Neonode

Neonode Inc. () is a Swedish manufacturer of mobile phones. The company was founded in 2001 by Magnus Goertz and Thomas Eriksson. They have approximately 20-30 employees and have their premises at Biblioteksgatan by Stureplan in Stockholm, the capital city of Sweden. The company's products have patented technologies known as "zForce" and "Neno" which are featured in their products. Neonode has made three models, "N1", "N1m" and "N2", N2 has been released as of August 2007.

The N2 phone has many simalarities to the recently produced iPhone by Apple Inc, but is far superior.

The N2 has the advantages though of not being locked to any network like the iPhone and the N2 is currently available in Europe. The N2 also has a further advantage over the iPhone of being expandable via a SD card upon which the whole memory of the phone is stored. The touch screen of the N2 has an advantage over other touch screens in that IT Works even with the user wearing gloves. No smear marks are left on the phone screen after use since the screen is held away from the face during conversation. It is also far smaller than the iPhone. Launch in the USA is expected some time in 2008.

All three products feature a common optical touch screen technology unique to Neonode in the mobile phone industry.

The Neonode N2 phone is currently sold through retailers in most parts of Europe and via direct sales from the Neonode website.

History

The childhood friends Magnus Goertz and Thomas Eriksson founded Neonode in 2001.

In March 2002 Neonode showed its mobile phone for the first time at the German IT trade show CeBIT and before Christmas the same year they arranged a press conference at "Fryshuset" in Stockholm. They got much attention for their innovative creation, resulting in a pre-order list of approximately 20,000 persons.

In the beginning of July 2004 released their first model "N1", which the company had planned to release two years earlier. In March 2005 an upgrade came, the "N1m". The added "m" indicates that the previous VGA camera has been replaced by a megapixel camera. Other updates were vibrator, triple band and a better battery.

On the 22nd January, 2007, Neonode and SBE, Inc. announced that the two firms have agreed on a merger. On August the 13th the merger took place and now the company is publicly traded with the symbol NEON.

In February, 2007, Neonode unveiled their new product called N2 at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. This was the firm's first all-new product since the N1 and the first new release since N1m. The New product brought with it a new lighter and minimalistic design, along with new features including a 2 Megapixel camera, Quadband GSM and Bluetooth.

zForce

Neonode removed the traditional keypad on their mobiles – instead they have an on-screen keyboard. This makes Neonode easier to use with one hand, just sweep over and tap the screen surface to access the different features displayed. Light beams form an invisible grid over the screen and finger location is detected as the beams are crossed. Neither a stylus nor any pressure is needed.

Neno

Neno is the name of Neonodes graphical user interface (GUI) and operating system running on the Microsoft Windows CE platform. As Neonode still develops Neno they regularly make new updates and versions available on their homepage. These updates can contain bug fixes, new functions as well as pure improvements of the software.

Criticism

  • When Neonode announced their revolutionary communication device in 2002, Neonode underestimated the time it took to produce a working cell phone and the money started to run short. They had to lay off employees which caused more delays.
  • The high expectations of the consumers and tech-lovers were dashed as the cell phone did not hit the 'shelves' on its planned release date. Its future was uncertain as Neonode delayed its release indefinitely.
  • It was not until Q3 2004 that Neonode began sales of the N1 by which the [...] edge features of the N1 had already begun trickling into other models and had reduced its appeal. Its 2-year delayed release had also brought negative press towards Neonode, with their phone N1 labelled as vaporware.
  • The release of the N2 model was originally slated to be in February 2007 which later was postponed to at least June/July 2007 (released August 2007), Neonode fans were once again disappointed as hyped rumors that dated back to 2005 which suggested features such as a larger screen and Wifi were proved untrue. The largely cosmetic nature of the N2 upgrade also disappointed many who had expected a more substantial hardware upgrade.

N2 Facts

  • Operating system: Windows CE 6.0 Pro
  • Display: 176 x 220 Pixels (Width x Height), 16-bit Colour TFT
  • Audio: Hifi stereo 48 kHz playback
  • Memory Storage: miniSD / miniSDHC
  • Connectivity: GSM Quad band: GSM850,GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900 MHz), Bluetooth, GPRS
  • Size: 47x77x14,7 mm (WxHxT)
  • Weight: Approx 60g
  • Imaging: 2 Megapixel Fixed Focus Camera, Still pictures, Video play-back (MPEG, WMV), Video Recording (MPEG4) (not yet, but planed in further updates)
  • Messaging: SMS, Support for long SMS, MMS, Predictive text input, T9 (English, Swedish, German, Dutch, Spanish, French and Greek), Call history (dialed, received and missed calls)
  • Audio: Audio player (MP3, WAV, WMA), stereo 48 kHz playback, Custom ring tones (MP3, WAV, WMA), Alarm application
  • Entertainment: Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer (HTML-browser), Games,

 3rd party software downloadable (Divx Player (Tcpmp) and so on ...)

N1m Facts

  • Operating system: Windows CE 5.0 and 4.2
  • Display: 176 x 220 Pixels (Width x Height), 16-bit Colour TFT
  • Audio: Hifi stereo 48 kHz playback
  • Memory Storage: SD card up to 2 GB
  • Connectivity: GSM Triband: GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900 MHz), USB 1.1
  • Size: 88 x 52 x 21 (H x W x D)
  • Weight: 94g
  • Imaging: Megapixel Camera (1024x1024), Imageviewer, Videoplayer (MPEG 1, MPEG 4, WMV)
  • Messaging: SMS, Support for long SMS, MMS, Predictive text input, T9 (English, Swedish, German, Spanish, French and Russian), Call history (dialed, received and missed calls)
  • Audio: Audio player (MP3, WAV, WMA), stereo 48 kHz playback, Custom ring tones (MP3, WAV, WMA), Alarm application
  • Entertainment: Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer (HTML-browser), Games, 3rd party software downloadable
  • Organiser: Calendar, Tasks, Phonebook with storage capacity of 1000 contacts, Add an individual picture for each contact, Synchronize with your PC using ActiveSync (requires extra software free of charge from Microsoft)
  • Miscellaneous: Large touch-screen, On-screen keyboard, Screen saver, Vibrator, Calculator, Updates available at the Neonode website, USB memory functionality, use N1 as portable storage device

de:Neonode sv:Neonode

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