Dual-mode GPS/Bluetooth phone runs Linux

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Feb. 23, 2006

A Swiss company has published a datasheet for a dual-mode Linux smartphone that also integrates a GPS (global positioning system) receiver, WiFi, and Bluetooth. ImCoSys says its smartphone, a quad-band GSM design with a PDA-like form-factor, will be showcased next month at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany.

(Click for larger view of ImCoSys GPS phone)

The ImCoSys phone is based on a Texas Instruments OMAP 730 processor, the datasheet says. The same chip was used in another dual-mode Linux phone announced by E28 at 3GSM last month.

The ImCoSys phone has 64MB each of RAM and Flash. It also has an SD Card slot, which can be used to load maps or expand storage, the company says.

The ImCoSys phone has an SD Card slot

The ImCoSys phone sports a plethora of radios, including:

Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900) with GPRS Class 10 and CSD modems
802.11b WiFi, with WPA support
Bluetooth 1.2
GPS receiver

The phone has a PDA-like "transflective" LCD-TFT touchscreen display supporting 262K colors and QVGA (240x320) resolutions. Listed connectivity options include a USB port, and, interestingly, an RS232 serial port. The device also supports external GPS and GSM antennas, the datasheet says.

ImCoSys phone front, back
(Click each image to enlarge)
The ImCoSys phone measures 4.9 x 2.5 x 0.7 inches (125 x 64 x 18mm), and uses a lithium-ion battery of unspecified size.

On the software side, the ImCoSys phone runs a Linux 2.4.20 kernel, along with user-interface software supporting German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish. Touted software features include a Web/WAP 2.0 browser, Java runtime (MIDP 2.0), push/pop/smtp email client, SMS/MMS message client, calendar, calculator, world clock, and memo applications.

Availability

The ImCoSys phone is expected to reach market direct and through distributors/resellers in June, priced at 300 Euros retail. ImCoSys will demonstrate the phone at CeBIT next month.

ImCoSys was founded in 2005, and employs 20. It is based in Zug, Switzerland.

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