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palmOne Releases Two New Zire Handhelds

Posted by simoniker on from the sweaty-palms dept.

wPageUp writes "palmOne today announced two new additions to their consumer Zire PDA line. According to PalmInfoCenter, the Zire 72 has a 1.2 MP digital camera, 32MB of ram and a 312MHz Intel processor for $299. On the low end side, the new Zire 31 is the first sub-$150 color handheld to include MP3 audio and a memory expansion slot."

9 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Palm renews mac support by dncsky1530 · · Score: 5, Informative

    MacCentral reports: "The Mac installed base is extremely important to us," said Stéphane Maes, PalmOne's senior product line manager for handhelds. "We will continue to meet Mac users' needs regardless of what OS we're running."

    1. Re:Palm renews mac support by EisPick · · Score: 4, Informative

      They're not renewing anything. Keep in mind that there are two "Palm" companies now.

      PalmSource, the company that develops the PalmOS operating system, will no longer incorporate Mac support into the core OS and desktop PIM. This has not changed since they announced it, and it probably never will.

      PalmOne, the company that manufactures "Palm" hardware has never shipped a Palm without Mac support and has never intended to. Now that they can't get Mac support from PalmSource, they will bundle third-party tools, just like they do with MP3 players and MSOffice editors, which also aren't incorporated in the OS. I'm sure Sony and the other PalmOS licensees will do likewise.

      Macheads need not get their panties in a bunch here. PalmSource simply wants to focus on their core competency of handheld operating systems. PalmOne wants to put together the best bundle of software and hardware they can. None of this should be news.

  2. Only EU has growing market for PDA's by boogy+nightmare · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to the register here

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/28/global_p da _sales_q1/

    (soz when i do ahref's from this machine they dont work)

    PDA sales are falling all over the world except EU, this can be attributed to the power of the mobile phones that are coming out at the moment. Seriously, i have a nokia 6600, what can the Zire's do that the 6600 cant. This phone has
    Calendar,
    Notepad,
    Plays music,
    Expandable memory,
    Todo lists,
    convertors,
    voice recorder,
    Camera (with video function)
    Address list,
    opera,
    games,
    email
    the list goes on

    But it uses Symbian a better OS that i can upgrade, alter and get hundreds of progreammes for.

    Its a nice little bit of cheap tech but would rather have the phone (prefer a p900 though)

    --
    Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
  3. Internet over Bluetooth to Mobile Phone by bre_dnd · · Score: 4, Informative
    I've played with the Zire72 -- doing some development work, have seen early versions. It's *BLUE*. The camera is decent enough to take nice snapshots at 1.2 MP.

    Most interesting to me is the Bluetooth connectivity, you can be connected to the Net in just a few clicks for most recent phones. Works good enough to read slashdot or check your e-mail.

    Another interesting new application in there is "messages" -- it sends and receives SMS, MMS and e-mail.

  4. Re:what about Linux by adriansuri · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since Palm already includes has a Java machine environment, why not simply install as java ogg player otherwise here's some info about native ogg players http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/oggpalm.ht ml regards Adrian Suri

  5. Re:"Sub-$150 color handheld" by krymsin01 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you look at the product page for the 31 on palm's site, you'll notice that you need an expansion card for mp3 playback.

    --
    stuff
  6. Re:Intel processor. by iapetus · · Score: 4, Informative

    No. ARM licenses their processor designs to other companies rather than manufacturing them themselves.

    --
    ++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
    Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
  7. Re:Intel processor. by iapetus · · Score: 4, Informative

    They use ARM code. Which is actually quite fun to write by hand, if that's ever required these days.

    ARM started as a spin-off from UK computer company Acorn (ARM originally stood for Acorn RISC Machines, although as it was exploited away from its parent company it was renamed Advanced RISC Machines). The ARM2 processor was used in their Archimedes machines, which at the time were probably the most powerful thing on the market. As Acorn started spiralling out of the home computing market, ARM was spun off as an entirely separate company, licensing its processor designs to other companies and improving them in the process (StrongARM with Digital and XScale with Intel being the most obvious big-name successes).

    (All from memory - apologies for any inaccuracies. You can probably find out more at the ARM website...)

    --
    ++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
    Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
  8. Re:Intel processor. by iapetus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't know what your best option for an assembler/dev environment would be for the Tungsten: I haven't played with ARM code outside the Gameboy Advance and back in the days of Acorn, but these links might prove useful:

    --
    ++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
    Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.