Redfly reckon the 4500mAh battery lasts eight hours with typical usage. That is hardly surprising as all it really as do do in power the screen. What is surprising is that the eight hour figure is cobblers.
We managed a solid ten hours from a full charge and that included charging up a phone that was only half charged when we started using it, and we had the phone's Wi-Fi receiver on for much of the time.
How much you want the Redfly will depend on who's paying for it
Of course how much you may want a Redfly will depend a lot on who is paying for thing. In the US it retails for $499, which we reckon is pretty steep for what it is. In the UK it will set you back a more eye-watering £320 and that's a very hard price to justify. Of course if some IT wallah from your company just drops one on your desk FOC, it's an altogether better deal.
So, is it any use? Well, some would say that anyone who wants laptop functionality should, well..carry a laptop, or a netbook, and they have a point. One the other hand, the Redfly is smaller and lighter than all but the smallest netbooks so for the business user who just wants to access his, or her, smartphone functionality but would rather the luxury of a real keyboard and a decent sized screen it just may make some kind of sense.
Verdict
Ah, America, home of so many things that just don't make sense on this side of the Pond – the Klan, baseball, George W Bush and arguably the Redfly. To be fair though unlike the first and third items in that list the Redfly is not a bad idea per se, rather it just fulfils a very specific need for very specific people. It's doubtless great for American executives, or indeed executives anywhere else in the world where corporate Windows smartphones roam in vast herds, but its not really intended for the rest of us who are much better off with our Eees and Aspire Ones.
Special thanks to Expansys for pulling the stops out to get us a review sample.
Celio Redfly Windows smartphone terminal
COMMENTS
Missing the point
Now, I'm no fan of this piece of crap (see above comments) but it does seem the "you should buy an Eee PC" brigade are missing the point some what.
The reason (Redfly thinks) companies are going to by fleets of these is because of the lack of risk. By keeping all the data and processing on the mobile phone, tucked safely away in Mr Big's very expensive suite pocket, it doesn't matter if they leave the laptop on the train, drop it on the airport concourse or have it stolen from their car whislst on holiday in Edinburgh They have lost nothing* because all the valuable stuff is still in their pocket and the Windows Mobile device offers remote wipe!
Yes, it would be cheaper to buy an Eee PC but it also increases the risk that the morons who use these things will go and give away all the company secrets.
Now, you (and I) may think that's an utterly moronic point and why not just implement over-the-air backup and decent security etc but, moronic or not, that is how they are trying to market these things so the Eee PC argument doesn't fly.
* where nothing = £330
This looks like bombing (in more ways than one)
Not only does it seem useless but US customs is likely to give you a "through" examination when you tell them that you laptop which "suspiciously looks like a laptop" contains no data and isn't a laptop.
Utterly pointless
Not only are you going to get laughed at for buying a crock of a WM phone to start with, but doubly so when someone discovers its not actually a net-book you are using, but its just something which blows up all the inadequacies of Windows Mobile on to an 8" screen. When they find out you've paid almost twice as much as what an EEE PC 701 now goes for, they'll probably give themselves a hernia from laughing so hard.
As Cobblers says, get an EEE or any one of the hoard of similar net-books, and use any phone you like as a modem. You'll have a fast, reliable system (if you go with the Linux versions), running Firefox and all the plug-ins which is a universe away from the hopeless WM browsing experience. Open Office is also vastly more compatible than using the crippled little WM Office apps.
