Iain's blog: The Tiger Telematic's Gizmondo

Sunday, January 02, 2005

The Tiger Telematic's Gizmondo

I’ve never heard of this new handheld from Tiger Telematics, the Gizmondo. The Gizmondo will be more powerful than Nintendo DS, but less powerful than PSP. The NDS has a 67 MHz ARM9, and the Gizondo will have a 400 MHz ARM9. Tiger Telematics is not affiliated with Tiger Electronics which had released Game.com. The handheld is over-priced, about $350 compared to the $150 Dual Screen, and $150 PSP when it launches in March. Everyone’s getting a PSP as will I.

Tiger Telematics managed to add Windows CE operating system. WinCE will give the handheld a media player with MPEG4 and MP3 support, a global positioning system (GPS) with navigation, and the Internet. With this package, there is multiplayer via Bluetooth (wireless) or Internet via cell technology, a graphics processing unit more powerful than Dual Screens, but less than average software at launch. It doesn’t look like too many big publishers are supporting it.

I don’t like other handhelds other than Gameboys or DSes, but I am having confidence that Playstation Pocket will have its own great games. The PSP will support a 400 MHz CPU too. In terms of handheld software, I own eight Gameboy Advance games, and one Dual Screen game. In short, why shall I invest in a Gizmondo when Playstation Pocket has more developer support while asking for less?

As for the two day silence, I had invited a friend over. Randy and I played Winning Eleven 6 International where I won against him by a foul goal that hit the inside rim of the goal post, and won the game 1 - 0. Then Randy did a cheap shot by running the ball in the goal in 2nd half, and won the game 0 – 1. The game of the moment was Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. I kept winning against him with my superior reaction skills, but it was a great bloody experience – I mean that. Bob has MK: Deadly Alliance for PS2, and is amongst his favorites. Of course, he and I never talk to each other. Randy had got off from work at 3PM where normally he got off work at 11PM which made his visit possible. He liked my TV. The day ended with us playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Tides of War on Xbox. He doesn’t like Halo, but he does like killing Nazis. Well, I offered him a whole DVDR worth of MP3s, he said, “No” to that. If my hard drive is equal to 2 single layer DVDs than he could have had owned half of my collection. O-well. It’s his loss.

Specs

Product Line - Gizmondo

Manufacturer - Tiger Telematics

General

Form Factor - Portable

Processor

Processor - ARM9

Processor Clock Speed - 400MHz

System Memory

Main Memory - 64MB

Graphics Processor - Nvidia GeForce 3D 4500

Video Output