Redfly Mobile Viewer Beta

RedFly by Celio Corp has recently released a 60 day trial of their Mobile Viewer software. This essentially gives you the same functionality as their RedFly Mobile Companion without the custom hardware.

In a nutshell, the Mobile Viewer application connects to your Windows Mobile device, turns off your device's screen and shows the screen content on your PC. Now the interesting part: you're not limited to your devices screen size, you can choose from four resolutions (800x480, 800x600, 1024x600, & 1024x768).

The website warns that display resolutions may be limited by the amount of memory available on your phone. I tested the software with a Palm Treo Pro and it worked very well.

Installation:

To get up and running you'll need to download and install the desktop component. You'll also need to download their "firmware" and the "driver" that go on your device. Its not exactly clear what the firmware is needed for but it may be emulating their Mobile Companion hardware.

Installation is straight forward and once everything is installed you can easily connect your device by syncing to your desktop PC and pressing the "Connect" button on the PC software.

Performance:

Is "ok", its much like using a remote desktop connection over the Internet. Its good enough to work on but animations and videos are best avoided. My Palm Treo Pro was also much more responsive when using the lower resolutions.

Compatibility:

Now because there are no Windows Mobile devices yet available with screens larger than 800x 480, some of your favorite applications may not work. The good news is, most, if not all of the default applications work quite well including Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, and the File Explorer. Your millage will vary with 3rd party apps.

I am happy to report that the software I tested from Panoramic Software Inc and Implicit Software Solutions Inc all worked very well. There was a minor menu issue with Calc Pro and the background doesn't scale for Panoramic Blackjack but everything was stable and usable.

Final Thoughts:

I love the technology but I personally don't have a big need for this software. I think it would be ideal for road warriors that do a lot of emailing on their mobile devices. However its free to try and I'd recommend experienced users give it a try. Final warning though - it is beta software so you'll be installing at your own risk. There is always a chance something will go wrong so you're best off backing up everything on your device before installing the Mobile Viewer.

http://www.celiocorp.com/viewer

Redfly Video Preview

As I mentioned a few days ago - Redfly is making a smartphone companion device which plugs into your Windows Mobile device and gives you a large 800x480 with an onscreen cursor and a touchpad.

Here's a Youtube video giving you a preview of how the device works, its a little dry but still interesting if this product is on your radar.

Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5HtetqGumU

Redfly Smartphone Terminal

This is an interesting idea. Essentially its a bigger, hires screen and keyboard for your Windows Mobile device.
http://www.celiocorp.com/

You connect it to your smartphone and it displays your smartphone screen on the Redfly's WVGA screen and allows accessing programs and documents through the Redfly. The first thing to wonder with this device is - will your applications scale correctly to 800x480? Fortunately there are a few WVGA devices already on the market so the answer: with most newer applications should be "yes".

This is a very similar idea to the Foleo for Palm devices. The Foleo never made it to market - likely due to the decline in Palm market share and the high price point of $499. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Foleo

As someone that enters a lot of data into my phone I could see the use in this. But really - I think I'd rather get a mini-notebook like the Asus Eee PC and use Dashwire's software (athough that requires an active internet connection).

I imagine the Redfly is a product you'll have to try before passing judgement. If its extremely easy to use it might justify the $200 US for the entry model. But at that price I'm not quite interested enough to find out.

I do love products like this and I hope they have a market. Less tech savy road warriors might find this indispenable (again - if its dead simple to use).

And finally a link to back to My Today Screen who posted the first article I had read on the Redfly.