Many Gadgets All In One

from the convergence! dept

People keep talking about the convergence of PDAs and cell phones, but here's the first attempt I've seen that actually looks pretty creative. It's call the PC-EPhone and it comes in two pieces. One is the main PDA, which is about as big as a discman (too big). The other is the "pen" part which is bigger than a normal PDA pen and works as the cell phone - which communicates via Bluetooth with the other part (acting as the base). I like the concept of having the two parts, but it's not clear that the two connect in any way, and the base part is definitely too big to be useful. Also, the company distributing it used to be a oil and gas exploration company (?!?!) and they're estimating the price to be around $1500 - which seems a bit pricey to receive any sort of market acceptance. Still, it is good to see people are trying creative ways to solve the convergence problem.
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  • identicon
    Marc Nathan, 9 Feb 2001 @ 12:07pm

    All-in-one device

    I think that this is a step in the right direction. Handheld devices are going to go through tons of different form factors and designs from all kinds of companies. This specific product is certainly not a "pocket-sized" device, but then again, neither is any portable cd player. In fact this is a lot like a portable DVD with PDA functions and an accessory pen/handset for voice calls. As far as the original parent company goes, I would almost guarantee that they went through a series of fairly arcane legal procedures called a reverse merger, in order to be able to raise money for the development/sales of the technology company. This is common for small companies and anyone looking at it should focus on the company now, not what they did in the past, because the old company most likely has nothing to do with this new product.

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