Hiptop to rival smartphones
Danger's Hiptop, with its phone, browser and email functions, could mount a serious challenge to PDAs and smartphones
The Hiptop Communicator from Danger could prove an attractive alternative to smartphones and other wireless clients when it is released in the UK later this year.
The long-awaited device, which supports web browsing, always-on email and mobile phone facilities, could attract firms with its convenient handheld format and support for Java applications.
Currently shipping in the US as the T-Mobile Sidekick, the device has a 2.6in greyscale display, but the UK version is set to launch with a full-colour screen as standard, according to Danger.
At a price expected to be about £200, the Hiptop will cost less than high-end PDAs with built-in wireless functions while boasting a much better screen and keyboard than current smartphones.
Unlike a PDA, the Hiptop is not a standalone device. It forms just one part of Danger's offering. "We're actually a software company, and what we're selling is an end-to-end wireless solution," said Danger's chief executive, Hank Nothhaft. To offer a good browsing experience on such a small device, all web requests go through a proxy server operated by Danger that reformats pages and content to better suit the Hiptop's screen.
Emails are also held online, making the Hiptop more akin to a wireless thin client than to a traditional PDA.
Danger is currently in talks with network operators in the UK that would sell a custom version of the Hiptop and operate the wireless service.
Danger expects the devices will be available through Orange or T-Mobile on their GPRS services by the end of summer, but a deal has not yet been sealed. "We could still end up launching with someone else," Nothhaft said.
Although T-Mobile has packaged Sidekick as a consumer product in the US, European carriers may take a different approach. It should be a straightforward task to create enterprise software for it, as the Hiptop runs Java applications, Danger said. "Because we're Java-based, there will be business applications written," said Nothhaft.
But Nothhaft believes that the Hiptop alone is sufficient to interest corporate buyers. "Enterprise folks will like the email with attachments," he said. On the Hiptop screen, the content of any document sent as an attachment appears at the bottom of the email message. "You can view Word and Excel documents this way, but you can't edit them," Nothhaft said.
Unlike most PDAs and smartphones, the Hiptop also boasts a keyboard, albeit with small keys. This makes composing emails much easier compared with using a PDA stylus or mobile phone keypad. The Hiptop screen hides the keyboard when not in use, swivelling around to reveal the keys when the user needs to enter text.
One drawback to the Hiptop setup is that emails cannot yet be synchronised with a user's Outlook mailbox. However, Nothhaft said that IT departments would be easily able to buy software to synchronise directly with their groupware server. "Because we're a client-server solution, developers only have to do an XML link to a back-end database," said Nothhaft.