Okay, now my NX80 + Wifi order got officially cancelled, I thought I'd console myself by imagining what the next keyboard CLIE will be like, based on what little we know and is rumored:
1. We know a lot more about the TH55 now- great battery life, large 480 x 320 screen, CLIE Organizer, Wifi sniffer, new NetFront, 32 MB RAM, light and thin, etc.
2. There's a unsubstantiated rumor of a slightly larger UX model, about the size of an NX. Let's just go with it for now.
3. We also know the TH55 list price of $399, excellent for the above features (especially for Sony).
4. OLED screens and OS 6 are coming, although perhaps not til near the end of the year. So we'll leave these out for now.
I think you can basically morph all the above (except for #4) into the following unit:
1. Portrait clamshell with improved but similar keyboard to UX
2. Similar footprint and thickness of NX CLIE
3. Large screen closer to TH/NX
4. Emotion Engine again (of course)
5. 32 MB RAM + 16 MB heap, but no internal MS or backup RAM
6. Excellent battery life
7. Wifi with sniffer, but no BT (at least in USA)
8. CLIE Organizer and all the other Sony apps
9. Camera- probably .3 MP CMOS, but maybe 1.3 MP CCD from NX80
PRICE- We're basically just adding a keyboard and maybe beefier battery to the TH55 here, so it shouldn't go for $699 again. I'm thinking $500 or so. Any more and it doesn't compete with the WiFi PocketPC's (at least spec and feature-wise).
They key would be to not re-invent the wheel and spend too much money developing, just take the best of the UX (keyboard) and TH (everything else) and make a new clamshell.
What do you think? That would make sense to me. Unfortunately probably too much sense. Sony instead will add an Aibo feature to it or some other nonsense, and charge $799.
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