New Phone Uses WLAN or Cel Networks

Reefa writes "Avaya, Motorola and Proxim this week are expected to announce a co-developed handset and enterprise network gear that let mobile phone users roam between cellular networks and wireless LANs to make/receive calls. The phone uses SIP to make calls when on the WLAN network and switches to using cellular network when out of WLAN coverage and vice versa. The device also supports Push-To-Talk over SIP. BTW, the phone runs WinCE."

Comments

Crashes more often

[RLW]

Win CE crashes more often than Win XP and that's too much!

Re:Crashes more often

[wfberg]

Win CE crashes more often than Win XP and that's too much!

My Win XP setup is fairly stable (also helped by the fact the dual cpu means one cpu is usually still there to do ctrl-alt-del magic), but the instability of wince is almost inconceivable.. It should remind you more of windows 95. It hangs on to all the design mistakes ever made in Windows, and then adds some.

Unfortunately, it has such a strong foothold in the PDA market, that the companies that produce components for iPaqs and such are likely to offer wince support by default. Whereas if you were to go with linux, good luck finding energy-efficient GPUs and touchscreens etc. that are supported.

It also doesn't help that there's not much in the way of device-friendly linux APIs.. Running X on a small device is a bit too much; opie is there, but not much else.. Microsoft have even crammed a stripped down version of directX into their pocketPC OS. *shudder*

You have to wonder who dropped the ball over at Sun that they don't have a Java OS for handhelds. And lament the rape of symbian by Nokia. (No, you're thinking of a sybian, different thing entirely).

Re:Crashes more often

[garcia]

Win CE crashes more often than Win XP and that's too much!

Well, XP doesn't crash as much as you claim it to be, but we'll let that slide. Yes, CE is extremely unstable. So unstable that I wouldn't trust it to make phone calls. Why are we making cell phones run CE? Why can't the run some embedded OS like Linux or QNX (or whatever)?

I guarantee that way that you wouldn't be locked in to a specific router, a clunky and unstable OS, or a vendor who is notoriously evil.

OT: qnx

[Eric604]

Why is it that QNX is used so rarely?

Re:OT: qnx

[Kenja]

"Why is it that QNX is used so rarely?"

Price. It is a VERY expensive OS.

We'll see more of that

[Anonymous Coward]

Upcoming WLAN enabled smart phones will simply add this through software. Once you have a computer with enough power in a handset, it's all software.

Two problems...

[Teancom]

Every 802.11b wireless device I've ever heard of sucks batteries like a fat kid with a slurpy. The example the article uses is a hospital staff. Is the phone going to last an entire 18-hour shift without recharging? That would be seriously impressive.

Secondly, why the need to have a special WAP? I can see having to have some sort of control-device, that's obvious. But it really ought to work with any standard WAP, and route to the PBX. I see that really hurting the chances of wide-spread adoption in a lot of places (like my house!). It would be like having a IP telephony system that made you replace all your hubs and switches. Just ain't gonna happen.

Battery Consumption

[reuben04]

I wonder how long the batteries last on it. They don't mention that in the article, but all of the WinCE devices I have ever used didn't last all that long. I assume that it would not last as long as the smartphone's as it probably has to search for the Wi-Fi all the time.

Alternative

[Creamsickle]

This isn't a first - the Hitara 3800 series came out about six months ago, which can do everything this device Avaya, Motorola and Proxim "invented" does. And for fans of open source, it runs Linux, not M$ crap. Having looked at specs for both devices, the Hitara certainly seems to have better pipeline architechture as well. Another example of open source and open engineering processes leading to better designed hardware.

Possible Already

[j_stirk]

Aren't there already PBXs that can do POTS <-> VoIP style connections? I seem to remember hearing about them, and a quick Google for them shows they aren't exactly unheard of.

Surely, if a phone has a basic 802.11 capability, the effort to write a Java or Symbian app to do the VoIP with the PBX wouldn't be amazingly difficult. And, scarily enough, it might even be platform dependant (or JVM dependant - whichever way your personal bias runs...)

This is not for the home user..

[Anonymous Coward]

The intent of this phone is not for the home user. If you read the article, you can basically use the cell phone as your office phone... it becomes an extension while you are in the office, and then you can use it on the road. In order to use the Wireless LAN and VoIP, it'll need to authenticate with the PBX.

You could theoretically use VoIP outside the office if you have some way to VPN tunnel back to the office and authenticate with the PBX once again. A VPN client on WinCE might work, in which case, it doesn't really matter what access point McDonalds is using.

Re:Can you hear me now?

[polyp2000]

worse still ... this is a true story ... I was in a pub near where i live a week or two ago. My friend was waiting next to me for his change. I enquired why it was taking so long; He said .. there's something wrong with the Till..My immediate reaction was to ask the barman if the thing was running windows. He said "NT-4" Im waiting for it to reboot , I said, well thats your problem then; and walked off with a smug grin on my face... When windows gets in the way of me getting beer then there are some severe problems...

Nick...