Palm Ships With 12-bit Screen, Says 16-Bit On Box

Launch was among the many readers to point out that "Palm recently announced that they made a mistake in their product description of the m130... it doesn't have the 16-bit screen they advertised. Rather then admit the mistake, Palm is using every ounce of their spinning power to mislead its less tech-savy customers into believing that the palm m130 can display 58,621 'color combinations' rather then the 'more than 65,000 colors' it had previously stated; only a 11% difference. This tricky language is meant to shade the fact that a 12-bit screen can only display 4,096 colors... that's a 93% difference." Have they not learned from the mistakes of history? On the other hand, the screen resolution is 160x160 pixels.

Comments

That's ok...

[IGnatius T Foobar]

There are plenty of geeks out there who would love to own a PDA with 4096 colors! That's the number of colors the Amiga could display. Think of the nostalgia value!

Re:That's ok...

[Black Perl]

why can't Americans distinguish between THAN and THEN?

Your sooo write. I guess its because their to busy misspelling they're other homophones.

Palm giving a refund?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so Palm should just refund the 4 bits to everyone who bought the m130. Hell, it's only 50 cents, what's the big deal? :)

Palm Infocenter has complete story

[Launch]

Apparently this debate has been going on a long time... Palm info center has a good article about it... And the PIC forum where the debate first broke.

that is just plain wrong

[AssFace]

before I was darn positive I could be playing the new Doom 3 on it and bask in the sheer beauty. Now I have so few colors that I'm not even sure it is still truly color.
I wonder if my e-mails and phone numbers will even work with the fewer colors?
probably not.

Re:Sounds to Me Like a Job for the FTC...

[Jucius Maximus]

"I do believe reading a quote from Tim where he said that the FTC will not tolerate companies not living up to their promises and misrepresenting their products. I'll be very curious to learn if we get any FTC action on this."

Perhaps it is about time to file a complaint with the FTC and see what they think of Palm and this misleading advertising.

Re:Excuse me?

[Draoi]

Except that people *know* it. Oh look, the crappy Compaq only has a 12-bit screen depth. I think I'll buy the cool Palm M130, 'coz it's got 65,000 colours ....

Palm published incorrect information which probably led many away from competitors' products. This is serious stuff. Now those people (including me) feel a bit deceived.

Re:Excuse me?

[jerrytcow]

Why is everyone jumping on Palm about this? The Compaq iPAQ has a 12-bit screen and produces *ONLY* 4,096 colors. The m130, by contrast, produces *MORE* colors, using blending techniques.

Because the blending technique is nothing more than dithering.

From the Palm support site:
The color technologies Palm employed in the m130 handheld to deliver text and images include frame-rate control and dithering techniques. (Frame-rate control turns pixels off or on to deliver a specific shade of color. Dithering uses a group of adjacent pixels to convey a composite color.)

If Palm gets away with this, we will never know the bit depth of video cards, handhelds, cell phones, etc. since companies will be able to claim any number they want because their product's display can dither. I say nip this in the bud and get Palm to admit it only produces 4,096 colors.
And yes, I am aware that they claim it uses "frame rate control" too, but it seems this is nothing more than a pixel flashing so it appears to be a less intense color - surely all displays could do this too.

MS Wins

[n-baxley]

I own a Palm device, actually an Handera 330. I've had one in some form for 5 years. I like my Palm. I want to keep buying palms, but I won't be able to.
</preface>
<rant>
As much as I hate to say it, it appears to be only a matter of time before Microsoft takes over the handheld arena. Palm, like Netscape before it, is not the suffering saint being crushed by the giant, but rather a bunch of incompetent fools. They have has 95% of the market in handhelds just a few years ago, and what have they done with it? Nothing! They issue late releases that tought minimal imrpovements and then pull stunts like this. If it were not for Sony and Handspring, I believe that Palm would already be gone. Please! Get your act in gear or leave the party.
</rant>

take action

[mhatt]

If you're mad, vote with your wallet. And print out the following letter and mail it to:

Palm, Inc. Corporate Headquarters
400 N. McCarthy Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035

--
This is in reference to the "updated characterization of the Palm m130's color capabilities." I just wanted to let you know that your deliberate attempt to conceal the truth has convinced me that I will NEVER support Palm by buying one of its products. The knowledge base article claims that the difference between the advertised 16-bit display and the delivered 12-bit is 11%, and compares actual colors with "color combinations", using some crazy formula, to arrive at this figure. This is a blatant lie. A 12-bit screen can display only 4096 colors, a 93% difference. You are comparing apples to oranges for the sole purpose of deceiving customers who bought this product and abating anticipated complaints.

This bit of dishonesty is unacceptable and likely indicative of deeper lying dishonesty. Perhaps your marketing division would benefit from the honesty lessons that your financial division should have learned in the wake of the public attention brought to corporate dishonesty in fiscal reportings. I have no wish to deal with a company like yours. It is very clear that your customers are not your first priority, though whether you have made such claims I don't know.

I am a computer science major and tech enthusiast, who both buys many tech products myself and makes recommendations to friends and family who actively seek out my advice; many of them won't make such purchases without first getting my input. Be it known that not only will I not recommend your products, but will go out of my way to recommend against them.

Thanks for your time.
--

Of course, change it a bit so it makes sense for you.

Re:Blending techniques

[roarl]

ok, graphics geeks... factor 58,621. You get 31 x 31 x 61. Looks like 5-bits, 5-bits, and 6-bits, blended. I'm wondering how they came up with that number of colors! Any ideas?

By dithering (mixing) 4 pixels in a 2x2 pattern, 16 colors can be mixed into (16-1)*4+1 = 31 colors. By dithering 2x1 pixels, 16 colors can be mixed into (16-1)*2+1 = 15 colors. So, by using a 2x2 dither pattern for green, and a 2x1 dither pattern for red and blue, 31x31x61 colors can be produced.

I do believe this is the correct explanation, but it seems so contrived that I suspect some boss ordered his engineer to invent a reason to come up with a number close to 65536. In a program, it would be much easier to do a 2x2 dither pattern for all three components, yielding 226981 colors.

For interested readers, a transition from one color to another using a 2x2 dither pattern can be as follows.

00 10 10 11 11
00 00 01 01 11

As you see, two colors turns into (2-1)*4+1 color patterns.