1st of April joke or...?

From this week's Your-Symbian issue...: Too good to be true???

Well, it's been a couple of years since I wrote anything to do with PDAs, Psions, Symbian or Penguins (Hoi! - Sophie), instead I've been stuck in a world Cyberpunk art, half written stories and management coups. However, it's good to know some people remember me; and a chance phone call with an old acquaintance led me to a darkened back room of Soho to find the latest Symbian OS phone. It's also good to know that these old acquaintances gave me a sly nod to let Your Symbian have the first 'preview' of this impressive piece of techno lust. And you thought I just dropped off the face of the planet to escape the Argentineans. (Well, I thought so? - Ewan)

The in house name of the device is "The Navi." Several points for stylish name, shame it sounds a bit familiar. The Navi is revolutionary for several reasons, firstly, the device is entirely comprised of a 408x352 screen, housed in a stylish red and white plastic shell (faces are replaceable) for the 'consumer' version and there is a platinum 'executive' model also in the works. Number and text input, as well as menu navigation, is provided by a new idea. your input is through an infrared matrix that sits just above the recessed screen. Think of the screen having a touch sensitive layer, but rather than touching plastic, you break beams of infra red light. This pad covers the whole screen, which displays the options underneath as you progress. This new method has various advantages over the more traditional touch screen in that the screen does not have the high reflection rate, also it enables some very interesting configurations for games playing.

When it comes to text entry (note the screen is exactly double the Series 60 size), you have three options. The first is Series 60 layout over the whole screen, where 2x2 pixel squares imitate one pixel (ie Series 60 full emulation). Secondly we have the Series 60 in the top half and an overlayed ABC keyboard in the bottom. Your third option is a full screen number pad with a small display at the top - it's so nostalgic it reminds me of the Nokia 2110!

The phone is tri-band so will work anywhere (Port Stanley? - Sophie). Okay, almost anywhere. It has good old GSM, GPRS, and 3G when it becomes available. The built-in radio isn't quite perfected yet, the circuitry only runs down to around 909mhz so Radio 5 is hard to get, but it should be fine in the final release. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Infrared and Advanced Serial are all supplied as standard.

The OS is Symbian. or is it? Half way through my demo, they leaned over and accessed the Setup Menu, pointing out an icon marked 'Palm.'

I kid you not here, the phone displays the Company Logo (comically reading Weyland Yutani - the development team are huge Aliens fans by the looks of it) and the phone switches itself from Symbian OS into Palm OS 5. All my contacts, agenda, notes and task data was read by an implementation on SyncML and everything was readable by the standard Palm applications. Now I've effectively got a 320x320 screen Palm with a soft graffiti area for input. Instantly I can feel millions of Palm Users throwing their Treo's out the window, loading up the 128mb of Ram with some of the thousand Palm applications out there, all the while not realising they have the more powerful Symbian Software as well.

This has sold me the phone. But wait. there's more!

[Geek Mode On]

Tech specs time, it's powered by an Xscale 500mHz processor, with 96mb of Flash Rom and 128mb of SDRAM available internally. 32mb is reserved for programs to run in, so that's a whopping 96mb for storage. Don't forget the MMC slot and Compact Flash 2 slot can provide additional memory storage. This enables you to use additional CF Peripherals, while using external programs/data in the MMC slot. Currently only CF Modems and WiFi cards are supported, but "the manufacturer" assures me that will change as demand requires.

Graphics is provided via some custom chips lifted from a Radeon 8mb 3d graphics card, and sound is equally impressive with a CreativeLabs SoundBlaster 5.1 Surround Stereo, though the phone only has a mono speaker, you can attach external speakers to the headphone jack. Its pretty impressive playing GLTron in surround sound, especially when Sark's light cycle cuts you off.

[Geek Mode Off]

Innovation is the key with The Navi, and none more so than in the power department. The built in battery, which recharges via the USB/Firewire/RS232 cradle allows for 1 week on standby and up to 6 hours talk time, which is pretty impressive for a 72-bit colour screen. However, this is only the beginning. The Navi provides one additional power source, a kinetic battery known as WristFlick.

In normal day to day use, the WristFlick extends the battery life by around 20%. It continually recharges the battery through natural movements. So as you walk (with the phone in your hand or pocket), the kinetic circuitry converts this movement to electrical energy. As well as extending battery life, it acts as an emergency source of power if you are away from your mains charger. If the battery ever runs out, no problem, give it a quick flick with your wrist for a few minutes, and you'll have a bit more juice. Ingenious, to say the least.

PC Connectivity is provided via the cradle, which, as mentioned, features USB, Firewire and RS232. The syncing software programmed by some of the people responsible for Symbian's own syncing software, gives you as good synchronizing as you would expect from those programmers. The phone also features impressive connectivity on the road, with an attachable port replicator which features all the usual ports, including LPT, USB, Firewire and Ultra Wide SCSI.

Summary

I only got to play with The Navi for a few hours, but it was a good size (about 7650 size, but all screen, no flip out and a lot thinner) and has feature set to die for. It's scheduled for release in around 5-7 month's time. Watch out, it's going to clean up.