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

Palm must be one of the dumbest companies on earth

[Khazunga]

They had one hell of a product, back in 1997. Yes, that's five years ago!!!

Product development since then? Zero, zip, niente, nada de nada. They let go all of their competent techies, and are now a mass of marketeers without guindance, slowly sinking to the sound of Titanic's band.

It's really sad that these guys took Psion's market, and then managed to give it away to M$.

I Forsee Problems...

[telstar]

I see two problems with these handhelds.

1) Moving parts (sliding parts). Face it ... if something moves, it's a weak point. Part of what makes handhelds worth spending money on is their longevity, and adding a weak point to a relatively fragile device is a mistake.

2) The Tungsten W will end up in the courts with a lawsuit from RIM. A good reference is here where they've had success thus far.

It's about time

[NineNine]

It's about time that they have some reasonably priced models. This is really, really gonna help them. Very few people need a $500 PDA. At that price, you can get a full featured laptop that isn't a whole heck of a lot bigger. I'd consider a $100 PDA for basic organization stuff. I would never consider more than that for something that's not a laptop computer.

The Zire?

[SetarconeX]

I saw this headline, and immediately jumped for joy when I heard Palm was going to release a new sub-$100 handheld. "Finlly!" I thought, something that could replace my aging Palm M105.

But then I checked the details. 2 meg of memory? Exactly what can you do with that much space these days, even on a handheld? The idea seems to be to attract new customers, but why would you sell something that's obviously less powered than the lowest current model?

You're not going to attract new customers by putting out lousy hardware. Palm's gotten bad press lately for failure to innovate, and this is not helping.

OS5

[banky]

every shot of OS5 looks just like every other Palm OS since... well since the beginning. Didn't Palm buy Be? Weren't they going to do something new with their OS?

Re:OS5

[i0lanthe]

every shot of OS5 looks just like every other Palm OS since... well since the beginning.

Yeah, what gives?... in Intro to HCI we learned the critical importance of changing the user interface as much as possible between OS versions. (Or was that, the importance of not changing... hm, well, maybe I shouldn't have slept through that lecture. ;)

still dragonball

[wfmcwalter]

Palm's innovation-curve is flatter than ever, particularly at the high-end, and they're continuing to lose market share to winCE units (despite winCE still being, well, winCE). Dragonball just doesn't have the horses to cope with the stuff one would want the next-generation of mobile-comms-organiser-thingy do to (decent audio, voice, decent handwriting-rec, games, still & moving images). Sony in particular have done an amazing job squeezing performance out of the palm platform, but there's a limit.

A palm unit with an ARM is _long_ overdue. I want a decent, useful, modern handheld, and I don't want more windows.

Palm can't compete in the low-end electronic-diary market - Casio, Sharp et al will eat their lunch - and currently their concept of innovation seems to consist of putting the same unit they've been making for years in a cool new case.

Re:still dragonball

[Nerant]

I quote: "Yesterday, Todd Bradley, CEO of Palm's Solutions Group, said his company would be launching a handheld that runs Palm OS 5 on October 28. This appears to be the model he was referring to.

Bradley said that this high-end model will have Bluetooth wireless networking built in and use a Texas Instruments OMAP processor, which is based on designs from ARM Holdings. According to rumor, the Tungsten T will use the OMAP1510 processor, which combines into a single chip an ARM-compliant processor with a DSP for multimedia capabilities, and runs at 175 MHz. Sources familiar with this device say it will have 16 MB of RAM."

Also, Palm OS 5 includes PACE (Palm Application Compatibility Environment), an emulation enviroment of sorts that allows the running of existing Palm Apps. (It emulates the DragonBall)

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

That's Pun-ny

[NetGyver]

yes yes, i agree, a Palm with an Arm just makes total sense to me. =)

Palm's philosophy is losing meaning ...

[hobbs]

I see several posts about palm not being innovative, but there is more that should be said about the poor old palm ...

I finally decided to dive into the world of PDAs after resisting for so long (forgetfulness being my main driver :/). After a lot of research, I splurged on the most recent generation of CE devices (Toshiba e740 FWIW) with built-in wireless, great expansion options, etc., all for about US$500. This machine is my mp3 player walking to work, an instant on recording device, plays movies (PocketDivX), and I can read slashdot from it, not to mention the regular PDA features.

I'm an OS agnostic - I just like what I can program, and this is infinitely more programmable, with ports of all your favorite unix tools already. In addition to that, I can get an expansion pack that allows me to plug in any USB keyboard and has a VGA port that will do 800x600 @ 256 colors - yes, I can put a powerpoint presentation on this and leave the laptop at home, and this thing is just a small attachment to the e740 - the functionality is all already built in. Way cool. (Note: the ipaq also has a Linux port, but not yet the newer e740 because it has new hardware)

What would I have gotten from Palm? Well, let's not even compare that because Palm gets blown away too easily. I was actually comparing against the Sony palm-based devices. They were a bit thinner and lighter, they had mp3 option in several players, and they even had the NR70V with built-in camera ... but aside from cool factor it was such low quality as to be not useful. It also only has memory stick expansion, which is much more limiting than the SD *or* CF that I have now.

All that for about the same price.

So what happened? Well, once upon a time, the only way you could get the functionality of these new CE devices was in mini-laptops (the original size of CE devices), and they were much more limited. Palm had the small form factor and all the same stuff. However, Palm is fighting an uphill battle against technology advancement by not adopting new stuff faster. Why are they still waiting to ship an ARM-based device? CE already is shipping units with the latest 400mhz Xscale ARM-based CPUs (think ~ to Pentium with MMX). Palm *was* great, but today all that "simplicity" just looks dated.

Two big groups buy these devices. For geeks, who love technology, it's hard to resist all the joy commanding this device can bring. For PHBs, who love spending as much as possible to get all the features that they'll never use, the CE devices are also hard to pass up.

OK, so what's the downside? I've been using my device for a while, and the only disadvantage is battery life. Using wireless without being plugged in can drain you fast. Add to that that it regularly powers over 100MB mem (32MB rom, 64MB ram, + whatever I'm accessing from CF or SD), color screen (standard on CE devices), ... This is one of those things that basically should be plugged in on a daily basis. That's not really acceptable for a PDA IMO, but since I go to work almost daily, my PDA is well fed. I will be buying my wife a PDA, and it will likely be the Sony instead. She likes the "sexier" look (cool brushed aluminum) and lighter feel (it has to fit in the purse with a million other things). I can't expect that this will be plugged in daily. It's a pity battery life hasn't kept up with technology, but that is honestly the only downside I can find for the CE device (OS preferences aside).

Welcome Slashdot visitor!

[SQL Error]

You have been redirected to a ligher [sic] version of our article in order to conserve bandwidth and keep the site running smoothly for everybody. This is the whole text of the article, if you would like to read the story along with our reader comments, please click here. You are also welcome to bookmark us and explore the rest of our site!
Thanks, www.palminfocenter.com

Damn! They're on to us! How are we supposed to slashdot sites if they do this?

Tungsten W may not fall under the patent

[coding_ape]

Each one of the independent claims in the RIM patent is very specific about the geometry of the keyboard. From the piture, the only one that the Turngsten W would come near is claim 23, which (among other things) claims

... the three sets of tilted keys are arranged into a QWERTY keyboard having at least three rows of keys, a top row, a middle row, and a bottom row, wherein the first set of keys is tilted at a first angle to a vertical reference and forms a top row of keys in the QWERTY keyboard, the second set of keys is tilted to a second angle to the vertical reference and forms a middle row of keys in the QWERTY keyboard, and the third set of keys is tilted to a third angle to the vertical reference and forms the bottom row of keys in the QWERTY keyboard, wherein the first, second and third angles are equal;

Besides the fact that this could probably be shot down by prior art, all Palm would have to do (if they cared about being sued) would be to change the angle of the key rows a bit and they would be in the clear. Seems like a patent so specific as this one really shouldn't be a threat to innovation; all it really stops is exact BlackBerry clones.

But I agree with your first point, important moving parts on a thing that's supposed to ride in your pocket all day are a Bad Thing.

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.