Seabright PC430 trades keyboard for gamepad
I suppose it was only a matter of time before another Windows CE 5.0 handheld prioritized a gamepad over a keyboard, but I didn’t expect it to be a clamshell.
I mean, if you saw a mini clamshell device—in this case, the Seabright PC430—and found out that it had a 533MHz Samsung 2443A processor (despite what looks like an old Intel sticker), up to 4GB of internal memory, SD card slot, USB 2.0 host port, optional WiFi and GPS, webcam, and the words "Micro PC" printed on it (blue text on silver strip above gamepad), wouldn’t you expect to open it up and see a keyboard sitting beneath the 4.3-inch display? I sure would.
The last thing I’d expect is a gamepad, especially one that looks like it has two sets of controls that do the same thing. In truth, the four buttons on the right side only look like a D-pad; they’re actually A, B, X, and Y buttons. The real D-pad is on the left.
Despite the PC430’s obvious emphasis on WinCE-based games, Seabright doesn’t play up its capabilities, saying only that it "can support network games." It isn’t clear whether the unit comes with any games preinstalled, but it does have all this other software:
- Media player (Flash, MP4, AVI, MP3, WMA)
- Web
- Word, Excel, PDF, Skype, MSN
- Photo viewer
- E-dictionary
- Calendar, paint brush (I’m guessing this is some sort of MS Paint variant), calculator, text viewer
- Software manager to add/remove applications (interesting)
There’s also an ASDL dial-in and an optional DVB-T/TVB-T tuner "if there’s enough space in the mold" (!).
The Seabright PC430 is another one of those OEM/buy-in-bulk gadgets from China, so don’t expect to be able to pick one up in the US . . . ever, really.
[Seabright]
