$300 Linux PDA from Royal to feature Qtopia

An anonymous reader writes "According to a Linux Devices news item, Royal is preparing to release a Linux PDA before the end of this year with a price point of under $300. The device will use Trolltech's Qtopia, so it will share a common operating environment and application platform with the Sharp Zaurus Linux PDAs. Royal announced a Linux PDA in January 2002, but apparently discontinued that project and embarked on a new design. The Linux Devices story includes a photo of the earlier version."

Comments

I had a Royal PDA once

[SoCalChris]

I bought it because I was too cheap to buy a Palm. At $50, it looked like a good deal because it had handwriting recognition, and most applications that Palm has.

Everything on it sucked though. The battery would last a day at the most, and it wasn't rechargeable. The handwriting recognition NEVER worked right. The user interface was horrible. I finally took it back and traded it up to a Palm.

Hopefully they designed this one better, and will be a nice choice for a Linux based PDA.

Not much different than the 5500...

[Not_Wiggins]

Checking on the model they introduced at the beginning of the year, it seems roughly equivalent to the Sharp Zaurus 5500 (which I own). Forgive me for pointing it out, but can't the 5500 be had new for about $240?
Or, are they planning on introducing something "more powerful" for $300?

I'm glad to see more entries into the handheld market that are trying to utilize linux... but, I can't say the price-point is compelling.

Besides, there's still issues with making the platform "plug-n-play" enough so you can get real use out of it without being a somewhat familiar with linux at the start. Anyone who's put OpenZaurus on their Z will be able to relate... especially when it comes to Synching with a desktop.

Unless this new entry makes it easier for "Mom" to use a PDA, I can't say it'll make much of a dent.

EEWWW....

[greymond]

it's going to be coming out late this year/ early next year and only have

"206MHz Intel StrongARM processor with 16MB of Flash ROM and 32MB of system RAM"

The new Zaurus's coming out at the same time are having 400mhz Strong/Arm and a total of 96mb of ram/rom

they really need to up the specs on that if they want to compete....

Flash EEPROM

[vlad_petric]

Since Flash is so cheap these days, it would have been better (IMHO) to have the home filesystem on flash and not within RAM, just like recent Zaurii. I don't know a single person who hasn't lost PDA data because of battery ... The Raven.

Will this be better?

[IceFox]

We can only hope that they wont fork Qtopia like Sharp did and upgrade as TrollTech releases new versions. Because of Sharp's fork, the Zaurus users never got the bug fixes from TrollTech and Sharp never gave back their fixes leaded to a very rapid End Of Life for the Zaurus. Ever wonder why Sharp's Qtopia sucked so much? It was a fork of 1.4beta. 1.5 was TrollTech's first stable release and that is debatable as to being stable. 1.7 is much better.

Now for the big question... Will it be compiled with gcc 2.x or gcc 3? If they use 2 they get binary compatibility. If they use 3 they get a much needed speedup, but only have source compatibility. Sharp choose the worse of the two. They broke binary compatibility and kept gcc 2. What stupidity!

-Benjamin Meyer

Linux on PDA - Already exists

[Junado]

Linux is already portable on at least one PDA I know of: the Psion 5mx. Imagine this: if I get to connect it to the internet through my cellphone (irDa port), with Linux installed, that would make that device one heck of a portable tool!

Info on PsiLinux

Re:Hmm

[Jungle guy]

Was this post informative? I bet that Royal is using the commercial version of Qtopia, and has paid for it. I don't think that is bad: Trolltech is an important company for the Linux ecosystem, even if many people on the community don't like them (for the whole QT licensing debate and the connection with the Canopy group). And Qtopia has a bonus: if you want to develop free apps for it, you can get the source code and the SDK for free.

Re:Not needed, I think

[Erwos]

The part that you don't mention is that there are so many warnings about "bricking" your iPaq that it's an extremely harrowing experience even if you know pretty much what you're doing. I've done the Familiar Linux thing with my iPaq 3150 - it was not at all fun the first time.

So, yes, hardened geeks who are fearless will not have too much of an issue putting Familiar on their iPaq. However, more casual users will certainly balk at this, especially on the more expensive iPaq variants.

Not all the quirks are worked out, either. There's no viable SD driver. Software support is somewhat lacking (no xmms-e!). Opie only recently released a 1.0 release, too.

More info at Handhelds.org.

-Erwos

Re:Wow.

[Milican]

Sorry to hear about that man, but not all PDAs have such abysmal battery life. I can use my Handspring Visor Edge with Magellan GPS for the same purposes and there is still plenty of battery life for on and off duties. I can go camping and Geocaching for the weekend and not even think about batteries. I was in Ecuador and didn't charge up my Visor for a week.

On a similar note, I had an iPAQ 3700 series and its battery life was equally lacking. I hear the HP 1910s and above are better though. I dunno about other PPC devices, but the Palms seem to have much better battery lives.

JOhn