Pictures Leaked of 3 new Palm handhelds

ahecht writes "On Thursday, Palm's Solutions Group's CEO Todd Bradley announced that 3 new handhelds will be released in October. Within 24 hours, pictures of all three handhelds have leaked out on the web. The first to be released, the sub-$100 Zire, can be seen here. The second handheld, previously known as Oslo, now has the name Tungsten T, and features OS 5 and built in bluetooth (pictured here). The third handheld is the Tungsten W, pictured here, which is a GPRS smartphone (although it does not have a built-in speaker or microphone). Zire will be released October 7th, while both Tungsten models will be released on October 28th." Could just be rumors or fakes, but it seems reasonable.

Comments

Keyboards...

[singularity]

Why do Palm/cell manufacturers insist on putting a keyboard on their combination Palm/cell devices?

If I am going to buy one of these devices, it is to reduce pocket-bloat by one device. That means that my primary motivation in getting one is size. Adding a keyboard only adds size.

I suppose I can see adding a 3x4 number pad for dialing, so if they are going to add anything I would rather see a usable 3x4 pad than an attempt at adding a full keyboard to aid in data input.

Currently I have both a Samsung SCH-3500 phone and a Sony Clie PEG-T665C. I would consider a combination phone/Palm device if one could do things as well as both of those devices. While I am all in favor of reducing pocket bloat, I find that dedicated devices do their job better than any combination device.

In the mean time, I will use a data cable to attach the 665C to the Samsung. Although I am really eyeing the new Vision-capable phones from SprintPCS...

Also - I have a Canon S200 camera. Until such time as a camera added to a Palm device can come close to the quality of that camera, do not even think about adding a camera to any device I am going to buy.

That camera is portable enough (and durable enough) to end up in my pocket for times I think I *might* want to take pictures.

Re:Keyboards...

[iso]

There's lots of reasons to add a keypad to a handheld device, and the "bloat" is hardly more than the writing area of a standard palm handheld. First of all, it's much faster to type than to use the braindead "grafitti" of Palm handhelds (hint: use your thumbs). You can also enter text with one hand on a keyboard, whereas with a Palm you need one hand to hold it, and the other with which to write.

Of course you also need to realize that different people have different requirements. Beleive it or not, the world does not revolve around you. For you it's "pocket bloat," for me it's useability. The keyboard makes sense. Research in Motion was right all along. The new BlackBerries are much more useable than any Palm I've seen.

- j

Re:Palm must be one of the dumbest companies on ea

[waytoomuchcoffee]

The mantle has been passed in the Palm front. Sony has one hell of a product right now. The NR70 has 320x480 res, virtual grafitti, and can do practically everything a PPC can do, but with 1/20 the MIPs. Plus it looks a lot cooler. And did I mention that the NR70 was just discontinued? Let's see what happens when they announce their Xscale version of the NR70 in a few days. Should be an interesting next couple of months. Competition is good.

Note to get here it took two things -- Sony to pump up the Palm brand, and MS to fumble and not support Xscale routines in the PPC OS. I find it amazing, after years of Palm letting its OS rot, that the Palm OS will actually have a (rather large) advantage in at least one aspect -- ability to actually use Xscale routines and power-saving modes that will have to wait until the next version of the MS OS. Not to mention the Palm OS can use other processors as well. I would never have guessed this happening a year ago, when PPCs had a large lead in both software and hardware.