PocketSurfer 2 Reviewed. Verdict: Would Love To Love You

Pocketsurfer 2, you are so close to being the perfect portable web toy. And yet so far!

Gizmodo reviews the hand-held QWERTY clamshell device, which surfs the web with its built-in cellular modem, and tried hard to like it. There's no phone, no other apps, just the browser: It's a focused notion which will soon have its day, but from Haroon Malik's writeup, it seems that day is yet to come.

"The notion of entire back end server reliance for hardware is very much the vision of the future, but the Pocketsurfer 2 is a little ahead of its time in terms of the idea at work. Sadly, it is a little behind in terms of technology implemented. A GPRS connection is never going to be a viable means for mass data transmission; no matter how good the caching system may be. The technology used is simply too out dated (for this purpose) to be functional."

Giz blames the display for the grainy look, but this comes mostly from the PocketSurfer's proxy servers, which work like those "surf 5x faster" dail-up accelerators, by caching the entire internet as rock-bottom-quality JPG files. The unit doesn't have GPS, either: any geolocation it does will be through cellular triangulation.

That said, its conclusion mirrors my own first impressions of the device:
I
love the ultrathin form factor, but the horrible cellphone keyboard and proxied web will have to go. Customers should be able to turn those proxies off when they're paying for the bandwidth — I can wait. It also needs to have Flash and media codecs, okay?

Pocketsurfer 2 Mobile Internet Communicator Reviewed (Verdict: We Wouldn't) [Gizmodo]