Last February we told you about Cotton Candy, a Norwegian designed micro-computer the size of beefed-up thumb drive. I suppose it should be no surprise to anyone with a modern smartphone that a lot of power comes in small packages these days, but we haven’t seen many new forms take advantage of the small electronics sizes.
But FXI Tech, the designers of Cotton Candy, have put together a pocket-sized device that provides all the functions of a computer, except for a screen or input device. Their goal is a flexible little device that can connect to any screen or computer to run either a Linux or Android operating system.
The company announced on Friday that the device will be launched in Sweden by the end of 2012 under the name TELEFUNKEN Smart Stick. The expected price point is not yet announced.
It sounds like a logical device to carry around if you do a lot of presentations, need a backup computer, or just want a fun device to hack. The press release describes use cases like this:
With the final retail version of the TELEFUNKEN Smart Stick, users will be able to process and present data on a monitor anywhere in the world, accessing it from a smartphone, a tablet computer or in the Cloud. They can also view their photos, videos and films in HD quality, as well as access smartphone apps and Internet games.
FXI Tech tells us they’ve spent the last year perfecting their any screen architecture with HDMI and USB connectivity, allowing any USB enabled PC to act as a thin client for the device. When plugging the Smart Stick in to a TV or projector, Bluetooth, WLAN and USB can connect to input devices on the device.
