Sep 17
At the ShowStoppers press event last night Celio showed off the new BlackBerry drivers for their REDFLY smartphone-expander, a $199-249, brainless mini-laptop that lets you use a big screen and keyboard to operate your smartphone. Previous versions of the REDFLY worked with Windows Mobile and Android devices, but now the company’s two REDFLY models work with BlackBerry Curves, Tours and Bolds too.
There’s one big difference between how the REDFLY works with Windows Mobile and BlackBerry phones. On Windows Mobile, the REDFLY genuinely extends the phone’s screen space – it gives you more pixels for surfing the Web or editing documents with a big-screen experience. On BlackBerry, for now, it just magnifies the phone’s existing resolution, giving you bigger (and jaggier) fonts but no more real estate. Celio is working on drivers which would allow for screen expansion, company reps said.
Even without screen expansion, though, the REDFLY may provide some relief for older BlackBerry users who don’t want to squint at tiny fonts or type on tiny keys while managing their email. The BlackBerry drivers for the REDFLY will be available before the end of the year, the company says.
In a survey of cell phone manufacturers, i-mate wouldn’t have been near the top of anyone’s list. For years, the company spouted mediocre, unlocked Windows Mobile-powered smartphones targeted sort of at enterprise customers, and sort of… at anyone, really. Once, I asked an i-mate senior PR person at a press event in 2007 to explain their different smartphone model lines to me, and who each one was targeted for. I literally received a shrug and an “I’ll get back to you with a real answer.” (They never did.)
If you’ve been waiting to buy a cheap music phone with some decent features, today might be the day to act on that urge. 