An English mobile phone manufacturer has unveiled a new multimedia smart phone called Z100, based on Microsoft Corp's mobile phone platform code-named "Stinger"

With Microsoft acting not only as a technology provider but also an investor in the start-up, the manufacturer, Sendo (Birmingham, England), appears to be leading the field in development of Stinger-based mobile phones. Other companies who have signed onto Microsoft's Windows CE-based Stinger platform for smart phones include Samsung and Mitsubishi.

Sendo's Z100, unveiled here at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA), is a new generation of colour mobile phones that include advanced mobile Internet and personal information management functionality. The GPRS tri-band phone operates on GSM 900, 1800 and 1900 networks across Europe, Asia and the Americas. The unit features USB, IrDA and RS-232 connectivity and has hot-pluggable Multimedia Card and SD memory.

The smart phone comes with a 65,000-color TFT display and multimedia playback capabilities such as MP3, Windows Media Audio files and Windows Media Video. Many features integrated into the smart phone, however, are not only dictated by Microsoft, but also by service providers, according to Ron Schaeffer, head of product, strategy and planning at Sendo.

For example, the Z100 is designed to play back MPEG-4, besides Windows Media Video, and Sendo chose PacketVideo as its partner. PacketVideo (San Diego, Calif), which develops software solutions to deliver rich media over today's wireless networks, offers a platform called PVPlatform enabling encoding, transmission and decoding services. The PVPlatform also provides error resilient technologies that recognise and conceal the transmission errors prevalent in wireless networks.

The Z100 features WAP, HTML 3.2, and Compact HTML - currently used by NTT DoCoMo in its popular i-mode. Sendo added to the new smart phone support for Compact HTML, because "There are European operators planning to roll out i-mode applications," Schaeffer said.

Sendo has been working closely with Texas Instruments in Z100 mobile phones. The new smart phone is based on a dual processor architecture featuring both ARM7 and ARM9, according to Schaeffer. The decoding of MPEG-4 is handled in software in one of the ARM cores. Due to the operators' demand for Java, Z100 will also feature a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Asked if Sendo plans to use a hardware-based Java accelerator, Schaeffer said, "We will be soon announcing a partner on JVM that's designed to run very fast and optimised to our platform."

Sendo is finalising operator agreements by testing the unit, while setting up a developer program to provide its partners with early access to its software and hardware. Besides PacketVideo, Sendo plans to work with a number of select partners to develop applications and services.

Already supplying its first three GSM dual band mobile phones in Europe and in parts of Asia, Sendo, founded in August, 1999, expects to sell over a million units of phones in 2001.