01/06/2010
SlashGear
We’ve been more than a little dismissive of Qualcomm’s FLO TV Personal Television, with SlashGear columnist Michael Gartenberg summing up most of our doubts when he asked why you’d want to carry a separate, dedicated device. Now, thanks to a deal with mophie, the FLO TV prospect has just got a whole lot more interesting: iPod touch and iPhone juice pack sleeves that add not only a backup battery but FLO TV live television receiving on the Apple handhelds.
While several cellphones in the US are capable of receiving FLO TV broadcasts – which are transmitted live in their own chunk of spectrum, rather than delivered over the 3G networks – the iPhone is not one of them. This new mophie adapter opens up FLO TV to a huge, dare we say accessory-voracious market of Apple fans.
There’ll be a subscription fee involved, obviously, which right now neither company are coming clean on; we’re guessing it’ll be around $8.99 per month based on a two-year contract, just like the standalone viewer. Expect the FLO TV mophie juice pack to arrive in the US in the first half of 2010, price to be confirmed.
