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Palm Unveils Foleo, Linux-Based "Mobile Companion"

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the too-little-too-late-or-lifesaver dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to recent rumors, it's not Palm's first Linux smartphone, and no, it's not a competitor to Nokia's Linux-based N800 Internet Tablet. Rather, Palm today unveiled the Foleo, which it's calling a 'new class' of mobile device. The device is designed to expand the email, Internet, and productivity application capabilities of mobile phones such as the Palm Treo, by adding a full-size keyboard and a larger screen. Company founder Jeff Hawkins predicts that the Foleo will be more successful than Palm's original Palm Pilot, which he designed, and more successful than its current Treo smartphones. He touts its simplicity: 'Press a button, it's on. Press it again, it's off. There are no other modes.'"

8 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Anyone else thinking what I'm thiinking? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Small, low-power Linux laptop....

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    My blog
  2. And I'd Want This...Why? by mmurphy000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A 2.5-pound notebook running Linux with WiFi and Bluetooth sounds sweet...but one report says it's a closed system, which means until somebody hacks past that limitation, it's a dead-end. For about $500, I'm expecting at least a mostly-open system (like Maemo with the Nokia N800).

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    The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
  3. Palm, Inc. jumps shark. Founder sells 15000 shares by Torqued · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FTW?

    Looks like Jeff Hawkins is so confident in the Fooleo that he decided to dump 15000 shares of PALM.

    Instead of spending R&D $ to fix the issues with their aging OS, they "invent" another piece of hardware that neither me nor any of my coworkers want to have to carry around. We already have notebooks.

    Palm has officially jumped the shark, IMHO. Looks like I'm getting a Blackberry soon. :(

  4. Battery life! Battery life! Battery life??? by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope this device actually gets a decent battery life. I've been frustrated that all the new PDAs have worse battery life than the early generation machines. The venerable (and discontinued) Psion 5-series got 25-35 hours of use on a pair for AAs and the original Palm Pilot series got maybe 15-20 hours on a AAAs. Every device since those machines has been distinctly inferior (usually getting only a few hours of real use per charge). If the new machine can't last a full day at a conference or a trans-oceanic flight, then I'll just keep using those older (and better) machines.

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    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  5. Re:What's the point? by Original+Replica · · Score: 5, Funny

    More to the point, where am I going to find a belt clip for this thing?

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    We are all just people.
  6. Just like a re-gutted Psion 7... great! by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I have a psion 7 running Epoch and an old CPU. This is a very handy form factor. I've been hoping for a new release but sadly Psion is no more. I think this is it.

    It is pointless trying to stuff productivity applications into a PDA format. Try doing word even simple processing on a PDA or blackberry.

    This is also much more like what an OLPC should be. ARM == low power & cost relative to an x86. I think OPLC got it wrong when they went x86 - which looks like it was done solely to support Windows. Linux runs great on ARM (there are probably more Linux devices using ARM than x86).

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    Engineering is the art of compromise.
    1. Re:Just like a re-gutted Psion 7... great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've spent the last couple years of my life working with desktop-class apps on ARM. Here's my experience:

      Linux may run on ARM, but desktop-class Linux applications run very poorly, if at all. For example Firefox is a dog, as is pretty much anything interpreted (especially javascript - ugh!). Lack of a large L2 cache is a primary culprit. Lack of an FPU in most ARM implementations is a problem as well.

      ARM/Linux has dragged behind the mainstream x86 kernel as well. NPTL on ARM was very late, which made porting many things a hassle. The EABI transition wasn't much fun either.

      Another big problem is that media playback is slow/limited if it works at all (Flash + other browser plugins for ARM are quite scarce). Optimization is often done for x86 extensions (MMX/SSE/etc). That code is key to performance in many media applications, and even if you're lucky enough to have something like WMMX on your ARM CPU, you still have to port the x86 code. That's a drag.

      It's my opinion that OLPC made the right choice by selecting x86 over ARM. The Geode GX was a bad move, fortunately they fixed that by switching to the Geode LX.

  7. Re:About the Size of My MacBook by cheater512 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually since its running Linux it does everything your Mac Book does.