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Sony Announces Excellent New Handhelds
PalmAddict writes "Sony Japan has announced what was only supposed to be a non-working mockup at Palm Source just a few short weeks ago, as reality. Palminfocenter has the scoop on the PEG-NR70, a thin, folding, half VGA, built-in digital camera picture taking, MP3 playing powerhouse." Nothing I can say except wow.
pictures from sony's japanese language site: http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/peg/Store/Clie/index.h tml
Sony Introduces Two Models with Keyboards, MP3 Players
.65 inches. They weigh 7 ounces, including the stylus.
Posted by: Ed on Monday, March 11, 200212:06:43 AM
Sony Japan has just introduced two new cutting-edge handhelds. The PEG-NR70 and PEG-NR70V both have built-in keyboards and 320 by 480 color screens. They also have built-in MP3 and ATRAC3 audio players. In addition, the PEG-NR70V has a built-in camera.
These have a clamshell design, with the keyboard on one side and the screen on the other. However, the screen can pivot around and then close again, this time with the screen facing out, allowing these to be used like a traditional handheld, with text entry done through a virtual Graffiti area.
The screen doesn not flip all the way around like a note pad does. It opens, the screen rotates on an axis located just above the hinge, then closes back over the keypad. When the screen rotates, it's image automatically flips over so it is still upright to the user.
Frequent readers will recognize the NR70V as the one a Sony executive briefly showed off at PalmSource last month.
The 16-bit color Backlit TFT screen is 3.8 inches tall. When closed, both of these models are 5.4 by 2.8 by
They are the first Palm OS models to use Motorola's 66 MHz Dragonball SuperVZ processor. They run Palm OS 4.1 and have 16 MB of RAM and 10 MB of Flash ROM.
Of course they have a built-in Memory Stick slot. They also have a Jog Dial and a Back button.
These have a built-in Lithium Polymer battery, which Sony estimates will last for 10 days, based on 30 minutes of use a day. They have an additional DSP chip for handling audio and this drains significant power. The company says these will last for 7 hours of music playback with the display off.
The PNR70V's camera is also on the hinge. It can take images with 100,000 pixels. It has a 1/6 inch CMOS Image Sensor and it can take pictures between 0.3 meters from the lens all the way to infinity. it saves images in PG Pocket format in sizes of 320x240, 160x120, or 88x88.
These models have the enhanced IR port from the T-series. They have other things in common with the T-series, sharing the same styli and HotSync port. This means the NR series should be able to use many of the same peripherals designed for the T series.
They also comes with ear-bud speakers and an audio control wand similar to previous Clié models with built-in audio players. Also like previous Sony models, the screen can be turned off while playing music. Because they use a separate DSP, the user can listen to music while using other applications.
In addition to software necessary to use the audio player and camera, they come with Documents To Go 4.0 Standard Edition to allow the user to access Microsoft Office files and Intellisync Lite for the Clié to synchronize with Outlook.
These handhelds have been introduced only in Japan. The NR70 will be available on March 23. The NR70V will be out April 13. There is no word yet on when they will be available in other countries.
The NR70V will sell for 59,800 Yen, or about $465. The NR70 will sell for 49,800 Yen, or $385. Again, these are the prices in Japan. They may or may not indicate what these will sell for in other countries.
Sony has also introduced the PEG-MSB1 Memory Stick Bluetooth module.
Thanks to SaxonMan for the tip and Eugene for his translations. -Ed
Related Information:
* ClieClub: Lots of Pictures of the new models
* PIC: Sony to Announce New Handheld in Japan Next Week
* PIC: Sony Prototype Pics
* PIC: Bluetooth Memory Stick Gets SIG Approval
* PIC: Sony Forum
for those too lazy to copy & paste :)
here's a link
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
So that's why I can't get onto PalmInfoCenter today. Anyone looking for more info on this might want to try PDABuzz, another pretty good Palm site.
It hurts when I pee.
Here's the CNET Story
Lots of pictures of the new models
It's not much besides pictures, but that's the first thing you want to know, right? That, and that they have a 66 MHz Dragonball SuperVZ processor, run Palm OS 4.1 and have 16 MB of RAM and 10 MB of Flash ROM. They also come memory stick slot and a jog dial. Battery life is 10 days, used for half an hour each day. Guess that means 5 hours.
:Peter
It's a link to a story with heaps of (threaded) comments attached. I'd say that the database is getting spanked.
No. That's not a technical term. I just made it up then.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
What it looks like open and closed (from the Japanese site)
It looks like they have a Bluetooth card accessory coming out and a GPS card. There is also what looks like a wireless modem and another type of wireless adapter, but I'm not sure if it's 802.11b, or not.
a couple more views
It can also be used to transfer map/location data back and forth with your Sony Car Navigator (in Japan). And it can function as a programmable remote control for your home theater gear (TV, DVD, VCR, etc). It looks like the camera uses Picture Gear Pocket edition, so the photos are probably compatible with most of Sony's DV and digital still cams (and transferrable by Memory Stick).
It's surprising they didn't put a phone in, but I guess Japanese hipsters wouldn't be caught dead talking into a giant PDA when they have such amazing "keitai" cell phones.
Keep that in mind before buying a Sony product.
Looks neat!
I'm a 2000 man.
If the main processor is a Motorola, perhaps the DSP is Motorola also. If the DSP is a 56K derivative, well, that would be most excellent, as this is somewhat of an industry standard in the audio industry (Motorola 56K-compatible processors are used by Eventide, Digidesign, TC Electronics, the XBOX, etc.).
http://www.gweep.net/~shifty/ is the homepage of a project to hook a Palm Pilot up to an ADI DSP dev kit for music DSP. Maybe the new Sony would allow you to do the same thing without the external DSP.
- MP3: I've given before. DRM means special app on windows to convert your MP3 to Sony homebrew format with copy protection. So it's not really MP3. First you need another OS to do the conversion with their crappy app (Jukebox if I remember correctly), next you can't transfer more than once and in one direction.
As someone who owns a Sony Clie' 760c I'd like to point out that this is incorrect.
I am able to put whatever MP3's I feel like on the memory stick. They are true MP3's that I ripped using MMJB. They have NO DRM. I am able to both read and write them from the Memory Stick as many times as I want. The MS shows up as a removable drive and it's drag and drop to add/remove MP3's.
I'd say you're off there. QuickOffice for Palm already will utilize the 240x320 screen of the Handera 330 in either portrait or landscape mode. PalmOS devices are definitely moving toward higher resolutions and virtual graphiti areas.
older apps will just be scaled to 320x320 by pixel doubling and the graphiti area will be displayed, I'd guess. In effect, the older apps would look exactly like they always have. Newer apps, though would have the option of 320x320 + graphiti area or 320x480. The Handera 330 already does this at 240x320.
I'm just trying to keep this short and simple.
"These have a built-in Lithium Polymer battery, which Sony estimates will last for 10 days, based on 30 minutes of use a day. They have an additional DSP chip for handling audio and this drains significant power. The company says these will last for 7 hours of music playback with the display off."
Please be more atentive to what you've just read, and know the facts presented to you, before trying to argue their flaws. No where is it stated that the 7 hours are calculated on the same 30 minute per day scale.
I hate all sigs, even this one.
Symbian is an OK OS, but have you tried programming for it? Its arcane exception handling infrastructure designed for C, rather than C++, really makes writing good applications difficult. Plus, the "your app could be killed at any time" nature of its memory management and multitasking is far less orderly than Palm OS's "one app at a time" system.
...looked somewhat familiar...
:)
Not implying anything of course, it was just one of those "I've seen that somewhere before" moments.
SIGFEH
The Clie will play mp3's straight off the memory stick, no copy protection built in if you use the purple memory stick.
If, however, you do not know, and buy the white memory stick, copy protection is built in and you can only play their proprietary format, not mp3's. However, their software will convert your music to their own format. Personally, I will convert the music to Sony's format because you can get equal sound as mp3 but with lower bit rates.
I've never seen the white memory stick for sale in stores or on any online stores, so I'm not even sure if they are sold anymore. I have seen them offereed with Clies for sale on Ebay, however. So if you want mp3, just make sure you get the purple memory stick.
puck
Except for a few extremist zealots, the Newton is thoroughly dead.
Extremist zealots? Are you terrified of Newton users for some reason? Some people prefer it and there is still an active eBay selling community. Are they all dangerous? Should they be locked up for not buying a newer PDA? Hardly. The Newton 2x00 series died because it was a $1000+ piece of technology before it was discontinued. There's no doubt that's too much for a PDA, no matter how advanced. But of course it was so expensive when new because of just how high-end it was, and that's why it survives today.
The 2000 series had an EL-backlit 100dpi 320x480 display, PCMCIA slots (shove a 256MB CF card in one and an ethernet card in the other and away you go), a standard DHCP-compliant TCP/IP stack (browse the Web, send/receive e-mail), sound (play MP3's, take voice notes), natural handwriting recognition from Paragraph (which works incredibly well and now forms the basis for Microsoft's "Transcriber" in PocketPC), a 162MHz StrongARM processor, the ability to import and edit Office documents, the ability serve Web pages, and an interface which combines the best aspects of Mac OS, Palm OS and Windows CE, all at only an inch thick and about a pound in weight.
The fact that this product was killed off years ago (as you mentioned) and that people still use it every day to listen to MP3's, edit reports, browse the Web, send/receive HTML mail, and host their Web sites makes it more amazing, not less.
But I'll be damned if these new Sony PDAs don't come close. If only they'd used CF rather than memorystick! If only Transcriber/Calligrapher were released in a Palm OS version!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Actually, Sharp Zarus MI-EX1 has a 480x640 4" LCD capable of 64k color now selling for 2 years already. Though the price is very steep, the display itself shows really amazing quality.