pdas

The I-mate 810-F may be the first ruggedized PDA-phone at the GSMA Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona, but the Dubai company is not done yet. Jim Morrison, CEO of I-mate, said too many vendors have been copying technology and interfaces from each other. Instead, he plans to innovate, not imitate, the company's handsets such that each model is unique in its own right.

The I-mate Centurion (shown above) is a credit-card-size, non-touch-screen PDA-phone with a full QWERTY keypad.

Though tiny and really light, we've tried out the keyboard and found it surprisingly usable. This model will retail … Read more

Q: I was browsing CNET, and noticed that PDAs have dropped off the map. It's been "the talk" for years that phones and PDAs were going to converge and neither would exist alone as we know them. Did it happen? Did I miss it? I've been an avid Palm user (even have programmed them for work), but of course Palm/PalmSource/Aspect is tanking with a couple Treos as the only remaining flotsam. The TX was great...but is going. Hewlett-Packard's iPaq is tragically bland. So, what's a PDA guy to do?

What would … Read more

It wasn't much more than an offhand comment this time, but Michael Dell's got the gadget-obsessed stirred up again.

In an interview with Om Malik of GigaOm, Dell was asked about the company's plans in the smartphone industry. At first he gave a vague, corporate PR-type answer: "We are certainly looking at the whole smartphone category, but I wouldn't expect anything anytime soon." But when Malik pressed him about whether his company was more interested in a Symbian or Android OS for any potential handheld device, Dell was slightly more informative.

"We're … Read more

Personal digital assistants, cell phones, smartphones--whatever you want to call them--keep getting smaller, thinner, and lighter. Congrats to the engineers who keep coming up with this stuff, but I'm going blind trying to keep up with them.

My tired eyes could use a break, though I know this is the equivalent of tilting at windmills. We get older and our bodies inevitably start betraying us--sometimes sooner, sometimes later. But if the inventors of tomorrow's gadgets are going to continue to think small, they've also got to start thinking big. From a purely design perspective, Apple did a … Read more

American workers apparently are getting more comfortable accessing the Web via their cell phones and PDAs.

The number of mobile devices accessing the Internet via wireless broadband skyrocketed 154 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006, according to research released Tuesday by ComScore.

The study also found that mobile broadband had a higher presence on work computers (59 percent) compared with home or personal computers (41 percent).

Verizon and Sprint accounted for the majority of the mobile broadband market last year, according to ComScore.

"Though mobile broadband access is currently used by … Read more

Ever found yourself peddling along madly and forgetting to breathe? If you have a respiratory illness, that can cause more than a minor glitch on the bike path. To monitor patients' inhalations and exhalations, scientists at Germany's Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft research institute have conceived of a digital assistant that behaves something like a pulmonary specialist along for the ride.

The Respisens system registers the pace and strength of the wearer's breathing. Measurements are taken with the aid of respiration straps--conductors integrated into a T-shirt across the patient's chest and stomach that emit an electric signal when expanded. The raw … Read more

The Sony Mylo is back (remember that little Wi-Fi messaging device?), and it's looking a little more mature and wiser after learning some lessons the first go-round. Available later this month for $299, the Sony Mylo Communicator 2's got a new look and more features, including AIM support and YouTube support, but is it all enough to lure the young'uns? Meh, we're not so sure.

Starting with the design, I have to say I'm liking the changes. I actually got some brief hands-on time with the handheld before CES, and while it's slightly bigger … Read more

Ha! And people thought the PDA was dead. Today, HP introduced two new models to its iPaq line of handhelds: the HP iPaq 110 Classic Handheld and HP iPaq 210 Enterprise Handheld. Now, in this day and age of smart phones, will this type of classic PDA fly? I say yes. There are still plenty of people who want one device for organizing their contacts and appointments while keeping their cell phone separate. And heck, since Dell exited the handheld market in April and there hasn't been a new PDA from Palm in years, HP fills that void. Both … Read more

In addition to several other mobile product announcements today, HP showed off two new smart phones, and they're not for the faint of heart.

First, there's the HP iPaq 610 Business Navigator, a quad-band mobile with support for HSDPA and assisted GPS with integrated Google Maps. The Windows Mobile 6 (Professional Edition) device is also equipped with Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g with WPA2 security), 256MB Flash ROM/128MB SDRAM, and a 3-megapixel camera. Like the previous HP iPaq 510 Voice Messenger, the iPaq 610 has more of a voice-centric focus and includes the same advanced … Read more