Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"If you'll recall, we spotted a "proof of concept" smartphone dock from the outfit [Celio] 13 months ago, and apparently that very device has shifted out of the R&D lab and into a working product. Now sporting the codename "Moab," the dock essentially brings a keyboard and mouse of your choosing to your smartphone, and it channels the video on your mobile's display onto a bona fide external monitor."

While the concept of a smartphone dock may sound useful to some, I personally would not buy an accessory like this and it seems a bit awkward for the purpose of typing long emails. If I have a keyboard, mouse and monitor lying around, there will more than likely be a notebook nearby to use instead. But still, for some this may be a convenient solution. Do you think a smartphone dock would be a useful accessory to own? Tell us what you think.

"Celio Corp, makers of the REDFLY Mobile Companion, today announced a public beta of the new REDFLY Mobile Viewer PC software for Windows XP and Vista. The REDFLY Mobile Viewer is a software product allowing smartphone users to conveniently use their favorite Windows Mobile applications at full size on their PCs. To download the free beta, visit www.celiocorp.com...The REDFLY Mobile Viewer works with all current REDFLY-compatible smartphones. The software gives users access to all of the smartphone's applications and features via a Windows PC, including the ability to send and receive SMS messages and e-mail in a full-screen window. The REDFLY Mobile Viewer is a great tool for multitasking, allowing users to interact and use both the smartphone platform and the PC platform simultaneously via the PC."

This is an interesting inversion of the basic RedFly concept: connecting a less powerful devices (the smartphone) to a more powerful devices (a laptop/desktop PC) rather than the concept of connecting the more powerful/connected device (the smartphone) to a dumb terminal. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it could be promising. Although it does beg the question of why you'd use Word Mobile on your smartphone if you had it on your laptop/netbook. Maybe it's more for the smartphone-only apps that benefit from the hardware in the smartphone (phone radio, GPS, etc.)?