The Personal Phone Hub Gets Respectable

from the making-more-sense-every-day dept

Last year we had a story about the IXI wireless gateway that was still a little short on details. The more I've thought about it, though, the more it makes sense. The idea is that you really just need one (small) wireless "hub" that you can carry on you at any time, and then let any other device connect to the rest of the world through that hub. In other words, instead of having a wireless radio/transmitter in your mobile phone, your PDA, and your watch, why not enable each of them with bluetooth, and keep the wireless transmetter in your pocket. Then, any time you connect wirelessly, all the data flows through the hub. Of course, not many people knew much about IXI and its plans, but the concept is about to get a lot more attention as both Samsung and Motorola have announced similar plans. My first thoughts on this were more skeptical, but the idea has been growing on me. It certainly opens up the possibility of doing a lot more with personal wireless devices. Right now, people won't build wireless devices for very specific tasks because the market might not be right for it - but if you can take the wireless part out of it, and just let it connect via a portable hub, you open up many new areas to explore. Suddenly, just about anything can easily (and cheaply) have a wireless connection. As people are discovering with WiFi, when things start to go wireless, it doesn't just mean cutting the cord - it means completely new ways of using products you've already been using.

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