Digital Life Video Preview: UTStarcom
If you’re wondering why posting has been sporadic the last day, it’s because I’ve been attending the huge Digital Life show at the Javits Center in New York. I’ve been shooting a lot of video, and will be uploading a lot of stuff in the coming weeks. Here’s something from earlier this week, at a preview show, where UTStarcom showed off some new phones.
The first phone is the G’zOne, which they’ve made for Casio. It’s a rugged, durable phone, with a 2.0 megapixel image/video camera, but the feature that made me excited is that it is water resistant up to 30 minutes. In the video, the rep dials her own cell phone, then tosses the G’zOne in a fish bowl full of water. The call goes through, as you can see. At the show yesterday, I tried the camera underwater, and the picture quality, in the water, is still excellent (better than my phone when dry).
The second is the Slice, a phone for Virgin Mobile’s prepaid service. At 0.4 inches thick, it is the thinnest phone available without a contract, and it costs just $49.99. It is a high quality phone, with a smooth keypad like the RAZR, an the feel of it is too solid and smooth for that low a price. I was really surprised that it was that cheap, because I’ve paid more for phones that were made out of crap compared to this. Really, just quality construction, it feels expensive. A rep told me yesterday that Target has already started selling them.
According to one person, going back through a series of mergers and other things, UTStarcom used to be mostly Audiovox.
Anyway, I was impressed by their lineup, and if I get my promised review units, you are going to see a lot of fun video with the water-resistant phone. Expect some more stuff after the weekend as I process my hours of video from Digital Life.
Those phones look sweet. Even better though was the spokesperson that UTStacom had today. Probably one of the hottest asian girls I ever seen but she wasn’t a booth model or anything like the scantily clad ladies sony had. She was simply just one of their employees. Could you get her on video by any chance?? She’s well worth the trip to the UTStarcom booth if you ask me
Comment by Jerry | October 13, 2006
[…] I noticed a Gizmodo guy at Tuesday’s pre-Digital Life press event, as well as the pretty decent video camera he was carrying (better than mine, certainly). What I must have missed was when he pointed that camera over my shoulder, proving that, indeed, there was only one journalist with a notebook actually conducting business at this shindig. My appearance comes about 43 seconds into their video. […]
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