Folding iriver Wing handheld PC runs Windows CE

I’m meeting with iriver this afternoon for what I hope will be some hands-on time with all of their new products (more on this later), but I didn’t want to wait until then to tell you about the Wing, the company’s brand new foldable ultraportable handheld PC. I’ve been sitting on the details of the device for several weeks, so to say that I’m thrilled that the embargo has finally been lifted is putting it mildly.

I’ll post some live shots and maybe even a video after the meeting, but until then, here’s everything I know about the Wing so far. Dig in!

• 4-inch TFT touchscreen (800 x 480)
• Windows CE Pro OS
• 4GB, 8GB, 16GB NAND Flash + microSD card slot
• Folding, portable design with full QWERTY keyboard
• Wi-Fi and VoIP
• Web browser, messenger, web mail, text viewer, voice recorder, multimedia: audio (MP3, WMA, OGG), video (MPEG4-SP, WMV9 @ 30fps), photo (JPG, BMP, GIF)
• 2-megapixel camera
• Increased battery life (whatever that means)
• Instant-on and "speedy answering function"
• Optional: WiBro, DMB, DVB-H, ISDB-T

If iriver joining the handtop/MID fray sounds familiar to you, that’s because the company once showed off a UMPC dubbed the W10 that never materialized. This was before the model number was assigned to the anticipated 8GB W10 PMP, which eventually lost its wi-fi capabilities and became the W7.

Anyway, here’s an old photo of the W10 for posterity:

I don’t know what the iriver Wing looks like yet, but I’m about 99.9% sure that it won’t bear any resemblance to the old W10. If anything, it may look a bit like the Samsung SPH-P9200 "butterfly" device.

The Wing may not be as interesting as a new MID would be to a lot of people, but I, for one, think the announcement is pretty exciting. It’s no secret around here that I’m a huge iriver fan, so I can’t wait to see the unit in person today. Is the Wing aiming to take on the Nokia N810? We’ll see.

Update 1.7.08: See 10 pictures of the iriver Wing!

As a reminder, Pocketables is based in Honolulu, Hawaii, and follows the HST timezone. This post was published at 10:01 p.m. on January 6, which is 12:01 a.m. on January 7 in Vegas.

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