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Sony's Palm PDA
Mr_Meowman pointed us to linkage with pictures of Sony PDAs. Of course I'm not skilled enough to read the text, but it appears to be a pilot, in color, with the camera and memory stick from the VAIO picture books.
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This is merely a artists rendition of what a Sony PDA might look like. Looks like the artist basically changed the hue of a palm image in Photoshop and drew on a few Sony-esqe things like the memory stick and the VAIO logo. I wouldn't be surprised if neither the stick nor the camera were ever said by Sony to be on their PDA or not.
modern day geek.
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If you scroll down you can see some nice buzz-words in english. The one that piqued my interest was "Spring board modules"
We covered this over a month ago right here and it is only an artist's conception.
/. the same day we posted it but it was rejected ... I guess you just have to wait a few weeks and resubmit to get stuff posted these days. *sigh*
It was submitted to
I've seen those same images before, but they were being shown as an artist's rendition, not the actual product.
This came on Palmstation last month. If you want to read the article, and the comments there, check out:
http://www.palmstation.com/vi ew_article.py?article=1784The light source on the back cover is at a differant angle than the silver thing on the top. I give the modeler points for changing the light source on the battery cover, but the picture is clearly the result of a Sony engineer fucking around with Ray-dream studio while drinking one to many Kirins.
What's more, on the pull out wand the light reflection is perfectly paralell along the long axis of the wand. Clearly rendered. Also, the view showing the back of the device shows the memory stick going right through the hinge for the camera, and the volume wheel. Unless the device is as thick as a brick, this is impossible. Oh, and the light reflection on the synch port is straight-on/all-pixel=R240/G250/B140. This doesn't happen naturally.
This is vapor(hard)ware.
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I had my Japanese colleague read and explain the site for me. Here is what I gathered.
As some have correctly surmised, it is an artist rendition. Sony does not have a working prototype. It is expected by the end of this year. It will be released in the VAIO product line.
Besides the memory card and camera, it will incorporate a jog dial. Seems like Sony likes them a lot. I have no idea why! That was lost in the translation.
Add on modules in the memory stick will have GPS, PHS(kinda like PCS, data capability, etc.) and can play MP3s. Runs on a Bluetooth chip and has a Firewire/iLink/IEEE1394 port (or syncing) besides USB syncing.
Supposedly there is a push for also making a Handspring compatible expansion slot. NTT (Nippon Telecom something) will provide the content. They have an existing agreement with Palm Computing.
That is all I got. Maybe a native speaker or an educated guesser can take it from here.If you can read Japanese (I do read Japanese, in case you are wondering), you will quickly find out that this is only what ZDNet Japan is imagining SONY Palm PDA. They have no idea what SONY is really planning to do with Palm PDA. It is more like they are hoping somebody from SONY will read that and make something like what they have....