I have always been a bit dumbfounded by Celio. They offer their REDFLY smartphone companion which is essentially a large screen, mouse, and keyboard for your smartphone. Kevin managed to score some early video showing BlackBerry support coming this year but I really cannot understand why anybody would want one of these. They are planning on selling their 7 inch screen model for $199 and 8 inch screen model for $249 which puts this well into netbook territory.
For $199 you will get a small screen that can connect over USB or Bluetooth to your BlackBerry and show you the BlackBerry OS in large format. The REDFLY has no CPU, no OS, no storage… While you can easily get a netbook on Amazon for about $240 that offers a CPU, Windows XP, and much more for the same price. You could then tether your BlackBerry and you are good to go!
I really cannot imagine a case where you would want to carry a 2 pound dumb terminal over a 2.19 pound FULL netbook. The only consideration would be battery life but you could always get an extended battery which only adds less than half a pound. If you just need to connect your BlackBerry to your laptop you could always check out the Bayalink solution for $99 which lets you use many BlackBerry apps from your laptop.
So is anybody actually going to pick up a REDFLY? I will probably try one out when it is released to see if it has any actual use cases but this looks like it will flop as badly as Lenovo’s constant connect solution. Anybody pick up one of those?
I just wish REDFLY would give up and release the driver powering this whole setup so you could do all of this from any laptop. Now that would be cool!
IronHide Not Registered
Posted: September 15, 2009 at 7:01 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9000
If they brought the price down to about $99 – I’d at least think
About it. Until then – sorry, CELIO. Wrong product at the wrong time.
A Claye Jones Not Registered
Posted: September 16, 2009 at 8:50 AM EST
This is a very stupid idea and product. IMO. That’s the point of having a full qwerty smartphone, so you can type like a real keyboard. Yes, it’s smaller, but I know most people like myself that can type pretty fast on their Blackberry. Like the Berry Review Team said, I would much rather go ahead and buy a Netbook for that price and have much much more than just a screen and keyboard.