A few weeks ago,
Celio dropped the price of its smartphone companion, Redfly, by half to $200. Celio has extended the special pricing, which was supposed to end at the close of last month, through the middle of November.
Celio says the purpose of the price drop is to raise awareness of the device, which is essentially a dumb-terminal that turns a Windows Mobile smartphone into notebook computer. A statement from the company reads:
The promotion has been enormously successful by introducing Redfly to new markets, users, and applications. The breadth of user interaction and media coverage has propelled Redfly into the mobile market spotlight and caught the attention of handset makers, service providers, and applications developers.
The company, if it can afford to, may want to consider keeping the price at its current level. It's unlikely folks will continue to buy Redflys at the current rate, which Celio is apparently happy with, for anything more than $200. After all, $300 to $400 gets you into fully-functional netbook range.
Redflfy measures 9 x 6 x 0.1 inches and weighs 2.0 pounds. It's an 8-inch monitor that folds against a full-size laptop-style keyboard. It simply connects via Bluetooth or USB to your smartphone.
From the Redfly, you access data files, e-mail or anything else on your phone. You can send messages, view or write Office Mobile documents and even plug into a projector to give a PowerPoint presentation from your smartphone
If concept behind Redfly sounds familiar, it should. Last year, Palm killed a similar-sounding product, called the Foleo, before it even shipped. The laptop-like 2.5-pound Foleo, with a 10-inch screen and a full-size keyboard, was to serve as the inaugural device in a new category of product for Palm called Mobile Companions.
Foleo’s main purpose was to allow users to view and edit e-mail and documents from a smartphone (preferably a Treo) more conveniently, automatically synchronizing files back and forth between itself and the mobile handset through a wireless Bluetooth connection.
Unlike Redfly, you would have also been able to access the Internet for Web and e-mail, edit Microsoft Office documents and more on Foleo without a smartphone present, though.
