By combining low power, high performance and small size on one platform, InHand Electronics hopes to simplify the making and use of wireless handhelds.
The product, called Fingertip to reflect its focus on size, was unveiled last week at Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Developers’ Conference.
Fingertip offers portable device development starter kits and boards that support Windows CE 3.0. It enables handhelds to combine reduced battery requirements, small footprints and full functionality, according to InHand Electronics.
“Fingertip’s main attribute is its level of integration,” said Andrew Girson, chief executive officer of InHand, explaining that the smaller the embedded devices, the more efficient the handhelds.
“It is the only board OEMs use to develop handheld devices as small as three-by-three inches,” he said.
He said the product makes handheld manufacturers get to market more quickly because the parts are easy to assemble without the burden of a lot of labor and expense. All the OEMs need, he said, is to procure the board, add batteries, append the display and put it in the box, and the device is ready to go.
He also said OEMs can use the platform to adjust their handhelds to the size they envision.
Included in the platform are the ultra-portable device development kits, industrial strength low power and compact flash and other peripheral interfaces.
The single-board computer’s ultra-portable device is 2.75 inches on a side and occupies 7.5 inches with enough room for complete handheld and personal digital assistants to function fully, according to InHand.
Intel’s StrongArm SA-1110 RISC CPU is the industrial strength and low power part of the platform with up to 16 megabytes of flash memory and 32 megabytes of DRAM.
“It’s a high-performance microprocessor with little power consumption,” said Girson.
The platform also offers a Compact Flash socket up to three serial ports, 12 programmable I/Os, a multimedia codec, a USB port, an LCD and touch-screen interfaces.
The product, which targets the handheld vertical market, will be sold to military, industrial, instrumentation and health care industries beginning in the second quarter of 2001.
