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Fed up with trying to convince other manufactures to use their compression software, Saygus went about building their own phone to show it off.  Last night, Saygus opened up on their plans and showed off their VPhone, an Android powered ODI phone that, fingers crossed, will get approved by Verizon soon.

2-way video is the key feature here (though according to Saygus, “the phone does everything better than everything else out there”) and Sayguys says it flies on even lowly Edge network, so 3G shouldn’t be a problem or worry to Verizon.  Popular everywhere else, 2-way video has yet to make a big impression here in the US.  Saygus is out to change that and the Vphone take 24 to 30 FPS.

Working with Verizon, Saygus has put together a hardware project in just six months.  The phone showed off last night was a little bulky but the features were impressive.  All the standard stuff: GPS, touchscreen, Bluetooth, WiFi, 5MP camera, MicroSD slot (to 16GB), and 624MHz processor.  One more stand out feature was the ability to turn the phone into a WiFi hub for up to 8 devices.

Despite lots of phone on the table and a PR team assembled to show us phone, I sensed there was more to the story.  When pressed, a non-subsidized price of $450 was mentioned; should Verizon approve the device, a subsidy will surely bring down the price to a reasonable level.  I asked Saygus if we’d see a VPhone 2 or is the endgame for Verizon to put the software to work on its other phones and the response was Saygus is a software company.

Company site: [Saygus]