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Credit Card Sized Concept PDA from Citizen

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the incredible-shrinking-handhelds dept.

chris writes "Citizen has unveiled a miniature PDA concept considerably smaller than existing PDAs. The 60 x 90 x 9.3mm 16-colour grayscale PDA is just a bit bigger then a credit card." A bit too large to stow in one's wallet, but it's still a slick form factor, easily hid in a pocket. It runs ITRON4 for an OS, and the battery life is rated at 30 hours.

8 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Only getting smaller... by Qweezle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    PDA's are only going to get smaller, and more powerful, as time marches on, much like microcomputers did in the 1980s and early 90's, and now we're at a point where they are all equally diminuitive. The same thing will essentially happen with PDAs...soon, we will all have PDAs which we can watch movies on, play music on, surf the web via our phone or WiFi on, or perhaps even it may be a phone as well, and etc. These will fit into a slot in our wallet for credit cards...and they may even dually serve as credit cards. Especially with the coming of OLED displays and nanotechnology, this all looks very certain to happen some time. Exciting!

  2. $200! by PaintyThePirate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For $200, I really can't see this becoming a hot product. The average consumer would rather buy a $200 Palm or Pocket PC. They are just as pocketable as Citizen's concept (unless you have really small pants) plus they have color screens and multimedia capabilities.

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    eclecti.cc
  3. Sure it's small... by MicktheMech · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...but how are you supposed to hold it without getting your fingers on the screen or touchpad? I know minituarization is the name of a game, but when you're talking human computer interaction is it really the best way to go?

  4. Is it just me? by Quasar1999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or are these getting too small to be useful? Really, if I need to read info off it, and more importantly enter info into it, it's just too dang small.

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    Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
    1. Re:Is it just me? by POds · · Score: 2, Insightful

      depends on what you want to use it for. It'd be usful as a notepad like applications to take down notes or whatever in meetings etc...

      What would be good is to able to use it as a PCI as someoen said there is something like that! And an application on the PC or whatever would take the notes off the device and using OCR (or whatever that technology for identifying characters was) or something similar, convert the notice to normal text tob e used in a word processor or something :)!

      Theres possibilities for this thing. We've just got keep an open mind, but not too opened that it will fall out, as someone said on slashdot once! :)

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      Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
  5. Too little, too late. by Dr.+Mu · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The screen is almost unreadable. And the price? $200!! Come on! This isn't 1999! Nowadays, you can get a better-equipped Palm Zire for less than half that. And the size difference? Irrelevant, IMO.

  6. I Can Wait by cmacb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I STILL think all these things are overpriced. Heck in the 80's I got hold of a calculator that was credit card sized..literally in every dimension. flexible like a credit card too so it fit into my wallet and got sat on just like other credit cards with no ill-effects. I think I paid about $5 for it on a boardwalk in CA, but I never saw the things widely marketed in the US. Instead I saw much thicker devices that would crack if flexed at all and they cost several times as much. Palm devices are the same way. The technology exists to build the thing for $15 and have all the standard Pilot functionality. As long as people will pay $200 for every new tiny incremental improvement you can't blame the hardware companies for taking your money.

    If my Palm III ever dies and goes to heaven (doesn't show any signs of it) my plan to is go to Walmart and see what Casio has been up to. I have a sneaking suspicion that they already have all the functionality I need for a carry-everywhere device. I'm a bit more picky about laptops however.

  7. Hopefully well designed by killerkalamari · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I bought one of those Oregon Scientific mini-PDA's (credit card size, but 1/8" thick).. it was only a few bucks brand new on E-Bay, so I decided to give it a shot. It was really fun to play with, but the lack of a keyboard or handwriting recognition made me quickly realize it wasn't much more than a toy. I just couldn't keep up trying to punch things in on the onscreen keyboard so I often ended up with various notes in my pocket thinking "I will enter that later" (phone numbers, appointments, etc). Later, of course, never seemed to come around. I finally quit carrying it when certain cells of the touch screen stopped working (on/off comes to mind).

    I'm still hoping for a programmable PDA calculator watch with the form factor of my Casio Data Bank DBC-61[0] (I'm not talking about those clunky new wannabe data banks with impossible to press keys). Here's a pic:

    Casio DBC-610

    Notice the smooth keypad? This is perfect for quick entry. Raised buttons are harder to press and slow me down. The battery lasts at least 3 years. Now, add PDA features and predictive text input, and you have a winner (the screen doesn't need to change much, it can display text and numbers). Of course it will never happen, but I can dream :) Jeff