Customer Reviews

Celio REDFLY C7

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I decided to give this a try since I could return to Celio for a reasonable $15 restocking fee (cost of experimenting) vs Expansys 25% (!).

The concept is good if you do a LOT of work on your PDAphone that could use a bigger screen and nice keyboard (Pocket Office apps, PIE browsing, long emails). I found though, that it is almost exactly the same dimensions as my Fujitsu Lifebook P1120, and with its dual-booting of Windows (2000) and Linux (Puppy), 9-inch 1024x600 touch screen, multiple I/O ports, audio and trackpoint (I do not care much at all for touchy touchpads), it is much more versatile in the same-sized package, especially since I can tether it to the phone, and thus get a lot more powerful processing of what comes over the airwaves than what a PDA can do (and, yes, the USB connection charges the phone at the same time, just like the 'fly). Also, the 1120 only cost me $140 on eBay (used of course).

I can think of some relatively simple improvements that would make the Redfly much more attractive, and which might even persuade me to consider toting it around instead of the 1120:
1. Include audio pass-through with jacks/speakers/mic to make some use of the wasted screen bezel space. This would permit a "big" speakerphone functionality to go along with its big keyboard and screen features. The pass-through would allow standard audio earphones or speakers to be used (with a 3.5mm jack).
2. If keeping the touchpad, enable it to scroll as with most notebook PC's these days - the screen scrolling is imprecise with the awkward touchpad/mouse button combo action needed, and is not at all smooth. Forget about a scroll-wheel USB mouse - that part of a mouse does not work when plugged into one of the 'fly's ports.
3. Better yet, have a Trackpoint (optional maybe?) that would allow shrinking the keyboard's depth, and also take a quarter-inch off each side of the keyboard frame to reduce the bulk in those 2 dimensions.
4. Reduce the overall thickness by at least a third if not half (or more) - think Macbook Air - reduce the overall "bulk".
5. If not reducing the depth dimension that much, then make the screen taller vertically to get up to a "real" 800x600 image height instead of making it a scroll-up-down option at it is now.
6. Backlight the keys (or make the legends on them a LOT brighter) to make this easier to use in dim conditions.
7. Add some simple type of velcro and mesh bag holder for the phone on the lid, or a bracket, or something equivalent to keep the phone from being a loose afterthought that you have to just lay somewhere. Just a thought...

Those tweaks would make this much more appealing (to me at least), but still will not overcome the limitations of the processor and software on the PDA phone itself - IE is slow and limited (Opera 9.5 won't work, 8.65 does not seem to work with the touchscreen/mouse, or did I download the wrong version?). Also, the big screen might tempt the user into opening more apps, but a typically configured PDA phone like my Verizon xv6700/HTC Apache with only 64MB of RAM still bogs down quickly when running low on RAM. The "big" screen and keyboard will NOT make this over into anything like a real notebook PC, even a low-end one like my Fujitsu P1120.

This is a well-made piece of gear with a good "tight" feeling without being quite as hefty as my Lifebook (it is mostly hollow after all compared to the typical notebook with it dense packaging), and it does what it is designed for fairly well. I found in reading various blogs that a number of folks do find this gadget suitable for the way they use it, so, as always, YMMV/caveat emptor.

HTH
RO

I purchased the Redfly C7 to have a minimal alternative to a laptop. The Blackberry's Hi-Res 480X360 output looks great on my Blackberry 9700 Bold but fuzzy on the Redfly's larger screen. The Blkbry's square format also causes "black bars on the sides of the Redfly screen, similar to the black bars seen on wide-screen monitors showing old style TV formats. It is not what I bought it for but maybe the Redfly is for watching video or movies? Battery works as advertised and the keyboard is an improvement on thumb entry. Also, DataViz, ($30 extra) to enable working with Microsoft Office documents, is disabled by my company's firewall. Oh well.