Sony to Announce New Handheld in Japan Next Week

One of the most important reasons - I think - that Palm is selling so much more handhelds than Sony is that their products are at least available worldwide within days of introduction.

Cheers,
Jan

"New screen" size could mean so many things. It could mean the products will have re-sized 320X320. Though unless they are going for a really really small device I can't see the point of shring the screens the Clie series use. And by the same token, with form factor being important, I can see them increasing the screen dimensions.

I believe and hope that Sony intends to introduce soft grafitti. While its conceivable they could follow Handera's lead and produce a 160X240 screen, this would represent a drop in resolution. I am speculating that the device could have 320x480 screen. This isn't beyond their capabilities. Years ago they introduce the TR 55 camcorder, which was about half the volume of anything seen previously.

Of course its very easy sitting here as the arm chair pundit and speculating but imagine the flip 'n fold device running at 66mhz, built in BT, thumboard, digital audio. camera?

I would certainly be tempted to shell out for it.

"A year ago, Bluetooth was a technology that was the butt of more jokes than anything else." To who? To those who didn't/don't sh@t about technology maybe. Why are these people not reading/doing there own research? Instead of talking BS on something they don't know nothing about. Yep, am indeed a little bit p.o

Why Bluetooth?

-Low power: No battery-sapping (like 802.11)
-Robust wireless connection method with a small footprint that makes it very well suited for millions of handheld devices
(A Bluetooth chip, designed to communicate in the 10m range, consumes only 1mW of power, compared to an 802.11b chip, which consumes more than 1W. A single Bluetooth chipset is also fairly small, with a size of 8x8mm, compared to the smallest 802.11b at 30x14mm.)
-Chips will be cheap (when volume kicks in)
-Bluetooth does not need a base radio station because every device can create a local network.
-Another advantage of Bluetooth as a cable replacement technology are the applications (e.g http://www.bluetags.com ). Retail kiosks, pay phones, and other public access points will support proximity services.
-Bluetooth also holds an advantage concerning voice communication. Here, Bluetooth can be used in a cordless phone within a 10m range, in an office environment or home, without the need for handoffs. Other WLAN technologies need voice-over-IP to support voice communication, which is not likely to happen soon.

Even with the recent delays, the progression of the Bluetooth standard is far ahead of the adoption rates of almost any other comparable technology. Many point to the sudden emergence of 802.11b as proof that Bluetooth has already been superseded by more advanced technologies. However, the truth is that the road towards 802.11b's success began over a decade ago in 1990 when the IEEE 802 Executive Committee established the 802.11 Working Group to create a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard. The b variant simply represents the emergence of a version of the standard that is a viable mass-market commercial solution. In comparison, Ericsson first began toying with the idea of a short-range wireless technology in 1994, four years after work on 802.11 began.

Furthermore, although the inspiration for Bluetooth occurred in 1994, real work on the technology as an industry standard did not start until the original Special Interest Group was formed in 1998. The 1.0 specification was released a mere two years ago in July 1999.

Another issue that was discussed in part 1 of this report is that of interference in the ISM band where Bluetooth operates. Many are under the impression that interference from everything from microwaves to other wireless technologies will make communication virtually impossible. The truth of the matter is that the combination of Bluetooth's frequency hopping algorithms and error correction schemes will minimize most interference problems. Studies have shown that the only time significant conflict occurs is when two technologies are placed in very close proximity.

The phony conflict
IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth wireless technology
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/wireless/library/wi-phone/

But the screen size and memory are right on. (I don't think I'll bother with Memory Sticks.) The GPS module is trés cool!

And Sony has fixed the buttons!

How much more than the Japan prices will this cost us in the U.S.?