From Jerry Wanger……..
AnyTone is prepared to give us prices and specifications at the end of July and to start selling them in August. They said they are still working on features so if anyone thinks they know what the radio will do is only speculating. The only ones who currently have this radio is their beta testers. They did loan one of their radios to be shown at a HAM show in Germany. They have not been given FCC approval yet so any hardware features is subject to change. The rest of this section is going to be devoted to speculation and why I believe it is true.
The radio is going to be tri-band. I believe this true for the following reasons.
AnyTone said their radio was going to be tri-band
Their AT-D878UV is capable of tri-band but was not designed for that purpose. All they need to do for a production model is have the RF power amplifier work on the third band and have the appropriate filters work on all three bands.
They need to be better than the Tytera 9600 or the Connect Systems CS800D if they want to be dominant in the market like they are with their dual band handheld. They have other multiband radios so they probably know how to technically implement it. The only thing I could see against them having this tri-band capability is because they might have problems getting it FCC approved.
The features are going to be as good or better than the AT-D878UV.
When designing a new product it is much easier to start with an existing product and modify it rather than starting from scratch. Therefore you can expect all of the relevant features that is in their existing portable to be in their new mobile. You will also find new features because the hardware design is different. The only way possible this is not true if they had a development team start developing the mobile before the portable was almost finished. This is not likely because they probably would not have developed the mobile if the portable was not successful.
The radio is going to be true dual receive.
The prototype that I seen about a year ago was a dual receive radio. Only one of the channels could be digital at the same time as the other but it would of been possible for both channels to be analog at the same time. This is a feature that many HAMS want so they will most likely keep that feature in the final version. It is unlikely that dual receive would cause problems with FCC certification.
The radio will not have a removable head but their approach might not matter.
In their prototype, they had all of their baseband circuitry in the head and all of the RF circuitry in the chassis. This makes it very difficult to have a removable head. However, with just a small modification to the design, it would be possible.
From everything I have seen so far, it looks like they are going to have a non removable front panel but with a Bluetooth extension to allow them to have a combination speaker mike with a display that could effectively be considered a remote head.
I am not sure if there would be any RF propagation problems if the radio is in the trunk with the Bluetooth head in the passenger compartment. You definitely could not reliably go beyond 10 meters.
I believe there are two negative things with this approach. The first is the size of the microphone might be too large to be comfortable because of the display and the second is the need to recharge the microphone. It should be noted that Hytera already has a radio using similar approach and I have not heard anything negative about their radio.
One of our competitors thinks the price is going to be $350. This is probably based on my speculation because they advertised their radio in Alibaba to see if their would be any takers at this price. However, the final price is going to be based on competition and what they think their radio is worth.
AnyTone has not been shy about raising their price above their competitors because they think their radio is better than then everybody else. Their only true competitor at this time is the Connect Systems CS-800D. When the FCC part 90 version is released, it will sell for $399. I would expect the AnyTone to be priced between $350 – $450 because of that.
Getting your own AT-D578UV DMR Mobile
To get one, just e-mail to jerry@connectsystems.com with the subject line AT-D578UV and your name in the body of the e-mail.
We will keep track of the order we receive them and use that to determine the order we will sell them. When the time is getting closer to actually getting the radio, I will then ask you to give us a deposit for the radio. If we don’t get the deposit, then you will loose your place in line.
We do not actually know how much it will cost us or how much we will actually sell it for. The only thing I can say is we will sell it at the lowest price AnyTone will allow us and we will meet any other deals our competitors might give. Of course you get the best customer service of any of the sellers out there.
We will not ask for the deposit until we know how much the radio will cost you. You can get your deposit back anytime before the radio is shipped.
Connect Systems Inc.
5321 Derry Ave., Suite B
Agoura Hills, CA 91301
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