Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Andrew over and Treonauts just reported on a new device that may provide true wifi capabilities to both the Treo 600 and the Treo 650!

I’ve written previously about how a hacker recently was able to make modifications to the Treo 650’s firmware as well as modifying drivers for Pa1mOne’s Wifi card for their Tungsten PDA’s and was able to accomplish Wifi capability for the Sprint Treo 650’s that are currently out. That was great and many will end up using that as a means of getting a high-speed connection. However, the two things it didn’t address were Treo 600 users and the much greater energy usage of wifi. Not to mention having to alter the firmware which is not the most user-friendly proposition.

Enter Enfora. (as an aside, this company name sounds very funny to me because we have a Greek Diner here with a very similar-sounding name – Amphora!) Apparently, they have developed a Wifi-capable hardware add-on to the phone which includes both a wifi receiver as well as large battery for compensating for this added power drain. The big downside, of course is that this basically double the size of the phone, and probably more than double the weight. But while this will decrease the mobility factor of the phone, will it do so any more than Pa1mOne’s Wifi card for which you will have to either carry around an AC power supply or an extra Treo battery or two?

The next obvious question is whether this will allow for VOIP (Voice over IP - internet telelphony) functionality. I don’t know if this can be built into software, but Skype apparently does something similar to VOIP and so theoretically they could create a PalmOS version of Skype. Of course you could always look into Vonage’s newly announced Wifi phone, (or Broadvoice’s that’s been around for almost a year) that will do just this, but then of course you have to carry around yet another piece of equipment, and that’s what we’ve been trying to get away from! What we really need is a purely software version of VOIP implementation like Skype that can work on many different platforms, including Smartphones.