A Palm for Every Purpose

fm6 writes "We can look forward to a round of niche devices running PalmOS. According to the Forbes article, we're looking at PalmOS in: a game device called Helix , a platform for developing 'customized handheld instruments' called the Meazura, and of course, the usual round of PalmOS cell phones. On the other hand, fewer manufacturers seem to show any interest in making general-purpose PalmOS PDAs. Food for thought."

Comments

The Battle Rages On

[snitty]

There seems to be a battle growing between integration and segration in the Computer Industry.

First it was the internet appliances, with the thinking that people would eventually want seperate "computers" for web browsing, typing, etc.

Now we have the idea of tablets as alternatives to laptops, and a camears being integrated into phones and PDAs.

It seems that people can't decide how many devices they want on them at any givem time. Will we ever see a balance between integration and segragation of digital devices?

Re:The Battle Rages On

[Bastian]

(warning, slightly OT)

I don't know, but it seems like the industry is also missing out on some of the most sensible types of integrations.

For example, I haven't seen much with integrating pagers, but I sure know that if I had both cell phone and pager service, I'd much rather have an integrated cell phone and pager than I would an integrated cell phone and PDA or cell phone and digital camera. (Heck, I'd rather have a pager/PDA than a cell phone/pda, too.)

Re:The Battle Rages On

[pauljlucas]

I haven't seen much with integrating pagers, but I sure know that if I had both cell phone and pager service, I'd much rather have an integrated cell phone and pager than I would an integrated cell phone and PDA or cell phone and digital camera.

The thing is that nothing on the current crop of cellphone/PDA devices or even just plain cellphones has to change one bit to incorporate paging since SMS exists.

All that needs to change is software/hardware on the back-end in cellular providers' switching centers to provide a POTS-to-SMS gateway just like there are already e-mail-to-SMS gateways.

There are any number of reasons why this hasn't happened:

• Paging companies are too entrenched and defend their markets against cellular companies.
• There's not enough of a return-on-investment for cellular companies to get into the market.
• Companies can probably make more money keeping them separate. For example, they can charge at least $35/mo for cell service and probably as much for pager service (athough I actually have no idea what pager service rates are). If they offered paging as an add-on service to cell service, they couldn't get away with more than $5/mo additional (probably).

Note: the above are educated guesses only. If somebody knows the real reasons, I'd like to hear them.

Re:The Battle Rages On

[JamieF]

In my experience, the folks in favor of integration are the engineers, while the folks in favor of segregation are usability specialists.

Maybe it *is* possible to get a phone, PDA, camera, pager, gameboy, audio player, etc. in a single small device, but how the hell are you going to get a decent UI on it? Perhaps the problem is more that there are too many single-function buttons on current devices, and that a multifunction device would just have a bunch of multifunction buttons that the software would use differently for each feature, sorta like the PS2 does.

You'd lose the dedicated "zoom in"/"zoom out" buttons but on the gadgets I have, those are so small that the icons for them are inscrutable anyway (so they might as well be unlabeled).

It's probably possible to come up with a good UI for such a thing, but since gadget buyers still buy based on features instead of usability, it'll probably be a reeeeeal long time before we see it.

Original Purpose?

[DarkBlackFox]

Were not all these concepts intended for the Palm platform originally? Mobile computing has come a long way in the past 5 years, with more and more powerful processors leading to smaller and better things. Where is the PalmOS headed? The place it's always been going- to provide a comprehensive interface to perform certain computing functions on an ultra-portable level. The introduction of more/enhanced features/functions/uses is only following the initial path set by mobile computing.

And of course...

[Graspee_Leemoor]

The watches, already mentioned on slashdot.

Amongst other places: here

graspee

Re:yeah right...

[the_2nd_coming]

where have you been? palm OS supports transflective color screens now. and palmOS 6 will be BeIA reincarnate.

pdas are now the niche

[Zebbers]

I just bought a Nokia 3650 which has enough average person pda functionality to satisfy me: calendar, todo, phonebook...christ. it runs symbian and java midlets so there are a whole lot of apps out for it, including doom ;)

point is...ive always been interested in a pda to use as an organizer, but theres no way in hell im carrying that bulk in addition to my phone.

now that problem is solved. I'm usually against multipurpose devices ie : vhs/dvd players...but space is a concern with things you carry.

Basically my phone is a phone, a digital camera (640x480),a gameboy(has emulator), a pda...and more (mp3...) and of course it has internet connectivity.

Re:pdas are now the niche

[gilesjuk]

Actually the Nokia 9210, 7650 and 3650 use very good batteries that last quite a long time. The reason is probably the low clock speed on these devices, on the 9210 it's around 66MHz.

These aren't PocketPC battery sapping PDAs. Symbian is a much more compact OS and has a long heritage with ARM processors. It needs more programmer effort, unlike Windows CE which is designed to be familiar to exisiting Windows programmers.

zire is a nice Palm

[romit_icarus]

The $99 Zire is an example of the non-general purpose PDA concept. Zire is only for scheduling, to-do lists, and an address book. It seems many were buying loaded PDAs and ended up using it as an organiser...

still holding out

[snuffdiddy23]

i am still going to hold off until microsoft comes out with a collar-based PDA with GPS capabilities. if they were cheap (or simply mandatory) i think everyone would grow to love them.

XP collar edition does not sound that far away, i am going to embrace the "freedom to innovate" and hope i don't catch anything.

Summary...

[floydigus]

Summary of this article...

Hey - you can get all different kinds of Palm devices! There's one for playing games and there's another one for doing science stuff! Palm and Sony make Palm devices for use as organisers! Cool!
Tune in next week for "There's these things called peripherals that you can plug into your computer to make it do stuff!"
What? You mean I'm actually getting paid for this?! This is like, so cool!

This will Continue

[Hangtime]

When the PDA really took fire three years ago, we all began to speculate that everyone would have a handheld and would go everywhere with it. My how times have changed and not necessarily for the worse. I have a Palm IIIxe and find myself not taking it to all the places I used too. It got to the point that is was very bulky and I found I didn't take it out as much so I left it at home. However, when I was in school I used all the time. Hooked up with one of the Palm keyboards I could take all my notes in class and not have to worry about lugging a laptop.

The simple fact of the matter is, handhelds are starting to go back into their niche and take the place of paper where it makes sense. Currently, we have an internally produced application that interfaces with our system of record to update inspections for home sites. It makes a lot of sense because the inspector no longer has to use a pen and pad and we can process draws for borrowers at any point in the week instead of waiting for the inspectors to come back in on Thursday.

I predict you will see more and more of this as time progresses. The time for everyone having a PDA with 20 applications has passed. Its now Blackberrys (wireless email, calendar, contact info) and/or hardened PDAs for every day, one to two applications use.

Re:This will Continue

[rmayes100]

I think the issue is not everyone needs a PDA. It got to the point where everyone was buying them and then discovering that they didn't really need them. I'm just a programmer, for the most part I sit in a cubical all day tapping on a keyboard. I may have a few meetings every week but I certainly don't need a PDA to keep track of things. My wife owns her own business and has to deal with distributors, customers, employees etc all day. She uses her PDA and her cell phone to the hilt and they do actually make her life more effecient and easier. A few people do actually benefit from these things and use them for what they were intended. For the general public things like wireless networking, games, music playback, cameras are far more interesting and specific applications like data entry and hardened versions for field work and factory environments are going to be far more imortant in the long run for corporations than just having PDAs for all their execs. Trying to build a super PDA that can do everything is not going to be very usefull for anyone. I think it's good that Palm Source is getting a very diverse group of customers purchasing PalmOS for a wide range of devices. It's better than the one size fits all attitude that a certain other PDA/Smart Phone OS vendor has.

The SPH-i500

[jstroebele]

We need more cell phones that run Palm OS like the SPH-i500 it's the size of a normal phone but with all the palm stuff built in

Of course the SPH-i600 would kick it's ass, but I don't think that will ever make it to market

A Palm for Every Purpose...

[Xacid]

My palms have enough purpose as it is... Patty cake you sickos, not that, I swear.

Re:What's the future?

[rusty0101]

Low level micro-coding will pretty much always have a purpose. Especially for micro-controllers.

I know that there are a lot of people who will point out that today's optimizing compilers can often produce tighter code than an average programer writing in Assembly. I won't even contest that, because I am pretty sure that the few of us that are completly incompetent at writing code in assembly are affecting the "average" in question. Of course that means that just about any competent Assembly programmer can write tighter code than an optimizing compiler can. (Today.)

Personally I think that if ASICs continue as they are, Coding at the bare metel is going to continue to be important as the ASIC will present an API to the system it is installed in. The ASIC itself may be running a higher level OS, but for the near future will not itself need to multi-task. As a result the OS involved will be very limited in capability, and may itself be written in Assembly. I would expect it to be an interupt driven OS that responds either to environmental or api interupts, which ammount to the same thing.

Yes memory is getting physically smaller with higher capacity, and these ASIC processors are getting faster. As a result it is possible to run more bloated softare with no appreciable impact to performance. At the same time there will always be instances where a 1/100" delay will be the difference between the user's life, and death. You may not be interested in working on a project where such is the requirement, but someone will. Provide them with the information they need to succeed.

Then again, I could be wrong. Expert Systems may be able to take arbitrary instructions and produce machine code up to the requirements. I just don't see that happening within the next couple of years. I may have tunnel vision.

-Rusty

Re:and look at the buttons. . .

[druzicka]

Actually, check out the video at the following URL:

http://www.godoplay.com/tapwave2.html

They show a brief glimpse of a guy using the hardware itself. He's holding it so that the screen is landscape... Looks like a layout similar to the origninal GBA, with Dpad and action buttons on either side of the screen. Plus there are clips from a couple of games. They look like they're in 3d. There is a Spy Hunter and a Tony Hawk game... Graphics appear to be as good as a Gamecube. Beats the hell out of the GBA's Super Nintendo-style graphics.

My Palm...

[Gefiltefish]

My Palm has been working it its own niche market since I was about 13...

build it and they will come

[Connie_Lingus]

There is, IMHO, a "holy grail" of handheld devices, and it would contain...

1. a cell-phone
2. 16-bit color Nintendo and/or Sega compatibility
(maybe emulated MAME-like?)
3. embedded Linux
4. 80G hard drive ala I-pod.
5. Can easily fit in my pocket...
6. 802.11g

Build it, and I will come...nothing else makes sense to me