Color Palms to Debut in February?

Kevin writes "There's a story over at CNET talking about the future release of color Palms in February. Palm Computing's IPO is expected to coincide with the release. The article states that simplicity is a major part of the PalmPilot's design and that the implementation of color screens may not correspond with the ' so-called Zen of Palm principle,' keeping devices as simple as possible. "

Comments

And the expected form factor is...?

[dmorin]

What I find interesting is that despite the apparent popularity of the V, that they are churning out so many variations with the III footprint. It's almost like they're saying "Ok, we made it as small and sleek as we could for the executives, but if you want it to *do* anything, you need this here workhorse-sized doohickey."

Ya got yer III, IIIx, IIIe. The VII is based on the III form factor. Soon you'll have the IIIc which I can only presume will be like a III (if not bigger!), and there's no reason not to think that the IIIxe won't be the same as the III sizewise.

I'm reminded of a device company I used to work for. A scientist sat in our weekly meeting and announced that the device would only produce acceptable results if measurement X was within something like 10 microns. Upon which the manufacturing manager demonstrated to him that by the time you got to measurement X you had to put together measurements A,B,C, each of which had a tolerance of 15 microns in the first place, so there's no way he could get what he asked for. He shrugged, apparently oblivious to the reality of the physical universe, and said that in that case, just wouldn't work.

Seems to me like people want it to be small (PalmV sized sounds nice), with a bigger screen and bigger writing area (huh?). More memory, please (16M would sound like lots now, but I'm sure it won't in a year), but I want to stuff a few MP3s on there so I'm going to fill it up quick anyway. Please add color and voice recognition, but don't make the batteries any thicker. Make them last longer.

I like my IIIx. I am hoping that, unlike the V/Vx, the IIIx will have an upgrade for that 8meg.

bah.

[Zurk]

whats really important is :
[1] Memory protection for the pilot in the OS - paperclips suck, resetting sucks.
[2] Better security for the databases - one application can rewrite *all* data right now 0- that sucks.
[3] Easier API's, more access to documentation and better testing
[4] A full web browser
[5] Faster CPU, better battery, slightly larger screen (and less reflective), less scratchy screen, more rugged construction.
Adding color is just a waste of resources - improvements need to be made elsewhere.

In defense of color

[mattdm]

Probably a lot of people are thinking "what do you need color for? Isn't that just fluff?" Actually, on a 160x160 screen, color is incredibly useful. It adds a whole new way to fit more information in that tiny space. For example, entries on the calendar can be made different colors to indicate types of events or days. Sure, you can do this with icons, but there's only so many 8x8 2-bit icons that are distinguishable from each other.
As it stands now, the month-view is basically useless. Color would change that.

Bright red in the todo or memo list is a quick visual cue that something is important. Or, toxic yellow could indicate work-related items, without wasting screen real-estate.

And of course there's things like maps, which barely work at all in black and white. The added information conveyed by color can fix that.

(Note that UI elements shouldn't _depend_ on color, since a lot of people are color blind to one extent or another. But that doesn't mean it can't be useful to others.)

--

There's a very good use for color, you know...

[golden spud]

Color is something that is much more immediately visible and discernable than words or numbers. Consider, for instance, someone that regularly uses the task list. Perhaps this person prefers to prioritize their list by importance. With a black and white screen, she would have to look carefully at the numbers to the left to determine what priority certain items were, even if the list were sorted by priority. (Perhaps she has them sorted alphabetically, with a certain code at the beginning to categorize them differently)

In this case, color -- even 16 colors, would be very useful. She'd press her todo key on her pilot, notice that there were two red items above several blue ones, and know that those red items were of high importance immediately. She'd be able to read them quicker if they were colorized than if she had to look at the priority number assigned to each item.

Something similar could be done with categories. Assign different colors to categories in your addressbook, and now you could view your entire address book but still be able to rapidly discern between different types of contacts. This would make it easier to use your Palm's address book quickly. Instead of using two hands and tapping the corner twice to get to the right category, you can leave it set on "All". Just use one hand to press the address book button and then use the hardware buttons to scroll through your list. Green for clients, red for suppliers, purple for personal contacts.

Color web browsing on a Palm would be neatonifty, but remember, the Palm is supposed to be simple. The examples above show why adding color will keep it simple, and perhaps make it even simpler, at least for data-retrieval tasks, which is what I (and the people I know who use Palms) mainly use them for after the "wow" factor wears off.

Technical Issues Regarding Color Palms

[Effugas]

(Disclaimer: I'm buying a Palmpilot pretty much when my paycheck clears. Merry Christmas.)

First of all, Palmpilots don't have a black and white screen. They have a black and light greenish screen--not "Spinach Green Color" as the old Game Gear ads chastized Gameboy for(but guess which system is still around!)--but greenish nonetheless.

You can't implement a color display without implementing the color white, and that's an readability increase.

The problem is, LCDs don't glow, they block. So most color screens have a consistent white light source behind the display, called a Backlight. Whereas Palmpilots can presently function just fine by reflecting the light surrounding the Palmpilot(with a very optional backlight for low light operation), Color WinCE machines generally need to tote around their light supply in order to meet the functionality expected by their users.

So that's where the battery problems come from. Of course, if a color screen can be developed that *also* operates based upon surrounding light levels, you're only talking about an increased memory/bus transfer load on the system, as it moves from animating and displaying 4 bit black and white color to various degrees of red, green, and blue. Nintendo's Color Gameboy--really a well executed piece of work--is quite small but is definite proof that a color display can be fabricated that operates on ambient light. (While I doubt it has anything to do with power usage, Color Gameboy restricts the color gamut--the range of addressable colors--to 56 specific colors, thus solving much of the speed problems inherent when you're throwing around much more data. Some crazy hackers managed to get a very high color display mode out of the color gameboy though--4096 colors, if I remember right.)

Regarding the usefulness of color, portable web browsing, photograph display, and most forms of advanced context are heavily assisted by the presence of color. We've developed color vision for a reason, and not just to tell whether fruits on the vine are ripe yet ;-)

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com