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Handspring Treo Now Available
miradu2000 writes: "Handspring's Treo, the revolutionary new communicator is now shipping. This has been anticipated since October. See the scoop here! This could change the world..." My guess is no, it won't change the world. But it could reduce by one the number of gadgets a lot of people carry around.
Nice price tag... Is a palm pilot + cell phone worth 400 bucks?
Color palm pilot = 200 bucks.
Ghetto cell phone = 80 bucks.
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
For those who want the scoop, there's a video available with the co-founder of this neat little gadget (he also was the inventor of the Palm Pilot that many have come to love).
e ed.jhtml
The formats supported are RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, and QuickTime. It's available in 56k, 100k, and 300k flavors.
I just watched it and thought it was kind of neat.
http://www.handspring.com/products/treo/choose_sp
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
The color model Found Here It should be out mid this year.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
Just like Palm, it looks like Handspring missed the boat on this one.
1. Where is the color screen?
2. Way to expensive - 549 US dollars "without service activation" I kind of like my current Cellular provider.
I've been using a Handspring Visor and VisorPhone attachment for a little over a year now. For those who don't know, the VisorPhone is a plug-in Springboard module that adds a cell phone to your Visor. Its sort of the prototype for the Treo.
I really like the VisorPhone, although its not without drawbacks. Its a little large; well actually the combined unit is a little large. It defintely looks a little geeky, and I think the Treo will be worse - Captain Kirk anyone? I'm using the Cingular service here in San Francisco and the reception is not great. I sometimes find I am struggling to get a signal when other cell phone users aren't.
All that being said I like the VisorPhone lots and will probably upgrade to a Treo Real Soon Now. The main advantages are having only one unit to carry around (I'd have a Palm device anyway); having everything always synched up (again I'd be synching my Palm anyway, this way my phone book gets updated as well); good software integration into the standard PalmOS apps; and I can play DopeWars on my phone.
Just don't drop it. I've had to replace the screen 3 times. One of the biggest features of the Treo for me is that flip up screen cover...
Sailing over the event horizon
.... but the battery life sucks. Anybody know what the battery life is on this thing?
A friend of mine has a Kyocera that does most of the same things (sans optional keyboard.)
What does the Treo offer over that?
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
It says here "GPRS upgradeable upon availability" - that rather implies it's not GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) at launch. That makes this rather less desirable - it's not "always on", and you're charged by time rather than by data. The fact it says "upon availability" makes this sound like a rushed out product. Compare this with the RIM Blackberry, which has been out for ages and has GPRS.
like the palm 705, this one has no gprs.
so you can just use it for wap and email.
the absence of a proper internet connection
make this product half-baked.
For faster speed you can use the nokia communicator, but neither the nokia, the palm
or the handspring has triband, so you can not use
them everywhere.
Also none has bluethooth; so even with the nokia
if you want to browse the internet on a laptop
via one of those devices, you are screwed.
Better wait for the next generation or if you
do not mind the weight, get a cheaper palmtop and
a phone with gprs, triband and bluetooth.
Anybody know what the battery life is on this thing?
Not great
For more information, click here.
I remember a couple years ago when i ordered my Visor Deluxe.... just when the company was starting up. I got the unit about 2 months after I ordered it, and it was non functional... they sent me another one and the screen was cracked. Finally over 3 months after my initial order I got a working unit. Grandted that I really liked it... but it was such a hastle. I hope they have the ability now to ship their products in a timely manner and have implemented some serious qa. ALso... the prce seems kinda high....... at least I think so.
When you can get a cell phone free with most service plans, and a good PDA for under $200, why is this worthwhile?
Honestly, while I'm always in favour of new geek toys, this one holds no interest at all. Frankly, I'd be more interested in a lower cost version of something like the Edge or Deluxe (Yes, I know the deluxe is available for $100 if you get it refurbished... that doesn't change the fact that it's still $200 for the cheapest of the new Visors). As a college student, most of my money is going to textbooks and bills, not buying new cell-phone/PDAs.
-Carik
It dawned on me the other day while borrowing a friend's cell that really, cell phones are really just small wireless computers with limited features that are called phones in order to sell more of them.
This thing is butt-ugly. I wish Apple would make one of those.
--[Nothing important]--
I love my Visor phone and the main advantage, and the reason I bought one was the components - if the Visor breaks - I just go out and buy another one. Same for the phone. With hopefully little downtime in between.
If the Treo breaks I'm hosed for either a lot of $$ or time cause I'll have to send it somewhere for repairs. Sorry but I'll keep my old stuff.
I'm a big fan of combining technologies and making life easier as much as possible, but in this case I don't think this product would work for me. I've always had palms in the past and have always kept them in my briefcase or outside compartment of my laptop case. I've gotten to accustomed to carrying a small phone now (the motorolo v8160) to carry something as large and bulky as the treo. Bottom line, I don't wish to carry something the size of a palm in my pocket.
Great phone for those that wear cargo pants.
Technology's a battle between companies producing more idiot-proof systems and nature producing bigger and better idiots
On the contrary, I think the introduction of the Handspring Treo will increase by one the number of gadgets people carry around.
Offers SMS.
Bad points: Way too expensive.
If it breaks, you're screwed.
No mp3 support.
I think the Treo is a good idea, but the fact that it is GSM-only makes it of no value to me. One reason I have a cell phone is for emergencies where I may be stranded with a flat tire somewhere in rural New Hampshire. I won't take the risk that my GSM phone won't work, so I will only carry a phone that supports analog in addition to digital.
The only problem I have with my cellphone/visor is that the cell phone, visor and it's cable... are bulky when taken all together.. not exactly what you want on the beach, or during a hike on 2000 ft. cliffs (not to mention that I've already lost the cable twice). I thought the new device would be great... all-in-one, etc.
But I'm less and less impressed. First... they did not include the Handspring port - citing some bull about wanting to have two distinct product lines... this is a major down point for me because if I want to *replace* my visor, I can't without also losing all the modules I purchased. Secondly... other companies beat them to the punch and already offer cell phones married to full functioning PDA's.
So as far as I can tell... too little, too late.
The Time.com article quotes the need for daily recharging.
I'd say this is about right. My VisorPhone requires recharging once a day if I'm using it to make calls, it will last nearly 3 days on a full charge on standby. I'd guess the power drain of the Treo is similar to a Handspring+VisorPhone.
Sailing over the event horizon
Well personally needing to charge every day after heavy usage is ok. Needing to charge during the day us not acceptable.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I've been using this for a couple of weeks, it's got GPRS (here in the UK). I like it for a couple of reasons: the obvious one is I don't have to drag around a phone and Palm Pilot anymore, and the other is that since it uses the Palm OS loading all my old PP stuff on it was so easy.
Good points: ironically, the SMS facility is very well organised and makes it much easier to keep tabs on who sent what, and your replies. The keyboard is good too.
Particularly good point: answering a call in real Star Trek fashion by flipping open the screen shield. Cool.
Bad points: the sound quality when using the phone through the shield headset rather than the plug-in ear piece, not good. And the battery life is indeed not good, although it does have a good battery life indicator: a light starting at green and slowly fading to bright red.
Particularly bad point: no cradle, making the recharging/hot synching less convenient.
Otherwise, it's a good size, and feels robust. And (not that it really matters) it's got a "wow!" factor, but that's just a new gadget syndrome. Um, overall, a bit pricey I'd say: you know that in a year's time there'll be plenty of these at a better price.
I used to have a handheld with a color display though and frankly the battery life of that thing sucked. If they make a Treo with color display, I sure hope that battery life will still be acceptable (showing off to my collegues for 1 hour per battery-loading seems sufficient for me).
<Sig>The good thing about having a good memory is ... euh
Presumably being PalmOS based that means you can get ssh for it. However the keyboard doesn't look up to much and it doesn't look hi-res enough to do 80x24. I don't think this will replace the Nokia 9[12]10 for remote Unix administration, and to be honest that and checking Railtrack for alternate train times when the train companies fsck up *again* mid-journey are the only things I tend to use portable dial-up for.
If so, then I'll skip buying a new pocket PC and just go for this baby.
Hmm. It's a bit strange - most dual band phones support 900/1800, but this one appears to be 900/1900. That cuts out quite a large proportion of European users. It makes no mention of data rates either, so I assume it doesn't support HSCSD. That limits it to 14.4 kbps, which is pretty restrictive for a "Communicator" device.
This, like many innovations, is just another step. Handsprings are slightly more modular than other forms of PDAs, while still having the minimal power consumption associated with palm pilots.
Many people, including myself, believe that the next frontier of technology is small, portable devices that communicate with each other wirelessly, though each device has a specialized function.
In order to make that happen, we need to start with devices such as handhelds - which can be easily specialized through software, and which have readily available wireless capability.
Its true that its "Just another handheld," similar to all of the other handhelds, but its more functional. Its not like another model car, which is exactly like the previous model, except that its "new and improved" (i.e. new and the current fashion); this is another piece of the puzzle.
And it does matter that its slightly more functional. The advent of the 386 chipset allowed a whole new class of problems to be solvable that where previously too slow to do research - I know that this is the case for my field, which is computer vision. As time progresses, even more problems are being researched.
I'm looking forward to using technology such as this -perhaps even this model - in the near future (when it becomes pretty inexpensive - perhaps two or three years from now) as a module for home automation - it would be just about perfect for the purpose.
Personally I would rather have:
a color iPAQ with GSM-jacket or a palm-pilot with blue tooth and Ericssons T68 (color display, bluetooth aso).
A the price is approx the same...
The OS is not what makes the phone useful.
The phone apps that control the phone are what is useful. Running one of the random Linux versions, NetBSD, or WinCE/PocketPC/whatever is possible. *BUT* without the applications to make the OS useful, what is the point of turning the device into a hi-tech brick that just happens to 'boot linux'?
Treo is smaller...so what, the Kyocera is almost too small as it is. They also made the Treo smaller by using a smaller screen then the Kyocera, so enjoy your scrolling.
No car kits from handspring...they are going to leave that to 3-rd parties, which means don't expect them for a while. Kyocera makes their own.
Treo: no voice dialing
Kyocera: voice dialling in the phone ( 99 names )
Treo claims 2.5hrs talk/ 60 hours standby. This is about half the Kyocera's capacity.
Treo says you may need to activate dial up access, and also get an ISP?!?! Both included in Kyocera service. And to make it worse, the Treo's modem is 9600 vs 14.4 in the Kyocera.
The keyboard is not that interesting to me, because I have used a palm long enough to get proficent with the software keyboard and graphitti. Plus my fingers are too fat to use buttons that small with any degree of accuracy...:^)
About the only think that is mildly amusing about this phone is that it is GSM, which doesn't help me where I live. I think I'll stay with my tried and true smartPhone.
...you can't USE the pda while you use the phone.
"Oh yeah Jim, um, what's-his-name wanted me to tell you, uh, hangon a sec." *flip, beep, poke poke poke, scroll, read, fumble, flip* "Ok Jim, yeah it was so and so, and if I remember correctly he said blah blah blah."
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but how might you take notes, lookup information, or otherwise use the PDA part of your "phone" while you talk on it?
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Oh, and I won't pay more than $150 for it.
That'd be cool! ;-)
The Japanese have had such devices for years, and as a bonus their devices aren't eyesores. Yes, they don't have the sheer organizing power of a Palm, but anybody who can actually use this thing to its full extent probably has a secretary already. Now, I'd like to say that the advantage of having a secretary is that he or she can double as a fling during the office XMAS party, but given the 60% obesity rate in America, it's more likely than not that your secretary will be a fatty in scrubs filling her keyboard with pork rind crumbs instead of a hotty in a miniskirt. And if you've never seen a cute male admin assistant in a mini, you've not been living, baybee!
Oh, and until PDAs have good handwriting recognition software again, they can all go straight to the steaming pits of Hell. Or my crotch. Same diff.
SprintPCS has a second generation device available, the Samsung SPH-I300. Color display, virtual Grafitti, dual-mode, external connection for hooking up your laptop, full HTML browser, voice recognition, second LCD (for Caller ID), among other features. It's also pretty compact. They also still offer the Kyocera. The Treo isn't bad, it may be "always on-line", and maybe you want GSM for one reason or another, but it doesn't look "revolutionary" to me.
I think we have to work more on improving cellular and digital networks around the country/world before we get excited over some fancy new phone that can make a 5 course meal if you press *2211. What good is a phone like this if you don't have service? I live in Connecticut, and my StarTac doesn't work in my house, at my office, intermittently in NYC streets, and never in a subway train. Cool phones are great, but more service would be better.
They tend to do everything they do pretty badly. For example: Nokia 5550 (Phone and MP3 player. MP3 player sucks, and phone sucks too), midi/mini HIFI systems (sound generally sucks compared to a nice seperates system), Webmin (sucks compared to a set of targetted, specific config tools), etc etc etc.
You get the idea.
Also, in my humble experience, I've found a worrying number of 'combined' gadgets such as this to fail in single areas -- and be almost impossible to fix due to their advanced miniturisation.
So... Nice gadget, but I'll stick with discrete tools -- my Sony Vaio C1, Nokia 7110 and Handspring Visor Edge do their specific jobs excellently.
Since this is a GSM phone, Verizon isn't supporting it. Only AT&T, MCI, VoiceStream, Cingular, to name a few national carriers.
Maybe those other carriers work for you, but for those of us who live in the northeast - especially around new york, the other carriers can;t live up to Verizon's service level.
Granted, I'm no Verizon-fan by any means - I'd drop them in a second if I could, but unfortunately that's the only carrier up here (NY Metro Area) that is worth anything.
For PDA users, this is great because it's smaller than you're PDA and it's also a phone, so you don't have to carry another device.
Most phone users, though, don't have a PDA, so they won't get to carry fewer devices, and the form factor really sucks in comparison to the newer phones on the market. Plus, if a PDA was something they wanted to have, they'd have gotten one in addition to a phone already. Why carry something as bulky as my phone a year ago just to have a set of features I don't really want or need?
For me, this looks pretty cool. For most of the people I work with, it's just bulky and expensive.
More?
I think the design is very well done expect for perhaps the keypad. I don't understand why they continue to arrange alphanumeric characters in a QWERTY arrangement on such a small keyboard, when a different layout would make much more sense. The auto word complete feature mentioned though is a good idea (Windows CE had this). Also, the resolution of the LCDs used in these things are very low and it makes text readablity difficult. That is one reason I prefer the windows devices (240x320 resolution) over the palm models. Finally, I believe that the ability to be able to access a document or search for information from anywhere is very important. If I have a question, I want to be able to go to Google and find the answer within 30 seconds. Will this be possible with the bandwidth and limited screen space that this device has?
... is simple. It's what people are used to, and what they expect. I know exactly where to find a A, or an R, on a QWERTY keyboard. I don't want to have to re-learn this just for my handheld.
What we really need is for someone to reverse engineer to phone API. Handspring would probably not want to rock the PalmOS boat by opening any specifications.
Absit Invidia
A system for reading e-mail needs to be "always on" to use a phrase from the competition (RIM). As far as I can tell with Treo if you are waiting for an e-mail you would have press receive every five minutes until the e-mail arrived.
Link points to the "man had sex with goat" story in the Sun. Really, who'd belive the Sun would have a worthwhile tech story anyway?
Add voice recognition capability!
How many people have phones now that you can add voice tags to people's numbers? This should actually be rather easy to implement in the Treo, I'd imagine. (I didn't see it explicitly stated in the review.) Imagine just saying someone's name, and their business card comes up and it asks you if you want to dial their number. Sounds like a winning deal to me.
Other than that, add some Bluetooth or 802.11b capability in there. Then I can use this as an uplink for my laptop. Or I can beam business cards with RF instead of IR. Or imagine being able to zap someone your business card through SMS. That's another cool feature.
These devices are almost there. We're almost to convergence, and I think I'll wait a generation or two and take another serious look at it.
... it costs an additional $20/month. I still think the Motorola T193 with iStream is a better choice. Phone=$50, Basic Plan+GPRS=$23/month, Better Plan=$30/month (see here)
I think this phone/PDA is a real step in the right direction of alleviating the clutter of many gadgets. It's a bit price, but hey it's new. This unit coupled with Nextel's direct connect feature would be great. That is if Nextel or Motorola figures out how to get direct connect to work outside of users local calling areas.
one of the reasons windows ce handhelds have suppousedly been doing better is because of their internet connectivity... maybe this, along with the palm m705 will level the playing field?
but, as for the palm m705... it actually has a graffiti pad, and an antenna that seems like it would have a longer life span. i think i'll just stick with that one!
I have still sitting on my desk this device from Qualicomm that is the exact same thing. yes it was neat. until you try and actually use it. Battery life is crap. if you like to use your cllphone more than once a day for only a 30 second call you have to drop it on the charger at least 3-5 times a day. taking notes during a phone conversation REQUIRES the headset. and connectivity via the web is neat-o but expensive and slow.
Nice try Handspring, but qualicomm learned the hard way that unless you can give major advantages that outweigh the horrible design flaws it will die a nasty ugly death.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is insane. My Nokia 6210 survives over a week on standby and on average four days with normal calling patterns.
The Palm Vx survives a couple weeks easy without charging, provided that it's not accidentally turned on while in the bag or so.
A cell phone requiring daily recharge is simply inacceptable in this day and age.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
The Samsung i300 is another PalmPhone thats been out for a while. Samsung has opted to not release an SDK as of yet.
Hence, I disassembled most of the phone's code and reversed engineered a dialer and figured out how to remove the soft grafitti area.
More information is in the http://www.sphi300.com developer's board if you're interested.
Whats cool is that my reverse-engineered dialer is in use by some commercial vendors. I received word from Iambic that they found the dialer code helpful in supporting the dialing in Action Names.
I'd love to reverse engieer the Treo, but I don't see myself buying one anytime soon. I like the i300 form factor better and its already color (though the screen isn't as good as some other color palm devices).
Anyone want to send me a freebie? Didn't think so.
I could never understand how my fellow students could mostly afford lappies, newest phones etc, etc...
While i'm strugglin' to pay the bills and buy the next round of text books.
Life's hard at Uni without parental financial support.
Dosen't make me wish any less though!
The Treo is an evolutionary improvement over previous cellphone and pda combination devices. Sure, it's smaller, and has nifty things like jogdial, but 2 things kill it.
1. It's still to big. Having handled one in person (I live in singapore and it's been out for half a month or so now) it's still too big. It hasn't reached that crtical *lack* of mass that'll make it replace my tiny Nokia phone as yet.
2. No GPRS.
Be kind. There are too many mean people out there already.
all (well most) modern cell phones have integrated aerial.
Is it here only to tear pockets, or to be geeky?
or perhaps is it the extractible pen?
No, that won't help much. Someone who would WRITE code based on the API/replication of the other tools.
Where is a small and lightweight:
Day planner
Phone number/contact manager
To do list
memopad
(Hint: GNOME is not lightweight.)
....a key point. The handhelds that are out have a big demand for one specific ADDON...802.11b. Everyone in my office gets the addon for their Jornada's, IPAQs, whatever flavor they're partial to. I think that if they could make a device that was cell phone/PDA/802.11(B/A)/Bluetooth, they would be the winner that could never be toppled. Are they listening? How awesome would it be to be a commuter/telecommuter and have this? Imagine: 1. On the train, I check stock prices/email/whatever else I need to on the wireless web. 2. I make notes in my palm notepad, and dial my sales rep/customer/whatever from my built in dialer. 3. I get to the office, and now 802.11/Bluetooth tkes over, and I'm still browsing with the same device. I think this device would sell better than ANYTHING EVER introduced...if it did all this. I wonder how much bigger it would be with these features.
is that handspring is pushing it now as their Only Product, which means all the visor prices are dropping drammatically! Check out the sidebar: Visor edge now for $199??!? I'll take that and a visorphone over the $549 treo, any day.
The Nokia 7650. It is so so sweeeeet. I wish we had it in the US.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
This is the smallest palm available, by a long shot.
If you take a look at the Treo website, they have a few size comparison pictures to help out (including one against a credit card where the Treo does pretty well).
I have a Nokia 83xx phone right now, and the Treo looks to be a little wider (and have an external antenna) but is otherwise quite comparable in size.
I don't use a palm often enough unless it's in my pocket. This lets me use a regular wallet again.
Regards,
Ross
As any old hi-fi fan knows, "components are better."
____
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I recall reading that in the US Army, soldiers were only allowed to have ONLY a cell phone, or ONLY a PDA, or ONLY a laptop, but not a pda and a laptop, or a laptop and a cellphone.
How would the treo play into this scheme?
I believe that the US Navy has standardized on Palm, and has sync ports on their ships (!)
Other note: what sort of battery would actually last on a color PocketPC or PalmOS as long as, per se, a standard phone battery (meaning, like around 10 hours of continual PDA/phone usage? I know that PocketPC's usually get only 5 or so hours of continual use)
what?
In the Netherlands, a telco is introducing the XDA: a GPRS-based color-screen PDA/phone.
http://212.78.161.154/O2XDA/
dutch unfortunately, but there are some images of the -very slick- device.
runs ppc2002.
R.
Right...
Sure...
Probably billed their Handspring client two hours for "posting to leading online community."
The Treo is a great idea that suffers from very poor design. Use it in phone mode, and you've got makeup and facial oils all over your PDA screen. I'll wait.
Battery life is typical of cell phones -- 60 hours on standby, etc.
Rather than think of it as a PDA, think of it as a cell phone on steroids (hence the usage of the term communicator)
Wow, 890$Can... I think I'll pass
I have the Samsung i300, which is way cool. And color. And small. While I think the Treos are decent, I think Samsung did a better job.
not much detail, some nice pics of a new prototype CLIE device ...looks a bit like a flip style cellphone like TREO, swivelling screen, and possibly a built in camera as well...
...is not anything very advanced, but it has a set of features that I cannot find combined in a single PDA. It has:
The closest to what I want is the Handera (ex TRG) PDA, that has the compact flash slot, but it has no color screen. The Clie and Palm use those Memory Stick and SD/MMC respectively. And then, of course, there are the Casios and Compaqs who don't have PalmOS. Why can't they build such a simple handheld? In the meantime, I will wait to replace my old Palm III.
After waiting quite a while for the Treo to come out, they finally announced they are avaialble, so I run over to the site, put in my zip (Los Angeles), and start the process where they let you pick a plan and what area you are in.
Then I saw something that made me want to cry: "Cingular Data (required for web and email access) $4.95/mo. plus 15/minute"
I can't believe this thing is not setup to use Cingular's internal network for web browsing. (which costs you $5 a month, plus airtime (basically, 'free' on nights and weekends). Instead, they are using the old Cingular data-connect, which is $4.95 and $0.15 A MINUTE. You can't use your included minutes, it's $0.15 a minute, always.
Not only that, but you have to have an ISP to make that data call into! If you use a cable modem or DSL, you'll have to pay a 3rd party ISP like Earthlink $19.95 a month just to use your data features.
Cingular has been setup, and has been selling phones that use their own 'wireless web' network for at least a year now. This is so sad.
Paying by the minute for data when you have a bucket of free minutes, as well as the requirement that you have a 3rd party ISP, is simply not acceptable in this day and age when other providers (Sprint, Verizon, Voicestream) are giving it away.
Incredibly dumb.
I don't understand how Handspring expects to sell too many of these with single-mode GSM. GSM only may be fine in Europe where everything is GSM, but in the USA, if you travel, you need to be able to fall back to Analog. A great part of the utility of having a mobile phone is being able to use it while travelling, particularly in a semi-remote area. You would have to buy another phone for backup with the Treo. It's built in on the Kyocera or Samsung phones.
Plus U can call anyone in your contact list easily.
Not only can I not reach the Handspring site right now, I also can't reach the first couple sites that come up on google for "handspring treo".
-prator
and treo becomes $149. I worry about dropping my visor too, but I never droped it for all these years of using it. So I think $150 for treo is worth upgrade.
Color, sleeker (IMO), and CDMA compatible. $499.95.
Samsung I300
Having "probed" the Handspring people over the last few weeks, I think the keyboard on the Treo is in the event they lose to Xerox. Handspring is PUSHING THE KEYBOARD over Graffiti in a major way. Even when someone says they prefer Graffiti, the Hanspring people push the keyboard version....
Something is up. IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Japanese cell phones still beat the living crap out of the most expensive American cell phone. This one here has a digital camera in it. I refuse to buy a cell phone, PDA, digital camera, or portable mp3 player, until they are all united into 1 cell phone sized device at an affordable price. The technology exists for something like this to exist right now. No company is doing it though. I wonder why?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
but most of us have never thouched it, right?
This thing got pretty good reviews, so let's hear from someone who actually use it here
Why are people allways trying to integrate sh*t? would it really kill you to carry two things? wouldnt it be more cost effective to have both? I applaud Handspring for their great engineering, I own a prism. I just think that it would greatly suck if the treo was to break down. Now you can't check your appointments and your out a phone. There are some perks to having seperate devices. Sometimes I dont fee like carying a brick in my pants like when im out bike riding or hicking. I would rather just carry a plane compact phone. One thing that is a hastle is having to sync my phonebooks between the two devices. so if they just made a synching medium between phone and PDA (between infared ports, beaming your phone book from PDA to phone...) that would be all I needed.
next time you boys try to think of something, think about hiring someone who should know more about design than the big brains who develloped this 'baby'
I also have Cingular in SF, and it sucks whatever phone you have. Verizon is also bad, but AT&T is actually real good. I'm switching to them as soon as my 1 year with Cingular is up.
Just a consumer information apropos.
Thanks for the info, here are some calculations...
a /10903_na.HTML and some other pages I found, multi-slot class 10 means 4+2 slots, i.e. 4 downlink and 2 uplink. The slot capacity is dependent on the coding scheme, which in turn varies depending on radio conditions - this looks like the CS-2 scheme, which is 13.4 Kbits per slot, since 4 x 13.4 is 53.6 Kbps downstream. (See http://www.nuntius.com/solutions22.html ) Upstream should be 26.6 Kbps of course since there are half as many slots. This probably doesn't include IP overhead, and may also not include the various layer 2 and below stuff above the actual radio link (there's a lot of tunnelling between the GPRS device and the network, to enable roaming).
S alkintzis.pdf
According to http://www.compaq.com/products/quickspecs/10903_n
Anyway, YMMV depending on number and activity of other GPRS and GSM-voice users in the cell - if they're busy you won't get the full 4 slots. Also, as the radio conditions worsen you'll drop down to CS-1, which has more error correction but maxes out at 4 x 9.05 = 36.2 Kbps downstream for a 4+2 device.
Fortunately, if you are using an efficient protocol, such as WAP or perhaps a custom protocol on top of IP (like some of the compressing/transcoding proxy setups), you can get pretty good response times out of a GPRS device, but it's not really meant for big downloads. On some tariffs, it's cheaper to use HSCSD (two GSM phone calls at once) for downloads, but ultimately GPRS will become a commodity and should end up being cheaper, with HSCSD the high-end service for those who can afford it.
At present, you may actually find WAP over a GSM call is a bit faster (I did a side by side test with Ericsson T68 vs Nokia 7110 on the same Orange UK WAP site) - but GPRS is much more convenient particularly for quickly checking a website on your Treo, or for sending an email without firing up your PC or making a data call on your phone. In the longer term, there'll be higher-spec phones, up to 8 slots downstream for 115 Kbps, but there'll be a price in battery life and perhaps overheating.
I don't think the country matters - GPRS works the same way regardless of frequency, so the US/Canada's GPRS at 1900 MHz will have the same data rates IMO as the UK's 1800 and 900 MHz (subject to radio conditions of course).
For a technical intro to GPRS, have a look at http://ww1.comsoc.org/pubs/surveys/3q99issue/pdf/
I've been trying to get order info from 10:10 am (now 13:55) on a visorphone order.
Voicestream says the Handspring computers are down.
Handspring says "the system is unaviable while they are doing some maintiance"
Looks like the Handspring business system needs some help.
I, for one, am considering a PDA to work as a simple organizer. Phone numbers, addresses, maybe some information about local take-out and delivery restaurants. Is everyone aiming for the high-end PDA market? When will we see the "Celeron" of PDAs gain more improvements?
-bugg
From the article:
;)
Blazer(TM)--the award-winning wireless web browser
Em, what award has Blazer won again? I thought that AvantGo won the awards. And, does it support typical PQAs or 'real' modem apps like the aforementioned AvantGo?
Hmm...
My only real gripe is it's price, looking at it. Looks schweet, too pricey. I'd have to give up the GF4Ti4800 from my new PeeCee for that
--pi, who is getting a new peecee soon...
Isn't that the phone used by Jamey on 24? If so, that was a clever ad move by Samsumg...
BTW, I just accessed 24's site for the first time, and on Jamie's profile, it mentions "recruited by CTU after Microsoft fired her for creating open-source software related to intelligence gathering" and "UC Linux user group (sorry, no URL, it's a flashmedia page). Really cool...
I've been waiting for this device for a while. A couple of co-workers have Kyocera phones, but I think they're way to bulky, no USB, and I prefer GSM service. The addition of the 900Mhz band is nice...it would work in London, maybe not all over Europe like a Tri-band would.
But now I'm not so sure. I've wanted a new PDA for a while, but then I heard about the Treo and decided to wait for it. I currently have a Palm III (not even e or anything) and a Motorola v3682. I don't carry the Palm around much due to it's bulk, and the phone numbers aren't exactly in sync. The idea of everything in one place appeals to me.
However, there are the new Sony PalmOS units...the 400 series is really nice...and there are tools to talk to GSM phones that have IR...for about the same price as the Treo I could switch to a PEG-T415 and a Nokia 8290 and have most of the functionality...but I'd still be carrying two separate devices.
Anyone trying to make the same decision?
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Sure, mini-stereos suck compared to a decent component system. They also cost about... what, as much as one, maybe two pieces of that system, tops?
Personally, I also will not buy a Treo - until they tell me that in addition to being a cell phone and a PDA, it can play MP3's. I've been waiting for a couple years for all three functions to be consolidated in a base unit without add-ons. Give me stereo headphones with a mike on the cord for the mp3 playback, and a device smart enough to pause the mp3's when a call comes in, and I'm happy.
-Dan
You know, for being in the same price range as the new Palm, it sure as hell does a lot more. Anyone else notice that?
Well if you prefer you can just get a VisorPhone and stick it on whichever Handspring you want. They're free with service activation. Personally I like having the plugin versions better because they give me the freedom to mix and match, but it seems that the market is trending towards one piece devices instead.
Hmm, I haven't been watching the show much...
I've been told that these PDA phones are "jack of all trades, master of none" buggers, but it does seem silly that there would be two independent devices, when they have so much (including form factor) in common.
I've had a Visor Deluxe for 1.5 years. I'd get a VisorPhone immediately (or even consider a Treo), if I could actually get service for it in Canada. Why are we being ignored?!
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
All those things you described are great, but...
It'll be years before the technology (and economics) gets us to the point where we can integrate that many devices into one "killer app".
The hard drive tech is there, the processor tech is close, so is the screen tech.
The problem is that the space requirements and weight problems would make a device have to be twice if not 3 times as big as the ipod under the current state of computer technology...but wait for it my friend...its gonna be great!!! =J
IMT-2000
Last P0st
UK Pricing (inc VAT) on Handspring's web site at European launch (21 Feb):
£299.00 with BT Cellnet contract
£599.00 without contract
699.00 without contract for our chums in the Euro zone.