SendoX enhanches Series 60 interface — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Send it for X-mas} SendoX enhanches Series 60 interface

22 Oct 2003 at 03:55 GMT Timo Poropudas

The UK-based Sendo showed Tuesday that it is capable of rapid and innovated results in mobile phone design by announcing its new Symbian-based multimedia smartphone, the Sendo X. Sendo is best known for it failed attempt to create a smartphone with Microsoft.

Sendo cut off its cooperation with Microsoft and sued its ex-partner for stealing its design secrets about one year ago. It licensed Symbian operating systems and Nokia’s Series 60 phone platform. Sendo expects to ship the phone in some territories before the end of the year.

The Sendo X features a number of innovations, specifically in the area of video, audio, camera, connectivity and internet functionality.

Hugh Brogan, Sendo's CEO, stated: "We believe that the Sendo X has the best combination of advanced multimedia and internet capability of any phone available on the market today. We have made the Sendo X extremely customizable for both the operator and the user. Innovations like the Sendo Now! screen mean that both network operators and consumers can now adapt the phone to the way they want to use it."

The new mobile handset is a compact, stylish, small and light GPRS tri-band phone in a typical phone form factor using high quality materials such as aluminum in its finishing. It incorporates a number of Sendo enhancements to the Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60 software.

Series 60 licensor, Nokia Mobile Software's Jukka Riivari, Director of Sales comments the new handset: "Within less than a year of our licensing agreement Sendo brings to the market an impressive smartphone. With the Sendo X, Sendo also leveraged the flexibility of the Series 60 Platform in product differentiation by adding many unique innovations to the phone, all packaged in a very light, small and stylish product."

The Now! interface

The 120 gram phone features Sendo Now! screen, a fast and easy to use, customizable, and expandable home screen, allowing users easy access to network operator value added services. The Now! screen also allows users to have quick access to their favorite web pages, documents and to get easy access to their frequently used applications on the phone.

The Sendo X features a 176x220 TFT display with up to 65,536 colors. It has a built-in camcorder function with more than half an hour of recording of quality video and audio. The Sendo X also includes a RealOne Player with H.263, MPEG 4 and RealVideo formats.

The VGA still/video camera offers 4 x digital zoom and an integrated flash with automatic red-eye reduction. Sendo has also added enough memory for the user to store up to 1000 high quality photos in the phone.

The MMS phone even offers the possibility to record personal ring tones wherever you are, on the fly. Sendo has incorporated its SoniX technology, which offers dual acoustic chamber speaker system, delivering superb sound quality from the in-built MP3 player.

It has GPRS and Bluetooth in addition to infrared and USB connectivity.

Internet compatibility extends to up to six email accounts and unique among Series 60-based phones, the full PIM (including email) can be synchronized with a PC over Bluetooth, infrared and USB using Sendo PC Connect (included on the Sendo X Companion CD). In addition OTA (over the air) synchronization is possible for contacts and calendar using SyncML. A large number of document viewers are included: Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint and ZIP are delivered on the phone, ready to use. More than 30 other document viewers can be found on the Companion CD, which comes with the Sendo X.