Gizmondo

The Gizmondo was a handheld console of the British Group Tiger Telematics, which in comparison to other handhelds era a more powerful processor and various innovations possessed (eg GPRS and GPS technology ). Until the cessation of production in early 2006 about 10,000 Gizmondo sold.

The design of the Gizmondo was created by Rick Dickinson, who was also responsible for the design of the ZX Spectrum. The Gizmondo uses a clocked with 400 MHz ARM9 processor and has a 2.8 -inch TFT screen with a resolution of 320x240 pixels. The graphics chip NVIDIA GeForce 3D 4500 has a programmable pixel shaders, hardware transform engine and 1280KB memory.

The black housing of the Gizmondo is home to many game consoles for new multimedia features. In addition to computer games, the device music and movies are back. It also serves as a storage for digital photos, can be like a mobile phone to send text, multimedia, and e-mail messages are used. About GPRS and Bluetooth wireless gaming is possible with other players. About GPS ( Global Position System ), the Gizmondo also be used as a navigation system or to retrieve location-specific service performance.

The initial problem of the device was that no telecommunications provider wanted to offer the Gizmondo, as this did not seem profitable enough. Finally, the operator Vodafone said to but the Gizmondo and bundled with a prepaid card.

On 19 March 2005, the Gizmondo was introduced in the UK in two different versions: the normal version for £ 229, and in the ad-supported version for £ 129 (Also called " Smart Adds " version) In the ad-supported version included all the features of the Gizmondo also in the normal version; However, the user agrees to receive three times a day an advertisement.

The Gizmondo was released until the cessation of production in three countries: England, Ireland and the USA. By then, nearly 20 games were produced for him, including The Great Escape and Conflict: Vietnam. Tigers buying Warthog and an agreement with SCi Entertainment should promise more games, but it never came to publish one of the games.

Currently, the device is available only at some online retailers; the Gizmondo store on Regent Street in London has been closed due to low sales. Despite the many features and its good graphics performance, the British product is exposed to the current handhelds from Nintendo and Sony a fierce competition. The Nintendo DS, for example, is sold at significantly lower price of £ 99 in England (149 € in Germany ) since 11 March 2005. The European branch of Tiger Telematics Gizmondo Europe, announced on 23 January 2006 on insolvency. Later finally went also the parent company bankruptcy.

In early 2008 announced the former CEO and founder of Tiger Telematics Carl Freer to the successor Gizmondo 2. Background of the development was led by Freer and his Swedish partner Mikael Ljungman company Media Power. Originally, the device should appear in May 2008. After several postponements, the expected release date was finally scheduled for November 2009. In April 2009, Ljungman was involved in one of the most serious cases of fraud Denmark, was arrested. The Media Power site was closed. Since mid-2009 were updates on the project.

Specifications

  • WindowsCE.net game console with Windows Media Player 9
  • 400 MHz ARM processor and Nvidia GoForce 4500 graphics chipset
  • 2.8 " inch TFT display with 240 x 320 pixels, with backlight
  • SD-/MMC-Card slot support GSM tri-band, GPRS, Bluetooth 2.0 and USB interface for multiplayer games
  • E-Mail/SMS/MMS send and receive, MPEG4, MP3, MIDI, WAV playback
  • Digital camera with 0.3 megapixels, resolution 640 x 480 pixels
  • Battery time in games for about 2 h, Standby 100 h
  • Integrated GPS receiver for location-based services
Handheld game console
267503
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