14 DAY TRIAL // iRiver, brand division of the South Korean electronics and entertainment company ReignCom, presented at CES its first mobile phone, a GSM device that has lots in common with Apple's iPhone. The handset doesn't have a name yet, so it's referred as "the iRiver GSM phone" and its producer intends to bring it on the US market until the end of 2008.
The look of the future iRiver phone is very close to the one Apple came up with, but this isn't really an uncommon thing among the post-iPhone handsets. Since it has a similar design, the iRiver GSM phone also lacks a keypad, hence the text input and navigation are made via the generous 3 inch touchscreen that provides a 480 x 272 pixel resolution: touching, sliding, flipping - exactly as you'd do with an iPhone. The iRiver phone uses a Linux-based OS, and its User Interface is another aspect that reminds us of the Apple handset.
Some nice features are packed in the iRiver phone, like 4 GB of internal memory, GPS, mobile TV, media player with Rhapsody music support, Adobe Flash Player and, last but not least, a 2 Megapixel camera with video recording (video recording that lacks on the iPhone).
The iRiver phone will be sold unlocked, so the user will have the chance to chose any carrier. Except Verizon and Sprint, since they don't operate GSM networks in the US and the handset is a GSM one.
iRiver is a trusted company, both in the US and around the globe, thanks to its wide range of high-quality audio players and other portable devices. Therefore, the future iRiver phone has all the chances to be a successful product, especially since the manufacturer said its price won't be as high as the iPhone's. Of course, some of you might assume that the iRiver phone will also be "weaker" than the iPhone, but we won't know that for sure until the handset hits the market, right?
