Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Sorry, looks like I spoke to soon - at least concerning the Tmobile 2002 Pocket PC Phone edition (HTC). It has an SD slot, but not SDIO. This means it can use the SD memory, but not the expansion cards such as the Wifi card mentioned in the last post.

Neither does AT&T’s (the other GSM carrier here in the US) Siemens SX56 have an SDIO slot, only SD. They do offer the Palm Tungsten W, which is a GSM Phone with PalmOS (albeit not the latest PalmOS 5), that does have an SDIO slot. Unfortunately the SDIO Wifi card offered by Socket Communications only works in Pocket PC’s! Argh! You can’t win, I tell you!

Well, it looks like I have finally found the answer to my ongoing struggle to find a convergence device that includes a phone (preferably GSM) with cellular data capabilities, a PDA that has good syncing ability with Outlook, and Wifi. It seems like it should be a no-brainer for a company to develop such a device. Especially T-mobile, who has the Starbucks/Borders hotspot network, you would think, would want to capitalize on this and offer something that would let you do high-speed data when at Starbucks and lower-speed when on the train.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have yet to find such a device, but now, thanks to Gizmodo, we learn that Socket Communications will be coming out with a Wifi SDIO card! So what, you ask? Well, there are a bunch of PocketPC and PalmOS PDA-phones out there, but as I’ve mentioned, none do Wifi. But most if not all of the Pocket PC Phones as well as the Palm Tungsten C and T (although the C already has built-in Wifi) have an SDIO slot for expansion modules or memory. As far as I know, up until now, there’s been no wifi SD cards, this is the first. Of course, another format of card called Compact Flash, which is also used for memory, is large enough that there are numerous wifi options built using this format. Many PocketPC devices come with a Compact Flash slot, but no PocketPC Phones come with such a slot, only SD, at least currently.

What this means is that finally, we will have now a large choice of PocketPC Phone devices that will allow us to do wifi as well! Of course, we will have to wait about 6 weeks for it to come out, and the cost of the card and the PocketPC Phone together might top $700 in some cases depending on which carrier you are currently with and which one you will be switching to (or staying with as the case may be). But I have seen the Tmobile 2002 PocketPC Phone Edition for as low as $200 on eBay and if this card is discounted at all, you might be able to pick up a brand new solution for around $300, which is the same price as the Color Sidekick. Not a bad deal, I think!