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Palm Releases New Tungsten T2
securitas writes "Palm has released its latest PDA, the Tungsten T2. The T2 features a Texas Instruments 144MHz OMAP 1510 ARM processor, 32MB SDRAM (29.5 available), 320 x 320 transflective TFT display, wireless communications including Bluetooth, email client, SMS, and web browser, Palm OS v5.2.1, and MP3, video playback, and photo software. It will set you back $399. You can read more about the Palm Tungsten T2 and get tech specs (PDF) at the Palm site. Press release here. More at CNet, PC World, Infosync, the Register and the Inquirer. I'm not sure how many people will buy this product instead of waiting for its newly acquired Handspring Treo 600."
Palm on Wednesday launched its newest Tungsten handheld targeted at businesses, the Tungsten T2.
As previously reported, the T2 comes with 32MB of memory, twice that of its predecessor, the Tungsten T. It also includes a new "transflective" display, which is the same size and resolution as that of the Tungsten T, at 320 pixels by 320 pixels, but Palm says it is more easily viewed both indoors and outdoors.
Updates aside, the T2 focuses on multimedia performance, including software for maintaining a digital photo album, playing audio files and viewing short video clips. The handheld also comes with the latest edition of Palm's operating system, version 5.2.1, and built-in Bluetooth wireless. It continues to use Texas Instruments' OMAP 1510 processor.
Tungsten T2, which is available now, will sell for $399, according to Palm. Originally priced at $499, the Tungsten T now lists for $349.
Along with the launch of the Tungsten T2, Palm confirmed price reductions on two of its consumer-oriented handhelds, in an effort to help stimulate sales.
The company dropped the price of its m515 handheld from $299 to $249, and cut its m130 from $199 to $179, the company said. Palm's last price cut was in February.
Nothing new? It has a new display and twice the memory. That's bundling only in the sense that any handheld is a bundle of components. It also comes with a new version of the OS, including Graffiti 2, which I don't think is available for the Tungsten T.
'cause most Palm apps are small ( 1MB). IIRC, the Tungsten T2 will (like other recent Palms) come with a SD/MMC/CF slot for expansion, so they can save costs by including less onboard memory.
T2 - 320*320
Treo 600 - 160*160
That alones makes a big difference in who wants which one.
1Mb? That's a huge Palm app! Most apps are around 30-64K (not including those with lots of extra data like plucker web pages, of course).
Yup, but most people judge the "size" of an app by looking at it in the Info program; on mine, AvantGo takes up 821KB and I've seen portable PDFs take up > 3MB before.
There's always Palms like the m105 - $59 I think at the moment. 8meg memory, 20Mhz. Plenty fast enough for me.
Er, the original Tungsten|T has a stereo Headphone Jack, as clearly indicated here.
--- Fox
Yes. The palm itself is not powerful enough to resize the images and render the documents, so they use a mandatory proxy that does the job. I don't know how fast it is, but it's really annoying that the palm can't connect directly.
I hate the concept so much because:
How do I know that it uses a proxy? If you look at the palm web browser page, you'll see on the bottom of the page that they mention that ports 8827 and 8775 must be open. I can't check if this thing would work without a proxy, because their browser won't work with earlier palms.
I should mention the Palm (III and above?) can do normal TCP/IP as long as you use a modem and not the proprietary web-only palm.NET service (I think it can even listen too but I doubt it can run servers), and there are a couple of palm browsers that access web servers directly without a proxy, like the free EudoraWeb and Xiino. But nobody seems to support them anymore and they got problems: EudoraWeb is very nice but can't load docs bigger than 21k, and Xiino is even nicer than EudoraWeb but it got a very annoying bug with radio buttons (when there are many radio buttons, it makes some of them selected).
I couldn't find any usable browser for palm which doesn't have the problems I listed above, even that I looked a lot. If anyone can recommend me one I'd be very glad, but till then I am really disappointed and frustrated at Palm. I bet that the browsing in the competitors (PocketPC/Zaurus) is much better.
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
the SD/ MMC format can only be used for memory
You never heard of SDIO? What's this Bluetooth card that fits in my m505's SD/MMC slot, then? There's already an SD digital camera for the Palm, and SD 802.11b cards are due this fall (sooner for Pocket PC).
Is the space saved really that important?
Yes.
Or could the unit not afford the slight extra power drain?
PDAs are always a tradeoff between size and features. A PDA with a CF slot and a larger battery to power it would be larger than a Tungsten T2. The Sony NX series has a CF slot and a pile of other features; it's also considerably larger and has been criticized for its short battery life, which apparently has been rectified to some extent with the new NX73/80 handhelds.
Why does palm insist on the clearly inferior expansion slot?
Because it's not inferior -- it just has different advantages and disadvantages than CF.
About a month ago I recieved my first PocketPC (a Dell Axim). I started, many years ago, w/ a Pilot 1000, I believe it was. Then other palms, then a III, IIIx. Then a Samsung i300 phone that had the Palm built in.
While I do love the phone w/ the palm built in, the PocketPC is so much more useful then the palms are (excluding, obviously, the bundled phone and palms).
There's more ram. I can throw documents on them. It's wireless. I can now surf the web on the shitter, in boring meetings. There's *room* on the thing to store just about anything I want.
I never had that with Palm. It was always a meager amount of space, no headphone jack, no color, no wireless, no way to add extra storage space (cf/sd). I couldn't just throw an excel doc on the thing and it just worked. Syncing w/ Exchange (at work, ugh) was never a process that I had 100% confidence in.
I'm not a big MS fan, but I highly doubt I'll ever go back to using the Palm products anytime soon. Which is sad, because for years I was one of their biggest fans. That is, until their innovation practically stopped. Now they've bought Handspring... kinda Microsoftian don't you think? Someone's got a good idea... let's buy them!!
Anyway, I'm quite happy with the PocketPC. I dither down video clips to it's size with MS's Movie app, I've got mp3's on it too. Wireless surfing just works.
Now if only the Axim had the 802.11b/g built into it, and was a bit thinner and lighter...
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
Why don't you try actually using that little handheld computer you have for more than just the basic 4 PIM apps?
First of all I'd love to have more than 4 buttons. Right now I have to use an app called Button Launch (its free people) that lets me assign more than 1 app per button. (counting what the buttons are already assigned to there's three apps to a button).
I have a Kyocera 7135 Smartphone. It runs Palm OS 4.1 and has 16MB of RAM. It also has a SD Card slot, 3G speed capability and a built in MP3 Player with a stereo headset. My AvantGo app alone has 8MB worth of channels (thats around 50 channels folks).
Not to mention I have real estate software to synch with my state's MLS systems, SnapperMail for on the go email, iSilo for reading ebooks at my leisure, PocketQuicken that synchs to Quicken Deluxe on the desktop so I can do away with paper checkbooks, Teal Script so grafitti can learn from me and not the other way around, Tipper so I can calculate the exact tips at restaraunts, upIR for IRC on the go, SplashID for keeping all my bank account, credit card account, web logins, and other sensitive data all in one encrypted place.
My PDA is more than just a glorified addressbook/datebook/todolist/memopad. Its a real friggin handheld computer. AND it does it all in 33Mhz. I can't wait to see what can be done when Smartphones get 400Mhz CPU's like the standalone PDA's already have.
www.kyocerasmartphone.com
I could never be satisified with the earlier models.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Why does palm insist on using a lower capacity, less adaptable expansion slot?
To which one might add: SD is proprietary and not publicly documented.
Why do they do it? Because SD is much smaller than CF.
Note that there are SD expansion devices, although the SD "card" in that case becomes little more than a connector.
Sorry, but that is not correct. I own a T|T, and it most definitely has stereo sound.
Not the best sound in the world (weak bass, low overall volume) but stereo it is!
Some of the other Tungsten series do not have stereo sound, but the T|T does.
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
* no support for playlists at all with native player
* dodgy plastic lens on camera really limits things. 640x480's not that bad (i remember paying quite a bit for the first domestic digital cameras that did this and being reasonably happy) but a glass lens would really help
* dodgy new memory format - the memory stick duo. it's a sony, so maybe you can't expect an SD slot, but it'd be nice. the duo cards are *really* expensive
* provide a means of terminating running programs without third party software. why don't the apps have a "close" icon? this is plain dumb
there's probably a few more, but these are the main gripes. don't get me wrong, i love mine. make it a little bit slimmer and less plasticy and i'd be *really* happy