Saygus Phone To Offer 2-Way Video Calls

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 11/17/2009

Salt Lake City - Saygus, a video-calling technology developer, has developed what it calls the first U.S. cellphone to offer two-way video calling.

The CDMA 1x EV-DO Rev. A VPhone is Android-based and expected by the company to be available for use on the Verizon Wireless network through Verizon's Open Development Initiative (ODI), which lets developers design and independently market devices and applications for use on the Verizon network.

Saygus said the 800/1,900MHz phone, which will be displayed at International CES, would be available "soon."

Select phones on AT&T's W-CDMA-based 3G network deliver one-way video calling, or what AT&T calls video sharing. One subscriber with a video sharing phone can transmit images while talking, but that subscriber can't simultaneously view images transmitted by the person at the other end of the conversation.

The phones features a 5-megapixel main camera with autofocus and flash, a VGA forward-facing camera for video calling, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3.5-inch 800 by 480 capacitive multitouch touchscreen, and 624Mhz Marvell PXA310 processor. It uses Wi-Fi, USB and Bluetooth to turn into an access point enabling up to eight laptops and other computing devices to connect to the Internet via cellular.

The phone delivers two-way cellular video calls at 24 fps to 30 fps via the company's proprietary low-bandwidth video calling technology. A 1,500mAh battery delivers up to four hours of video calling or seven hours of talktime.

The company has tested the technology on slower data networks such as EDGE.

Other VPhone features include accelerometer, assisted GPS, FM radio, 512MB flash memory and slot for 16GB SDHC card.

Talkback

We would love your feedback!