Slashdot Mirror
Lust After The Sony Clie NZ90
V0rtex writes "Once again, Sony is ahead of the game with their new Clie PEG-NZ90. View the specs here. Not to be released until the end of February, this one is packed with some long awaited features since the NX70V such as built in bluetooth and the 2 megapixel camera with flash. Is it really that great? Check out a couple reviews. It would be nice if they would include the faster (400 MHz) version of the XScale processor and step the internal memory up a bit, but this one carries an $800 price tag as it is." Even if it has issues, I think any step towards integrating the vast array of personal electronics (Cel Phone, MP3 Player, PDA, Digital Camera) is a good one. And this looks like the first PDA with a real camera.
But I made a laundry list of features yesterday of what I want in a handheld/phone:
Integerated Cell Phone
MP3 Playback
Voice Recorder
GPS
Memory slot (SD, Flash etc...)
Calender/Scheduling etc...
Full operating system (either Linux or PocketPC)
Clamshell design (hate having to use a stupid case)
At least 3 Megapixel Camera with optical zoom
I think we will have this in about 2-3 years and it will cost $500.
Any other features I've forgot?
...but this one carries an $800 price tag as it is." Even if it has issues...
For $800 I sure as hell don't want it to have 'issues'. Linux has 'issues', I'm willing to deal with them because it's free. If it cost $800 I'd laugh and ask for a refund.
The main reason is that the Memory Stick, in implementation, sucks in just about every way imaginable.
It is bigger than SD/MMC, more expensive per MB than just about any other removable media, slower, and is still maxed out at 128 MBs.
Sony has been promising gigabyte memory sticks for years, and just recently they announced that not only will it be delayed further, but in fact they won't work on ANYTHING but new devices.
I'm the very happy owner of a Sony NR70V, but to suggest memory sticks are even remotely competetive with the plethora of compactflash and SD/MMC available in stores today is ridiculous.
The sooner Sony gives up on this stupid attempt to control storage media, the better off they and their customers will be.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
> of the user code is written as 68K and emulated on the device
:) as for how the OS5 devices run, i have posted a few stories in the past to /. and, a few of them are here in other stories:
8 73 166
7 87 743d =4787 183
= 13 4
:) - having 400Mhz would give us even more fun stuff to experiment around with. the real issue we are running into is the differences with ARM implementation, mainly OMAP and XScale. sony adopted XScale, Palm adopted OMAP. there are some slight issues between the two, which, gives different 'running speeds' for native arm code.
:) it just takes a bit of thinking and good design. we have been writing ARM code for palmos way before the pubic devices were available - it was fun figuring out how native arm code works and rebuilding cross compilers :)
damn.. i had moderator points - but, i figured my input in this story was better than moderating it
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=35839&cid=3
and, some other postings specific to native code in the ogg/vorbis threads. [maybe of interest - more specific to development of native arm code]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=46474&cid=4
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=46474&ci
as a developer, having 400Mhz is nice. we have a 3D engine (raycaster based) running on 68k units, and, we were able to seriously enhance it for arm units:
http://mobilewizardry.com/board/viewtopic.php?t
its been solely possible due to the extra processing power. while some may argue its only an emulated system - the extra Mhz means palmos can do pocket pc stuff
> There is a way to write some code as ARM, but it's pretty painful
it is not painful to write ARM code