BluOnyx lets you share your media with just about everyone

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Product: Agere BluOnyx Mobile Content Server
Website: WWW.BLUONYX.COM
System Requirements: Bluetooth enabled phone
Price: £50 - £125

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AGERE SYSTEMS TOOK US aside recently to show us their new mobile content server the BluOnyx.

This pocket sized piece of kit packs an astounding punch, with between 1GB and 40GB of data and can connect to practically any device over USB, Bluetooth, WiFi or via the SD slot. Incidentally by pocket sized we don't mean 'happy to see you' pocket sized, but in fact about the same size as a stack of credit cards. Come to think of it a stack of credit cards could qualify as 'happy to see you'.

A rather innocuous looking thing

Sporting a 600MHz ARM processor running the open VxWorks operating system means that the potential is there for 3rd party developers to create a wide variety of applications that make use of this device. Essentially it's a small computer controlled via your phone or a jumped up portable HDD depending on your point of view.

The unit only has two buttons, one for power and other to connect, and no screen or other interface. The interface is primarily aimed at being done via your mobile phone over bluetooth, currently using a text based interface, but the spokesAgere informs us that it's developing an icon based interface with a 'three-click-rule' whereby any action should be achievable with at most three clicks. We can only pray that the option of the text based interface remains behind so that us old fashioned sorts can stick with what we know. If you hook up the BluOnyx to your PC or router is will appear as another drive letter and you can just drag and drop files as you would with any other mobile data device.

The BluOnyx packs in an average of 12 hours battery life, although if you're streaming and transcoding to multiple devices at the same time for long periods you can expect that number to drop somewhat. There's also password protection and group policies to help protect your data and only share what you want your friends to see.

With the open OS and such a broad selection of features and connectivity the idea is to provide a platform where the user decides what to do. Backup, media storage, data transport, media streaming are all potential applications for this device, but unfortunately that's where we have to inject some reservations. At the moment potential is all it is, we reckon it looks great but punters may be put off by the lack of direct interface or 3rd party developers may simply not make stuff that people want. Not to mention it depends on what the actual price and battery life turns out to be.

In Short
We're really looking forward to getting our hands on one of these, as the potential is there for a great device that could appeal to a large number of different people, we only hope that developers take to the device and make applications for it and that it performs consistently as well as it did in our demo.

There will 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 10GB and 40GB versions available in a variety of colours and different price points ranging from £50 to £125 and should be out during the summer of 2007.

We're reserving final judgment until we can actually play with one of these for a suitable amount of time. µ

The Good
Small
Well priced
Excellent potential
Wide range of connection options

The Bad
Depends a lot on what actually gets done with it

The Ugly
Couldn't see a way to turn off the LEDs