Another week has come and gone and we are a week closer that that wondrous day parents look forward to all summer — back to school! Lots of goings on this week and much of it was centered on mobile phones. Spotify announced that it would have an official app available on the iPhone that works for subscribers on Premium packages. Monday, a bit more light was shed on the much anticipated Android donut update, alas it’s said to not be the OS 2.0 update we hoped for and won’t have multitouch.
It seems a long time since we played with a non-functional prototype of Samsung’s Mondi WiMAX MID back at Mobile World Congress in February. Only last week the Windows Mobile 6.1 handheld saw its official launch, to take advantage of Clearwire’s slowly spreading CLEAR WiMAX network, so imagine our surprise when a Mondi dropped, unannounced, through the SlashGear letterbox. After the cut, check out our walkthrough video and an initial hands-on gallery, together with some early feedback in advance of our full review.
Well another week has come and gone as time steadily marches on and like every other week here on SlashGear, it has been a busy one. Poor old Toshiba took the old adage “if you can’t beat them, join them” seriously on Monday and announced that it would be launching its own Blu-ray player by the end of 2009. That had to be hard to swallow for the execs who bet it all on HD DVD only to be defeated by Blu-ray. Also on Monday the slick HP Mini 5101 netbooks tipped up starting from $399. I’m not convinced we need another netbook on the market right now personally.
Samsung’s Mondi may be tricky to find for retail right now, but an early unit has dropped over at PC World for them to try out. Taking advantage of Clearwire’s CLEAR WiMAX network, the Mondi MID has a slide-out keyboard, 4.3-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen and runs Windows Mobile 6.1; unfortunately, reviewer Ginny Mies found that while the screen is “gorgeous” the keyboard is too flush to be comfortable and the OS does its usual job of making things sluggish.
Samsung have officially released their Mondi MID, the Windows Mobile based WiMAX handheld, to coincide with Clearwire’s CLEAR WiMAX service rolling out in Las Vegas. That takes the number of WiMAX markets to three, with Clearwire claiming around 1.7m residents have now been covered with the new service rollout.
Samsung’s Mondi WiMAX MID had something of a stretched out launch – first being demonstrated at MWC as the SWD-M100, then getting a quiet mention through the company’s own RSS image feed, before Samsung finally came clean early this month. What we haven’t known until now is the processor powering the Mondi, and anybody hoping for something esoteric and interesting will be disappointed: it’s an 800MHz ARM11 chip.
Today at CTIA, Samsung announced the Mondi, a small, Windows Mobile powered device, featuring WiMax and WiFi capabilities. The Mondi has a 4.3″ touch screen, packs Bluetooth 2.1, a 3MP camera with video capture, a full slide out QWERTY keyboard, HDMI out, and 4GB of internal storage.
The Samsung SWD-M100 WiMAX MID that we saw back at MWC has been prematurely named by the company’s RSS feed. Now known to be the Samsung Mondi, the MID has a 4.3-inch touchscreen, slide-out QWERTY keyboard and 4G WiMAX access via the Clear network in the US.
Video overview of the Samsung SWD-M100 Mondi after the cut
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