cebit 2005

so, i was at cebit on friday. as usual there's a lot to see when you're only there for one day. but i did manage to talk to a few people at junghanns, snom and 2n. other than that it was more of the same you get every year. hundreds of asian booths trying to get "new products" on the market, which mainly consists out of usb sticks, ipod knock-offs and other mp3 players, all kinds of cameras and of course computer cases.

one of the few innovating new products i managed to find was the new zyxel p5000w video phone. it's a sip based device, running linux which allows you to make video-over-ip calls but also sports an agenda, address book and many other nice applications which can be accessed using the 5" touch screen. it has a removable bluetooth keypad that also doubles as a handset. i couldn't get a lot of information but it should be available at the end of the year with a price tag around €500. here are some pictures.

german provider freenet also introduced a new mobile/voip phone. the freenet ip1 clamshell handset is developed in cooperation with alcatel and allows you to make calls at home within 100m of the base station. the base station is a dsl modem & wlan router which also supports bluetooth. apparently it uses bluetooth and not wi-fi to connect the voip calls to the base station, which is kind of a missed opportunity in my opinion. when you leave the so called 'phone zone' the handset automatically switches to the 900/1800mhz gsm network. although it's unlikely you'll be able to switch your current call without disconnecting, this device is sure to generate quite a stir in the current mobile market. no news on price and availibility yet, but i will post more here as soon as i find out.