• It's snappier than I thought it would be. Even though it's powered off of a Windows Mobile phone, there's a separate renderer based in the Redfly so it handles the graphics (instead of depending on the paltry one in the phone).
• Keys aren't as spaced out as a regular keyboard, but it's spacious enough to be not cramped. You can definitely two-hand type on this thing.
• The display is extended to 640x480 resolution (see bullet point one) to fit the Redfly.
• The touchpad is slightly smaller than we would like, but it's not unusable.

Is it worth $499? Only if you're really dependent on your Windows Mobile phone and don't want to carry around a UMPC with you. It also has 8 hours of battery life and charges your phone during use, which helps justify the price tag. [Gizmodo]

The good news is that this has an eight hour battery life and can power your cellphone on the go, plus has USB ports so you can store your data via USB flash drives and not have to burden your phone with it. The price: $499 directly from Celio in March. I don't know—the Palm Foleo wasn't all that bad, even if its use was limited to a very small segment of the market that relied on their smartphones instead of a full-sized laptop to send/receive email and work on documents on the go. The same segment that doesn't have an ultra-portable like an Eee PC.

We can't say whether or not it'll be successful for everyone (unlikely), but for the people whose needs are met by the Mobile Companion, it could be quite nifty. We'll check it out in person at CES. [Celio]