By Todd Ogasawara on September 14, 2009 4:30 AM

Celio Redfly + HTC Touch Pro2 = Bad Experience

I think I kind of understand Chicago Cubs fans now. I bought a Celio Redfly terminal to use with my Windows Mobile phones last year. It is essentially a dumb portable terminal that provides a large screen (relatively speaking) and decent sized physical QWERTY keyboard for Windows Mobile phones. This should ease tasks like writing email and working with Word Mobile documents or Excel Mobile spreadsheets. The idea is a really good one. And, I really want it to work for me. Sadly, the dream has been far happier that the reality of my experience with it so far.

I’ve tried it with a bunch of Windows Mobile touch-screen (Professional Edition) and non-touch-screen (Standard Edition) phones over the past year. Only one, the HTC TyTn, worked somewhat passably (though too slow to actually use regularly). My theory was that the phones I had were too slow for the task. So, having bought a reasonbly fast HTC Touch Pro2 recently, I decided to try this phone with the Redfly. And, so began my tale of woe.

It started out looking good. Celio’s Windows Mobile app seemed to install correctly. However, it wiped out my Today screen (the first screen you see) leaving a blank screen starting at me. I went into Settings and found that all of my options had been unchecked. It was easy to recheck information I wanted displayed on the Today screen. But, that was incredibly annoying.

The next problem came while attempting to update the Redfly’s firmware from the TP2. It reported that I had an incompatible device and refused to update the firmware.

I forged ahead anyway. The TP2 recognized the Redfly terminal and the two connected. However, the resolution was very odd (looked like 640×480 or maybe even smaller instead of the expected 800 pixel wide display). And, font and background colors were way off (see screenshot above).

You can see the low resolution issue in the screenshot above. This experience, like previous ones with the Celio Redfly, was a complete bust for me. So, I packed up the Redfly back in its box and uninstalled its driver from the TP2. I guess there’s always “next year”.