The Verizon-powered, video-calling, Android VPhone may be rolling out within weeks, the phone's creator Chad Sayers said to me at CES.
We first
saw the VPhone back in November, when Sayers - the president of a small, new wireless firm called Saygus - brought it by our offices. The phone is being processed through Verizon's Open Development Initiative, which is the carrier's effort to get devices onto their network that they won't have to service or support.
The VPhone will have its own, non-Verizon-branded service plans, but the plans will be affordable, Sayers said. Saygus' video compression technology lets the phones use relatively little bandwidth, so they won't be network hogs, he said.
Sayers had the same VPhone at CES as we saw in November, but he had some updates on the business. For one thing, the phone will now run Android 2.0. It has no Google apps, but is compatible with the Android market.
Sayers was very optimistic that the phone would make it out of Verizon's labs soon, and he's lining up sales channels. The deaf community is particularly enthusiastic about an inexpensive video-chatting phone, Sayers said.
Saygus hasn't given us any reason to doubt their sincerity, but I'm still withholding judgement until I see a fully working phone - which they haven't shown yet. As we learned most recently from the
CrunchPad debacle, companies can promise a lot - but bringing the products to market is another thing entirely.
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