Celio is a company that has produced the Redfly Smartphone Terminal since earlier this year. They have just released new update hardware in terms of the C7 and C8N, where the differentials are purely in screen size, weight and ‘Media Port’ – all of this for between $229 and $299 (I would expect that to be £180 to £230 over here – around the same RRP as the EeePC 4G to EeePC 900 / Acer Aspire One devices). These are interesting and novel devices which require a Windows Mobile phone to actually provide the processing and software aspect, because they are nothing more than a glorified screen and keyboard. Interesting – yes, successful – no.
This device competes in the same realm as netbooks with none of their advantages of providing you with a similar/same environment to work in as a full desktop, with full client application functionality. What about web applications I hear you ask? well unfortunately this device requires a Windows Mobile Phone as its only host, which means it is hamstrung with the same application limitations – a shoddy browser that is circa 1998 in capability.
They do cling to the enterprise market and push for data security as one of its advantages but sorry, data leaves the company just as easily on a Windows Mobile Phone as for a laptop and is just as obtainable – without going anywhere near my own mantra about the silliness of enforced control measures on devices when the true knowledge in a company is in the employee’s head, and they leave the company every night and no-one requires people’s brains to be locked down. You can use good common sense security mechanisms on a netbook, with greater capability than you can with the Celio Redfly / Windows Mobile combination (can you encrypt the entire storage of a Windows Mobile Phone?).
No, I cannot recommend such a device for anyone. Get a good netbook and a decent mobile phone instead (I say this, and I have a Windows Mobile Phone but then I feel comfortable with its lack of features in the web and application side and I use Exchange for contacts/calendar – the iPhone is calling me right now).
