The Qualcomm FLO TV personal television only just got pushed out in the US last month, but we’ve just had a go with it here in Britain. But is there any point carting this thing around when FLO TV runs on phones too? Read on for our hands-on snaps and impressions.
We’ll say it now. We can’t think of a single reason you’d buy the Qualcomm FLO TV personal television. Before we held it in our hands, we were hoping for a credit card sized panel you could slip in your pocket. In reality, the Qualcomm FLO TV personal television is a fist sized slab with bad picture quality, a low QVGA resolution 3.5-inch screen and the wrong ratio (4:3) for a lot of TV.
It seems like a step back in technology and logic for a company that’s been beaming channels onto multitasking mobile phones for a while now. It’s thick, it’s large, and the picture quality (video was being beamed off a local transmitter for the demo) was mediocre at best. Sure, an EPG is handy, but wouldn’t you like something that played back other media too? There’s not even a microSD slot.
Qualcomm FLO TV personal television unveiled
We asked Qualcomm whether the FLO TV system and FLO TV personal television would come to the UK – it owns spectrum here meaning it could physically manage it if it wanted to – and we were told by John Denniston, a senior marketing manager for MediaFLO technology that it’s “still kind of exploring and seeing what the best use of that…spectrum is. Right now it’s just an R and D [research and development] tool.’
We’ll let you know if and when that changes, but take a look at what we’re missing – or not – in our Qualcomm FLO TV personal television hands-on gallery here. Would you buy one?
Out TBC | £TBC | Flo TV
