Ultimate digital nomad phone connects anywhere

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- A company called Elektrobit demonstrated a Windows Mobile phone that connects to Wi-Fi when it can, AT&T's 3G network when it can't and to a satellite network when it must. In other words, it gives you connectivity indoors, outdoors, in cities, on mountaintops and in the middle of the ocean. The company also showed a proof-of-concept modem that does all that for your laptop, too.

The company unveiled a working model of its digital nomad cell phone reference design at the CTIA show in Las Vegas this week.

Elektrobit is looking for OEMs to manufacture and brand its phone design, and the handsets based on it should go on sale next year.

Besides running Windows Mobile 6.1 (ugh!), the phone looks ideal for the digital nomad lifestyle. Most noticeably, the phone has no visible antenna, which is to the best of my knowledge unique for a satellite-capable phone. It's powered by a 300 Mhz STN 8815 Nomadik chip, has a 3-megapixel camera, and is supposed to get 4 hours of 3G talk time and about 2 hours of satellite talk time -- if you can afford the per-minute charges. The phone itself should cost less than $800 or so.

The ideal scenario for this phone would be for RIM to pick it up, and create a kind of satellite-capable Blackberry bold. But that's unlikely to happen because the phone was designed around the Windows Mobile operating system and, to the best of my knowledge, RIM doesn't do that sort of thing.

Another direction for this phone that also should but won't happen is for Palm to pick up the reference design and sell it as a Windows Mobile device. However, the Elektrobit design is bleeding edge, innovative and solves a real-world problem -- and Palm doesn't do THAT sort of thing.

A wireless modem dongle version of the concept, which also hops from the AT&T 3G network to the satellite network and back again as needed, could be used for laptops, and even for cars!

The reference design "will work on the S-band, with initial availability made for the TerreStar Network," according to a company spokeswoman.

It's not clear if the phone itself can be tethered to a laptop and provide mobile broadband and satellite data connectivity, or if you would actually need both phone and modem to travel abroad and take full advantage of this technology. It's also not clear that if you did have both hardware components, if you would also need two AT&T accounts and two satellite network accounts, which, of course, would be absurd. The best option would be one account on each service accessed via tethering.

I'll keep you posted on this super exciting product as it finds an OEM -- and its way to the market.