93 g
Software:
Camera, Mediaplayer, File Manager, Address book, notepad, SMS, MMS, WAP-Browser, E-mail, Internet Explorer