Pogo Phone/PDA Quietly Launched

labourstart writes: "Carphone Warehouse, one of the largest mobile phone retailers in the UK, this week quietly began selling the Pogo device, which claims to offer greater than 56K connection speeds to the Internet without waiting for 3G mobile phones to come into use. It's also a PDA and web browser using a proprietary operating system and data compression software that, they say, allows very fast downloads of HTML (not WAP) web pages." This one's been mentioned before, but now it looks like it's really and truly available.

Awkward shape

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, the shape of the the thing is a bit awkward to carry around. I don't want a giant squarish thing clipped to my belt.

56k? yeh, right.

[oozer]

I have to admit that I hadn't heard of this device before, but according to the specs it uses standard 2.5G technology (GPRS/HSCSD) in which case its claims of 56k transfer rates are highly optimistic.

Also, I don't which mobile networks they are expecting you to use this on, but unless they have been opened up recently, they didn't have a general GPRS->Internet bridge available that would let you use the Pogo to browse web pages via GPRS.

The last time I looked at GPRS in the UK you could only use it to connect to the networks own WAP and messaging gateways and the authorised WAP servers operated a "walled garden" policy.

Need better pics.

[nobodyman]

Man, the pogo website blows. From the pics that they got on there, I can only get a cursory idea of what this thing looks like. It would be really nice to get some nice hi-res images of the thing.

Anybody out there got some links besides the pogo website?

Backed Up?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

From the article [carphonewarehouse.com]:

Meanwhile, all your data is stored on a centeral server and backed up everytime you go online, so there's no need to sync your Pogo manually with your PC.

Wait. OK, so all my personal info is being synced with some company that has root access to that said info? Does anyone see a problem here?

What about the servers? Let's just say this device really takes off, what's gonna happen when the un-avoidable upgrade happens? What if the upgrade goes boom? Does that mean all my data is MIA? Is there ANY WAY I can sync my info with another PERSONAL computer?

To speak quike frankly, if this wasn't actually being sold, I'd call it Vapor-Ware(tm).

Total cost of ownership

[seldolivaw]

This is indeed a pretty sweet device, and at £329 it's comparable to (say) the latest Visor models. However, in typical UK fashion (I live here; I know) CPW has loaded unreasonable ongoing costs on the back of it: data and voice calls are 10p per minute (14 US cents), calls to phones on other networks are 35p (aargh! why?!), and on top of that there's a £7.99 (US$11.50) monthly charge for the Internet access, etc.. That can really add up if you use it pretty regularly. Other than that problem, I'd get it tomorrow! :-)

Re:56k? yeh, right.

[seldolivaw]

According to the ZDnet review, the web pages it browses are actually translated by the "Pogo Technology Server" first: so when you go to www.yahoo.com, it's actually a page on their server: their server optimizes the colours to the Pogo's standard 256, swaps fonts to display better, and then it shrinks the whole page so that an 800x600 page looks fairly normal (if teeny) on the 320x260 screen, which is pretty cool. The fast transfer rate is accomplished because the server also compresses the page before sending it to the phone, which then decompresses it -- a good solution in a bandwidth-limited device. But it relies on a *lot* of proprietary technology :-(

why headset-required?

[jchristopher]

This is the second combo phone/PDA device I've seen that appears to require the use of a headset for phone calls. (The other device is a Motorola that they sell on Voicestream, don't know the model number.

What makes them think I don't want to hold the device to my ear? I don't want to have to hunt for a headset everytime the phone rings.