Voq Professional
Sierra Wireless are a pretty unknown
name in the UK, and to date most of their
products have been industrial, commercial
or telecoms based. So the Voq Professional
is a bit of a suprise.
Essentially, the Voq Professional
is a combined PDA/mobile running Windows
Mobile 2003, which combines the power and
familiarity of the Windows operating system
in a tiny package. It's a tri-band GSM phone,
so it will work pretty much anywhere there's
a GSM network, and the Voq supports
data transfer over GPRS.
In addition to making phone calls, the
Voq Professional supports POP3 and IMAP
email, instant messaging through Microsoft
MSN Messenger, SMS and MMS.
The Voq Professional runs Pocket Internet
Explorer and can play back music and video
using the built-in Windows Media Player.
PDA functions on the Voq Professional
are pretty standard for a Windows-based
PDA. The Voq connects to a PC using a USB
cable and supports all the usual data synchronisation
you'd expect.
One really special thing about the Voq
Professional that stands out from other
similar Windows-based PDA/phones is the
fold-out QWERTY thumbpad. This is an novel
solution to data input which can otherwise
be a bit fiddly on PDAs.
Underneath, the Voq Professional has
a 200MHz Intel XScale processor, 48Mb of
Flash memory (20Mb for storage) and 32Mb
internal RAM (16Mb for applications).
Sierra Wireless haven't specified size,
weight and battery life of the Voq Professional
as of yet, but it's likely to be slightly
larger and heavier than the Orange SPV e100
which is 120x50x23mm and weighs 120g. Sierra
Wireless are keen to emphasise long battery
life, which has always been a weak point
in Windows-based mobiles.
There's certainly no other phone like
the Voq Professional. Maybe it's not
quite the perfect hybrid PDA/Phone/music
player, but it is certainly getting there!
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