The Motorola MC9500 can face hail and high water, while offering high-end features for vertical markets. These include GPS, motion sensing, battery charge indicators and the ability to quickly switch between support for CDMA-EvDO and GSM HSDPA networks.The MC9500 rugged handheld device is Motorola's newest enterprise offering.
Packed with features and complemented by new accessories, it's likely to be a
game-changer for industries such as retail, transportation, field service and,
soon, delivery. At an event at New York's
Museum of Arts
and Design on Sept. 15, customer FedEx announced that it would be rolling out
100,000 of the devices over the next few years.
Gene Delaney, Motorola's president of enterprise mobility solutions, noted at
the event that the keys to enterprise mobility are seamless connectivity and
access to information, and said the MC9500 delivers both of these "into
the hands of end users."
The device builds on Motorola's MC9000, and many of the updates are market
firsts. For example, the MC9500 can switch between support for wireless
broadband connectivity on GSM HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) or
CDMA-EvDO (Code Division Multiple Access-Evolution Data Optimized) networks,
via a feature called the MAX FlexWAN.
Currently, companies will send devices to the manufacturer to have the radios
changed out for use in a different geographic location, but an interface on the
MC9500 can be changed in-house with just the removal of two screws.
A portfolio of swappable keyboardsfull QWERTY, just numeric, etc.are also
available and can be changed to best accommodate the device's primary
application.
Another innovation is IST (interactive
sensor technology), which enables the screen to appropriately adjust from
landscape to portrait mode. A delivery person with the device strapped to one
hand and viewing an application horizontally, for example, can tip his or her hand
toward a package's recipient for a signature, and the application will flip
around to match the recipient's viewpoint.
Small efficiencies like this, according to FedEx executives, can shave seconds off
of transactions that occur hundreds or thousands of times each day across a
work force, offering a return of numerous man-hours.
The same technology also enables the device to detect when it's face-down and
go into a sleep mode to save battery life. Waking the device is as simple as
picking it up.
Also regarding battery life, the MC9500's batteries now have a charge indicator
and also show when they're nearing the end of their life cyclethe first of
which can warn a worker not to head into the field with an about-to-expire
battery, and the latter of which can enable enterprises to reduce excesses of
inventory.
The rugged MC9500 weighs 22 ounces with its battery, stylus, keypad and strap,
and measures 9.2 by 3.5 by 2 inches. It includes WWAN (wireless WAN), WLAN
(802.11 a/b/g) and GPS antennas and meets military specifications for drops,
tumbles, sealing and other environmental parametersa Motorola promotional
video showed a worker scraping snow from his windshield with the MC9500.
There's Bluetooth 2.1 on board, 1D and 2D bar-code scanning technology, a
3-megapixel camera with video capture, a speakerphone, microphone and receiver,
and a 3.7-inch color, high-resolution VGA display with a digitizer and
backlight.
The processor is a 806MHz Marvell XScale XA32, and the operating system is
Windows Mobile 6.1. The MC9500 is the first device based on Motorola's Mobility
Platform Architecture 2.0, and it comes in four versions, priced from $2,495 to
$3,295.
With the launch of the MC9500, Motorola additionally introduced a new charging
and racking system that it said offers a space-efficient, cable-minimizing way to store
and charge the devices. The racking system will be compatible with future
devices as well. According to Motorola, the savings of not having to rip out
and reinstall such backroom equipment can save a midsize business approximately
$200,000.
Over 10 years, as new devices are gradually phased in and old ones out,
Motorola estimated that the racking system could reduce the required footprint
for device storage and charging by 30 percent.
"Customers are looking for new revenue streams," said Ken Pasley,
FedEx's IT director of wireless technologies, "and this opens up
opportunities to them."