With UniFi-1, WiFi in PDAs soon standard?

[Colin Dunstan]

Although I share your disappointment that palmOne decided against integrating WiFi in its latest Tungsten T5, I can guarantee you that we have some bright times ahead of us!

Inquirer reports today a British company called CSR PLC (LSE:CSR) developed UniFi-1, the first single chip WiFi solution for the embedded device market (camera, MP3 player, PDA, Smartphone, ...).

What is really great about this chip is that all the relevant software runs on a seperate RISC processor, which means no processing power is taken away from the device's main CPU. Better still, the chip comes for the low wholesale price of $6.96 for the 802.11 b/g version or $9.98 for the a/b/g version. And, according to CTO James Collier, you should be able to run Bluetooth, GPRS and WiFi at the same time!

To get more info, you can read the official press release statement.

The future belongs to WiFi!

[Zire]

Nice great news!

[Pride Of Lions]

It remains to be seen whether this chip actually exists in tangible form and if Palm OS hardware licensees will implement it into a future iteration. I get the feeling that most Palm OS hardware manufacturers don't believe the people want Wi-Fi. I wish they'd do what the PPC makers seem to be doing and make two versions of a handheld, a no-frills PIM thingy and a souped-up multimedia/wireless device that appeals to the power-user. That way, people could choose their features and the manufacturers would have a more representative showing of who wants what, instead of whatever "data" they're using now.

However, it does sound good and I hope it arrives in Palm OS PDA's soon. The only thing missing in my Zodiac2 is Wi-Fi. Maybe in the Z3?
POL9A