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New Wireless Handhelds On The Way
Imran writes: "Palm and Handspring have both received regulatory approval for three new wireless devices. According to documents filed with the FCC, the Palm i705 will have a built-in antenna, a universal connector for add-ons and syncing, and a postage stamp-size Secure Digital expansion slot. There will also be new features aimed at making e-mail a key function of the device. Handspring's devices, the Treo k180 (which has a keyboard similar to that of the BlackBerry) and Treo g180, can surf the Internet using Handspring's Blazer browser. They feature a 33MHz Dragonball VZ processor, 16MB of DRAM and rechargeable batteries. Both can connect to a PC using a USB or serial cable. The cover of each device flips up and acts as the earpiece for the phone, while a microphone is located at the bottom of each unit."
Apparently they were pulled to keep the information they supplied to the FCC private. I guess "pending" applications are kept private. Ones that have been approved are made public. I guess Palm and Handspring are trying to keep some things as close to their chest as long as possible.
I've had my Handspring Visor Deluxe for about 5 months now and discovered *yesterday* that it has a built-in microphone. There are no apps that ship with it that use it, and I hadn't heard about anyone hacking it to be useful. Am I missing something? Turning it into a voice-recorder would be nifty, and I can think of other things (voice-activated, etc) but it appears that you need to buy something like the Visor Phone to get any use out of it. Has anyone come up with a cool hack?
Anyone know any more information about the new Blackberry that RIM is supposedly working on? Rumour has it that it will also have cellular capabilities as well. I haven't heard if it'll be GSM, TDMA, or CDMA (although CDMA and TDMA are unlikely, IMHO), but if it's a RIM product, it should be pretty good...
"... new features aimed at making email a key function of the device."
In otherworks, RIM and the Blackberry are starting to eat their lunch and they are trying to fight back.
The Blackberry does exactly what the Palm made it's initial success for; a small, focused device that does a few things extremely well rather than trying to do everything. Palm has really lost their focus in this regard lately, so I'm glad to hear they might be trying to get back on track.
-- Rob "Xemu" Fermier