Redfly Dumb Terminal looks to succeed where Palm’s Foleo failed. [Epic fail II]

Before we even start, I’ll just say one thing: FOLEO.

Looking at the Redfly Dumb Terminal for BlackBerry devices leaves me asking myself: Why? I guess we should tell you what it does. In short — not much. Essentially, the Redfly hooks up to your BlackBerry giving you a larger screen and keyboard to type on making hammering out emails and working on documents easier. Stop me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that what Palm marketed the Foleo for? And we all know how well that went over. Smaller and lower powered than a laptop but too heavy, cumbersome, and “technologically dumb” make this less attractive than a netbook. Coupled with a $250 pricetag which is just shy of lower-end netbooks and laptops that can do much, much more means this thing is already dead.

Another sour point is that the display simply makes small, barely perceptible problems on your smartphone screen a larger and clearly more noticeable problem on the Redfly’s screen. The BlackBerry isn’t the only device that can make use of the Redfly Terminal mind you. Since all that is needed is a USB port and a small install of Redfly software, many smartphones can make use of this seemingly useless device.

Would you spend $250 on this device or pass it up for a more capable and usable netbook/laptop? As it stands now, this is for all intents and purposes a Palm Foles part 2. You would think after seeing the massive amounts of public disapproval after Palm announced the Foleo and ultimately failed would warn other companies to steer clear of these gimmicky failure prone “helper/companion devices”. We don’t want them. I guess Redfly missed that message. We’ll see how far this one gets…

Wired