Oxymoron of the day: User Friendly
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Asus netbook will have a takeaway phone
TAIWANESE MANUFACTURER Asus is planning a netbook with a slot-in mobile phone that will double as a 3G communications module, according to a UK distributor.
The arrangement offers an easy way to use the same SIM card and data account for both a phone and a portable computer.
The phone module, from an Israeli company called Modu, is already on sale, together with an array of feature-phone shells and other devices that it's designed to slot into.
Andrew Tse, head of UK distributor Purely Gadgets, said the idea is that you can change the phone shell to match your clothes or to get new features such as a camera. One shell takes the form of a photoframe that screens pictures held in the phone.
Tse, who describes himself as 'chief inspector' of Purely Gadgets - a reference to the Inspector Gadget cartoon series - said the Modu-equipped netbook is an extension of the same idea. "If you don't want to take the netbook out for the evening you just pull out the phone and take that."
The modular approach addresses one of the great problems of mobile devices for both buyers and designers: you cannot, with current technology, have a device that is both large enough for comfortable extended use and small enough to carry around all the time.
The issue is exemplified by Apple's Iphone and the larger Ipad. The only way to have the advantages of both Apple devices is to buy both and synchronise data between them.
The Modu approach, however, will allow you simply to slot the phone into the netbook. µ
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Ha, have been wanting to see this but just with a smart phone running ANDROID, OLED touch screen and wireless dockable keyboard.
Makes since to be he next logical step in development. :-)
This Modu phone is amazing!! Its for people who dont need all that app smart phone crap. Its simple, sylish and fun!
is what I'd be wanting to know. Oh, and is it a Tablet PC. Without the second requirement I'd be immediately interested.
In Warren Ellis's science fiction comic TRANSMETROPOLITAN, the protagonist made a point of installing "phone tools" on any computer he used, which in that future world made less sense than today when it's edgy and underground* and possibly hard to trace, whereas he should have been able to install them in his brain. Or at least his head. For that matter, his computers tended to have keyboards, too. Unlike mine.
* A bit less underground when you could buy it in Tesco. (Discontinued.)
one of the comments above refers to the modu phone as a retard cellphone but modu is working (this was published here as well, I believe) on a second generation phone which will be HSDPA and touch. This is expected this year.
Probably the netbook/phone will be based on that device and not the first generation.
This parade will likely be rained on by the convention of having one SIM for the phone and another for the SIM card slot in your laptop. Which has a (recently cheap) 3G modem in it.
So that's that then, except you wouldn't suffer a laptop's mediocre antenna -- instead you'd be saddled with the laptop's shell acting as a faraday cage in the worst case.
This is an epic fail on both the part of Asus and the Modu phone itself.
If Asus wanted to make something along these lines they should have picked a better partner or designed the phone themselves, god only knows they have the talent on-board to design things compelling.
This would be a great ides if the Modu phone wasnt completely retarded.
Making the iphone itampax comparison isnt a valid comparison, because with the apple products you get the same capabilities on both devices, save the phone part not included on the imaxi. the Modu device isnt a smart phone, so if you need smartphone capability then you still have to carry the netbook with you, and as a bonus, at no extra charge to you, you get the opportunity to look like a moron in public as you sit and talk to your computer like its another person...
Now that is a neat idea! Is the phone module a smart phone, or do I have to lug around the Netbook to view my calendar?