Datawind PocketSurfer2
Rating: Go on dip your feet in, it might be warm, it looks hot!
By Rob Knight
Knowing my penchant for all things geeky means I get loads of emails from my friends going “Hey Dude look at this” - cool eh, I’m sure you want to be me right? Well into my email box came one from the Wooshman this morning which lead me to mobilephonedevelopment.com and the Datawind PocketSurfer2
I couldn’t download or read their press release unfortunately, I’m sure their servers are a bit hot today 
but the web site claims it brings –
The real web in the palm of your hand anytime * anywhere: an ultra thin device that fits in your pocket. The PocketSurfer2 works everywhere. Your PocketSurfer2 provides access to your information, the way you are accustomed to it on the web, with no new learning curve.
The PocketSurfer2 is a thin/sleek handheld device: Delivering the power of a monster-service in the palm of your hand.
What we think
The clever thing about this device though is that unlike all the other mobile devices on the market this has no browser on the device. Yep, you heard that right. It uses a VNC application that talks to their servers over GPRS which are running a fully featured IE web browser. This means you get a desktop experience on your mobile device, not only that they claim becuase they use a VNC terminal application it only takes between 5-7 seconds to load a web page. Impressive!!. The price is £179.99 and includes 20 hours of usage per month and if you want an all you can eat plan its available for an extra £5.99 per month. The second year only costs £39.95 for the 20 hours per month. I would like to know what it costs if you go over your allotted hours.
It can also be used for email - I couldn’t work out if it has an email client but I’m sure I saw an email button on the keyboard or of course you could ways a web based service like Gmail and it can also IM apparently. The other thing that I noticed in the specifications was the words GPS location information. Tell us more Datawind!
Now this does mean you will need two devices as it has no phone capability so that may preclude some all in one device fanatics. Personally though, I think this is a great concept. On the road I could access Google Docs for writing and working on spreadsheets allowing this little device to work as a mini laptop and who knows if they included some VOIP software and bluetooth hardware then you could make phone calls as well.!
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