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SOUTH JORDAN -- Officials from Saygus have high hopes for their new VPhone.
CEO Chad Sayers says, "Quite frankly, my dream is to sell 7 million of them and beat the iPhone its first year."
The device is ready to go, but it needs to be approved by cellular carriers before it's released. Sayers says when it's officially on the market, the VPhone - which runs Google's Android operating system - will be compatible with the Verizon and Sprint networks.
"Right now, we're in the labs with Verizon. Verizon has been great with us, and it seem like we have a lot of support from them," Sayers says.
It has the touch screen, full QWERTY keyboard and Web browser that every potential "iPhone killer" needs, but Saygus is hoping one new feature will be the main selling point. It lets you make live, two-way video calls on your cell phone. This is something that other companies have tried, but Sayers says previous cell phone batteries wouldn't last long enough.
"It would do 30 minutes to an hour's worth of video calling, and then ‘bam' it dies. That's a concern," he says. "If you're going to do video calling and you have a phone you need all day long, if it dies in 30 minutes, 45 minutes to an hour, you're not going to do much video calling."
Plus, the bandwidth that was needed made that feature far too expensive.
Saygus CTO Tim Riker says, "What our video calling technology does is not only decrease the amount of bandwidth that we're using but also [it's] able to handle an unreliable network that you're on top of (if your network is having problems)."
The phone does have other features, too. Riker says the VPhone has a higher resolution screen than the iPhone, along with an auto-focusing camera. Also, it can become a portable Wi-Fi hot spot for your laptop.
"It's in the ‘access point' mode on the phone, and [your laptop] will see this as another access point, and I can get on the Internet. I can do it with eight devices simultaneously plus place phone calls and do video calling," he says.
The phone is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2010. Depending on any potential rebates from wireless carriers, the VPhone could sell for anywhere between $199 and $299.
E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com
