jkOnTheRun video review- Celio Redfly Mobile Companion
The Celio Redfly Mobile Companion is a deceptively useful device that takes a Windows Mobile smartphone and turns it into a mini-laptop. With a press of a button the Redfly connects up to the smartphone and extends the display to 800×480 and throws in a full QWERTY keyboard to boot. In this video James Kendrick gives an overview of the Redfly hardware and shows how the mobile professional can pull the Redfly out of his/her gadget bag and be reading email in less than 3 seconds. Take a look at the video and see why James is so excited about how useful this device can be for enterprise workers.
UPDATE: the oompah loompahs at YouTube have produced a slight audio sync problem and my audio gets out of sync with the video toward the end of the video. Sorry about that, my video is perfectly in sync. 
Thank you for the review, hopefully when the redfly comes out it would be a little bit lower in price, thats the only thing that keeps me from getting this device.
Too bad Palm 86′ed the Folio… coulda been a contender.
Will this setup work with other WM devices?
kamikun, there is a list of certified phones that the Redfly will work on and it’s being updated continuously. I believe it will work with most of them anyway.
It’s very compelling simply because it is your Windows Mobile device. All the data that’s in your pocket device is right there and editable and when you shut down the Redfly you can still access and work with your data even without it, just on the smaller screen etc on the phone.
A modern WM device has a really speedy CPU, almost up there with the slower UMPC’s, and even enough RAM to be useful considering the lower memory footprint of Windwos Mobile, so there’s really not a lot of reasons a WM device couldn’t be a great computing device as long as you get the decent screen and keyboard going.
Considering it’s “just” a dumb terminal type thing I do hope they can get price down. If they can sell a complete Eee for similar money, there has to be some air in the Redfly price. It’s a cool device but how pricey can the parts be, really?
Great review,, James. I must admit I was luke warm about this device. After you stated that it could connect to the windows mobile device via bluetooth Or usb. I’m sold. Bluetooth rocks, but you can’t use it on a plane.
I just hope the price is reasonable.
I too hope they get the price down but I understand why it’s high. Celio is a small company and instead of jobbing the Redfly out to Asian manufacturers they are making it completely themselves. This makes for great QC and an easier time to address the intended enterprise market, particularly government agencies perhaps.
Great video and excellent commentary. I have been beta testing this for a few weeks now and its just a blast to use. This is better than the Foleo. No OS, no need to sync.
More importantly no OS (or CPU) to keep updated or optimized. No drive to defrag. No user manintenance whatsoever which I think is partly why it’s so much fun to use. That and it’s so darn fast.
The Redfly could be an Enterprise killer application / solution. If they can get it to be CEO proof, i.e. if really is just a single button or cable to connect, I can imagine that enterprises will be queuing up for it, no matter what the price.
Personally, I would pay $$$ for a similar device to work with my iPhone, I could see my whole mobile work requirements being met by such a pairing of devices.
Does this now define a new number of minimum devices, one and a half devices?!
And the Gps navigation ?
Glad you mentioned that misutsu. I am charging my Freedom keychain GPS this morning. Maybe this afternoon or tomorrow I will try it out but I bet it will work good.
I don’t think I would use this as it stands but it is terrific to see this type of innovative product get to market. It is another step towards the ‘modular’ computer idea.
I’ve been waiting for this type of solution a long time.
The dollars have already been set aside for an Experia and a Redfly.
Would love to see this married to a Nokia N82 for the cam/vid – real-time vid capabilities. Talk about an enterprise solution, using something like FlixWagon with a RedFly for vidconferencing would be a killer!
It’s coming…
James Morman- what phone are you using your Redfly with?
I am using my i760. The unit James has in his video has some slight improvements from mine as far has the hardware goes. I have a Treo 700wx which I donated to our Police Dept. a couple months ago. I am going to borrow it back for a few hours to see how it works with it. I know they (Celio) are working to get more devices working with it. I am secretly hoping for support for the Q and the SMT5800, one of which will be my next backup device since I donated the Treo. It’s interesting that right now the only devices they have compatible are WM Pro devices. I have some thoughts on the redfly posted at my personal blog as well. http://www.sixftunda.blogspot.com
A lot of people are talking about $500 being to much for the Redfly compared to a laptop. Have they put the difference between a full tethering data plan and just a PDA data plan in their calculations? An AT&T customer is looking at paying $20 less a month if they can live with the Redfly/tilt combo to do their road warrior stuff. Also JK: could you show the charger? Is it the same size as laptop charger? What is the cord length? Is it a propriety charger? Can the Redfly charge on USB? When the Redfly is plugged and turned off can it charge a phone off the USB? That saves the need to bring a phone charger with you (you can just use the usb cable you would carry with you to connect the Redfly and your WM smartphone). Also is there a car charging solution? Can you try this with a WM smarthone, not a WM PDA? How about a KVM set-up? Lastly as one who tethers my Laptop through my smartphone to download emails I know the advantage of just displaying the phone (w/ more resolution)on a larger screen, with a true keyboard. I have constant trouble with maintaining a bluetooth/USB DUN GPRS connection. When browsing on my PDA it maintains a better connection, with less drops, and auto-reconnects when dropped to complete the page download.
John M: The charger is not like a laptop charger its just a regular charger kinda looks like what my old LG dumb phone uses. I don’t think there is a way to charge this via USB if that is what you are asking. I am not sure why you would want to. With the beta unit I have (keep in mind this may change) the Redfly has to be on to charge the phone. The battery life on the Redfly is so good that I have it set to never turn off on battery power. I have gone three days with regular use (Approx 2 hours per day) and not run it dead. I have not been told of a car charging solution if there is one. I don’t know what a KVM set-up is. As I mentioned earlier the only supported phones at this point run WM pro. This is deceiving because it’s called a “smartphone companion” since a lot of us know the technical difference between a smartphone (wm Std.) and ppc (wm pro).
It might only officially work with WM Pro (touch screen), but I have tested it with a T-Mobile Shadow (non-touch screen) and it works quite well. I’ll post something on my blog after I return from Alaska at the end of the week with test results from the Shadow and Dash devices.
“It’s a great writing solution…”
Yeah, thanks for NOT showing Pocket Word!!! FIEND!!! (That you showed PDFs doesn’t count!)
Now, if it worked with an iPhone …
What I don’t understand is, what are the mechanics of this magic? It seems they’ve done what the Foleo *couldn’t* — actually *mirror* the phone at boosted res. And if Redfly can do that with WinMob … why not iPhone? (Yeah, yeah, access to the iPhone BT stack … but hey … maybe if they twist Jobs’s arm? But even if they *can’t* access the BT stack, why not simply via USB? Did they download the frikkin iSDK?!!?)
I didn’t have any docs loaded on the phone to show in Word Mobile but trust me it works fine. Celio has indicated that WM is just the beginning, maybe we’ll see an iPhone version down the road.
Thanks James M for the answers. You figured out my main question(my 2 year old was climbing all over me while I was typing my question). I really would love to know how the Redfly works on a WM Standard Smartphone (i.e. Moto Q). The reason I was wondering about charging the redfly with USB because I keep a 12 V car / usb charger in my car. The KWM set-up is a KVM switch (KVM being an abbreviation for Keyboard, Video, Mouse). When you want to conviently use a full sized montitor, mouse and keyboard for more than one computer.
Has anybody tried this with the SoftMaker suite? If the Redfly works well with PlanMaker, etc., this thing will allow me to retire my aging NEC MP 900c (which is becoming buggier by the day).
This looks like a very neat device, would certainly be handy to use with my WM6 phone but the price would be a major turnoff. I google’d around and brighthand.com quoted the price being near $500, I can’t see myself paying so much for such a simple device. My EEE PC costs less and still included all of the essentials while this is more of a thin client device.
A $200 or so price would be much more reasonable in my mind.
VGA output but NO AUDIO?
Hello
The Redfly reminds me the stupidly aborted Foléo by Palm…
As a Macintosh aficionado (I hate Window) and
discouraged by Palm lack of imagination and guts… ( The Palm OS is Mac compatible…) I turned out to a Nokia E90 which is very smart, fully equiped but not Touch…
I wonder if the Redfly would be compatible with a Symbian software – alias my Nokia E90.
It will be a perfect companion while travelling… having than WiFi , an FM radio, voice recorder a camera etc in it…
Thwe rReddfly could become a smart extension and works like a light computer…
As I mostly work in french I also wonder if the Qwerty Redfly keybord could generate also the french accentuated caracters like é è ç è û etc.
So I could forget my PowerBook at home …
Any idea ?