With the Eee PC, Asus were arguably the first company to make a serious mass-market Linux PC so it is perhaps not too surprising that they would be eager to try their luck with a Linux-based phone as well.
The Taiwanese manufacturer already sells mobile phones and PDAs running a variety of operating systems, but has announced that early next year it will roll out a phone running Google’s Android OS.
The phone will launch in the Taiwanese market initially, but Asus plan to create customised or rebadged models for sale overseas later in 2009.
Well, not exactly give away. Orange will be bundling the Eee PC with high-end contracts for its USB dongles.
The Asus Eee range are tiny - like slim hardback books, and light as a feather - perhaps a little too small and underpowered for use as your main computer, but excellent for using on the move for web browsing or light wordprocessing.
Orange plan to provide an Eee 900 (16GB SSD drive, 1GB RAM, Linux or Windows XP) with their 24 month USB dongle contracts .
The contract comes with 3GB/month data usage(which should be enough at dongle speeds) and 300 texts that can be sent from an app on the laptop.
Vodafone’s latest handheld PDA-cum-computer, the v1520, has appeared on its UK website as ‘coming soon’.
The v1520, built by Asus, is a Windows Mobile 6 Pro device with GPS, 3G/wifi, Bluetooth, a microSD card slot and of course, a two-megapixel camera.
It apparently uses an Intel processor running at 520Mhz, which is pretty fast considering HTC’s TyTN II (another WM Pro 6 device) runs at only 400MHz.
You can find out more and pre-order your v1520 here.
