Disappointing Announcement From BaofengTech

So a while back BaofengTech posted an announcement on their website about a new mystery game changer that was to be released in coming weeks.

Of course this was quite interesting and the members of the radio community that use Baofeng radios were all talking about this mystery release. Ideas were flowing on the forums ranging from a radio with 27MHz included, a HF radio, all sorts of multi mode type radios and even D-Star!

However, Baofeng released this rather disappointing statement regarding their new release this week:

We have taken your feedback and are introducing the WORLD'S FIRST radios to be completely multi-user capable - including GMRS and MURS pre-programmed capabilities.

You didn't think we would just stop there did you? Since we have the best FANS we also are including: Crossband Repeater Capabilities, Dual Simultaneous Receivers, 6 Band Reception, NOAA Weather Channels and Alerts, 7 Encoding and Decoding Methods, and Upgradable Firmware. There is still so much more to be revealed!

This is obviously aimed at the US market and I can only assume that BaofengTech is a distributor of Baofeng products with an influence on what they release. GMRS and MURS along with NOAA are all irrelevant to UK users and simultaneous receive and cross band repeater have already been done by Wouxon in the KG-UV8D and upcoming KG-UV9D.

Upgradable firmware could have its advantages and the encoding and decoding methods seem interesting but overall I'm pretty disappointed at such an anti climax of what was expected to be a game changer from Baofeng...

Thanks for reading!

73's, Lewis M3HHY.

Manchester, UK.