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Motorola Solutions says its new MC2180 is "ideal for inventory management, stock replenishment, price marking, and shelf labeling." Like most of its competitors, the handheld device meets IP54 standards for sealing against liquids and dust, surives four-foot drops onto concrete, and resists up to 500 1.6-foot tumbles.According to the company, this "value-tier" device (pictured) is available with a 1D laser, a 1D linear imager, or a 1D/2D area imager. It's also equipped with 802.11b/g/n wireless networking and Bluetooth, Motorola adds.
There's no cellular connectivity on the MC2180, but the handheld does include a microphone and speaker. This makes it compatible with Motorola's TEAM ("total enterprise access and mobility") VoIP solution, which connects a company's wireless network to its PBX, complete with features such as extension-based numbers, push-to-talk instant calling, group calling, and call forwarding, transferring and waiting.
Motorola Solutions says the MC2180 has a 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen (with 320 x 240 pixel resolution), a 27-key numeric keyboard, and two programmable side buttons. It runs Windows CE 6.0 on a Marvell PXA320 processor clocked at 624MHz, comes with 128MB of RAM and 256MB of flash storage, and has a microSD expansion slot, according to the company.
The MC2180 also has USB 1.1 host and client ports, plus the ability to fit into optional docking cradles that, depending on model, can just charge batteries or can also add an Ethernet connection. Capable of working in temperatures ranging from 14 to 122 deg. F, the device has a 2400mAh rechargeable battery whose life wasn't specified.
Motorola Solutions also offers two MC2100 "batch mode" models that are mostly identical to the MC2180 but do not include resistive touch or wireless networking. They have a 1D laser or a linear imager and add a buzzer, both apparently designed to allow a user to perform repetitive scanning operations without otherwise having to interact with the system.'
Specifications listed for the MC2180 by Motorola Solutions include:
Background
Last December, Motorola split in two. The half of the company that's well-known to consumers is Motorola Mobility, which has forsaken Microsoft Windows entirely and is responsible for a stream of Android-powered smartphones and tablets (including the Motorola Pro+ and the Xoom).
Motorola Solutions, meanwhile, had been loyal to Microsoft operating systems, featuring them on a bevy of Windows-based handheld computers (such as the pictured MC65). The enterprise-focused company also produces radio-based devices as well as data capture and Wi-Fi security products.
On Oct. 11, however, Motorola Solutions announced its Android-based ET1 tablet, calling it "the first in an emerging category of enterprise-class tablet computers designed for a variety of vertical markets." The seven-inch tablet (below) uses a "hardened," enterprise-ready version of Android 2.3.4 on a Texas Instruments dual-core, 1GHz OMAP4 processor, most likely the Cortex-A9-based OMAP4430 system on chip (SoC).
Earlier in the year, meanwhile, Motorola Solutions had acquired Rhomobile, known for its Rhodes development framework, which has been promoted as a way to create "device-optimized" native applications for Windows Phone 7 and Windows CE. (Support for these operating systems was added to Rhodes 3.0 in May, joining existing support for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Android.) Modeled in part on the open source Ruby on Rails framework, Rhodes combines an HTML coding framework with a Ruby interpreter.
On Oct, 17, Motorola Solutions announced RhoElements 1.0 -- "in effect a browser with abilities to do some device capabilities via extended HTML tags (specifically EMML 1.1)," according to a company blog posting by Motorola Solutions. It's designed as a tool for building "connected hybrid apps," which utilize relatively few local device capabilities, perform most or all of the business logic via a web server, but can be "easier to deploy initially and update" as a result.
According to Motorola Solutions, RhoElements 1.0 supports the company's handheld computers running Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5, Windows CE 5.0, Windows CE 6.0, and Windows Embedded Compact 7. The framework is also said to support the ET1 tablet mentioned earlier.
Motorola Solutions says RhoElements 1.0 (pictured) will help customers transition from terminal emulation or legacy browser-based solutions, replacing them with "applications with a consumer-style look and feel with consistency across device type, screen size, and operating system." It supports HTML5 features such as web storage and application caching, enabling continuous operation even when connectivity is temporarily lost, the company adds.
The developments cited above led us to worry that Motorola Solutions was planning to phase its Windows CE-based products out in favor of new entries running Android instead. While this could still be the ultimate plan, the company is promoting the MC2180 handheld covered in this story as being "compatible with ... RhoElements, making it the first value-priced rugged mobile computer to support HTML5."
Further information
Motorola did not cite pricing for the MC2180 and MC2100, but said the devices will ship during the first quarter of 2012. More information may be found on the MC2100 series product page.
Jonathan Angel can be reached at jonathan.angel@ziffdavisenterprise.com and followed at www.twitter.com/gadgetsense.
