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I finally took a look around Kentia hall today. No Gamepark here this year, rather an unfortunate occurance in my opinion. But after a bit of wandering, I stumbled upon something. There's another Korean handheld in town, and this one is even more obscure. No software publishers signed on, two buttons (plus start and select) and a vertical screen. Very interesting.
It is not more interesting than their slogan though: “Pleasure in My Hands.” Hmmmm.
Some product specs to start with:
CPU: 32bit ARM 7 Core CPU
LCD: STN Color LCD 1.9" (65k Color)
Sound: Stereo Sound / MIDI 32 Poly
Memory: ROM 8mb / RAM 16MB
Media: 32MB / 64MB / 128MB
Interface: Bluetooth / USB
Power: AAx2 (10 hours)
Weight: 180g
Dimension: (L) 140mm - (W) 90mm - (H) 27mm
The thing looks very strange, and is a bit odd to hold. Kind of reminds me of budget-priced digital cameras. The two speakers are nice, making the (now) two Korean handhelds the only ones with two speakers on the base system. There's a backlight for the screen, which looks to be about the same size as that of the N-Gage. The 32bit ARM 7 Core CPU looks a lot like the GP32's processor on paper, but in reality the FreeON only has 72 Mhz of power, vs GP32's 133 Mhz.
It uses proprietary Rom cartridges, some of which will connect to various accessories. Some planned peripherals are: MP3 player, digital camera, voice recognition and LAN access point. I'll be blatantly honest when I say that I don't quite understand the purpose of that last one. And I'm not being facetious either - I really don't understand.
The FreeON uses bluetooth for wireless gaming and networking. Up to eight players can play at the same time, requiring only one game cart. You can basically download the game from the 'master' player into temporary memory, and play it until you shut the system down (when it is erased from memory). This is something the B'ngo can also do. The bluetooth connections can be made at distances of up to 10 meters.
Included in the box you'll find: user manual, installation CD-rom, AA batteries, product registration card, and the system. Exciting!
Optional accessories: MP3, PDA, E-book, VOD system, voice recorder.
The voice recognition device (though called a voice recorder above), allows you to tell the game to do certain things. Like if you want to drop a bomb, say 'bomb', and the game does this. Very curious thing to do with a handheld.
The SDK is free, and games can be downloaded online, though most will come in the rom carts. There's a Virtual Machine in the hardware, though it's not JAVA. It's a proprietary VM, and java games must be ported to it in order to work. Again, a very odd choice.
They're hoping for an October release in Korea, and a US release before Christmas. And yet, they only have a few small developers in Korea interested in the system, no big names, no real titles viewable. The one game we saw today was a sort of strategy game, but the direction of movement did not really correspond to the direction of d-pad pressure. It feels rather cheap at this point, but...time will tell, I suppose.
They declare this to be the world’s first wireless bluetooth portable. But…unless they release this thing on October 6th, they’ve got another thing coming. If we never hear of the thing again (this is very possible), at least you've got a taste of it.
Brandon Sheffield
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