Comments on: Palm Hints at Three New Handhelds

The only way, IMHO, for Palm OS to continue to support its lead over PocketPC is by innovations from ALL its supporting companies. I, still for the life of me, can't figure out how come there's so much animosity between Palm OS users. If you need to feel your handheld is best to make it in life, don't let me stop you.

A new $100 handheld would be great. My daughter (going on 9 years old) and had her m105 for almost a year now, and loves it. She uses it at school for assignments, at home to keep track of phone numbers and games. It's nice to know that there will be another affordable palm for her when she need to replace this one.

Palm makes a great line of devices, as do Handspring, Sony and Handera, it's going to be great to see what everyone has in store for OS5 and the new ARM processers.

TC

"...in the end the only one left smiling was the Jester, and his was only painted on..." - TC

So, which market do you want to attack? These guys need to remember that no matter how cool a PDA/Cellphone hybrid might be, the primary application for these units is to TALK (not text/sms/email) to people.

Time will tell.

I think that with as many hybrid PDA/Phone combos that we will be seeing in the very near future that the need for BT enabled phones is diminishing. They will certainly be available, but the need to use them as your wireless link from your pda will be secondary.

Most pda/phones I've seen have very little talk time (ie 2 hrs). This means after you talk your phone to death you can't even see what you next appointment is because there's no juice.

Don't forgot you won't be able to talk on the phone and use the pda to do something else either without a headset.

Until hybrid devices get better battery life (PDA's and phones seperately need more life) I don't see standalone devices going anywhere.

No highs? No lows? Sound blows?
Must be BOSE.

I /am/ the eggman.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2CC14CE

MPEG,1/4 VGA color screen, Digital camera included, GSM/GPRS phone, fast processor, probably 32-64Mb memory, and more.

Actually, THAT is an idiotic statement. Hawkins created graffiti, and Xerox is saying that it is so similar to their unistrokes system that it is copyright infringement. Yeah right. Take a look at when Hawkins was creating this stuff, and you'll find that if Unistrokes did exist then, Xerox wasn't telling anybody. Beyond that, when you let people use your creation long enough without doing anything about it, you lose your right to it. That's why Windows (or any other windowing GUI) doesn't have Xerox stamped on the box, and why that mouse you're so busy mindlessly clicking can be made by numerous manufacturers without paying a fee to PARC. If you remember, Xerox actually tried to assert intellectual property rights over the GUI, and lost because they had let it go so long. They only persued it when they smelled money, and that is what they are doing here. I predict that the appeal will overturn the original ruling on Graffiti.

It's poor foresight and crappy asset management like this that has driven Xerox to the brink of bankruptcy many times.

I'm guessing the real reason you think this is because it doesn't run Pocket PC, to which you have dedicated your life.

Another one will have built-in Bluetooth, so as to have the SD slot for other application rather than occupied by the current Bluetooth SD card.

Frankie

That's silly. The only thing people have been jealous about here with PPC is the hardware spec, (that and the OS ability to do hi-res and sound - both really related to hardware). Most people in the know (ok - lots of people on PIC anyways - myself included) HATE the PPC OS. With OS 5 allowing for higher res than PPC and sound, security, and networking that is at least as good - WHY ON GODS GREEN EARTH WOULD YOU GET AN OS 5 DEVICE JUST TO INSTALL PPC ON IT???? Palm OS is much better. As a developer, i love Palm OS - i have more control over the interface (better dev tools in my opinion) and from a user standpoint - it is much more straight forward to do something in Palm OS, then it is to do the same thing in PPC.

Part of his job as CEO is to go to conferences and be a corporate cheerleader. No one listens to you if you don't have something concrete to say, which is why Benhamou talked about good upcoming products.

I'm surprised when Palm said last month that demand was way down that it didn't blame OS 5. I know I'm not buying a handheld until OS 5 is out and I'm teling everyone else the same thing.

Hey dumbass....this isn't an official product announcement, it's only a preview of what Palm plans to do in the near future.

Think before you spew from that oriface you call a mouth.

Last month, a Motorola spokesperson told ZDnet UK that the Palm OS 5 handhelds will use roughly half the power as Pocket PC handhelds running the same hardware.

www.palminfocenter.com/view_Story.asp?ID=3514

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News Editor

What are you talking about? It is known that OS5 compliant processors are coming out that range between 18Mhz and 1Ghz. Why would you assume that the entry level OS5 device is going to be faster? With OS 5's emulation of OS 4, it sure as heck won't be faster (for most things)unless they go with a processor thats at least 100 Mhz. And for a device thats only $100, don't count on it being more then 100mhz - if that. I like Palm and i am anxious to see what these new devices are about - but dont get yr expectations completely out of perspective. OS 5 CAN run really fast - it depends on which CPU manufacturers use. Also, OS 5 CAN support hi-res and MP3, but these almost certainly won't be in a $100 device.

Why assume that it will have an expansion slot?

Why assume it will be color?

This device will be entry level and will be cheap. Is it really realistic to assume that it will have any fancy doodads. Hope springs eternal but I suspect that this will be a pretty stripped down, basic Palm model.

The CDPD network that OmniSky/Earthlink use is primarily owned by AT&T, but some other carriers have some chunks. The DC area's coverage is through Verizon, for instance.

Play up the storage capabilities of the SD card and how you can have an huge array of games onboard without ever having to swap cartridges. Cost-wise, it's easy to implement and would go a longer way to getting the teenage-ish market onboard than MP3 gimmickry does. (All of the kids I know don't mess around with memory card-based MP3 devices because of cost and storage capacity. They just burn their own mixes onto cheap audio CD-Rs and play them on $40 portable CD players).

In many respects, any color Palm PDA is already far superior than a GameBoy Advance which a) cannot backlight the screen and b) cannot be turned off in mid game (which to my mind is crazy!).

I would look forward to a gaming oriented marketing push, especially if a 4 way directional pad was available on the hardware buttons! I had hoped Sony would do something like this but given their track record on designing woeful buttons...

-Kevin Crossman

I don't see it as a far superior machine. They are both used for two totally different things. I'd much rather play games on my GameBoy. I use my Palm to organize my life (and play games at work, =) And for the record, it can be backlighted, Nintendo chose not to.

You don't turn your computer off in mid game and expect it to come right back up when you boot it. Same concept for the GameBoy. Granted, it'd be an awesome feature, but it drains batteries while the unit is off. That goes back to the whole backlight thing. Nintendo kept it out to make a lean, game playing machine. I'd like to see Palm make a $70 unit that can do more graphically and sound-wise than the GameBoy.

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Fammy

So you will just have to wait and see what they will support.

Don't troll around please.

Palm already said it was going to start using high-res screens on OS 5 handhelds so the smartphone will almost certainly use it.

The cheap one is another matter. I think it will be something like the m500 with a plastic casing running OS 4.

Well - Palm wouldn't win much praise with PIC readers - but you are right. Going in low would probably make them a ton of money AND hook a lot of users who until now, haven't considered a PDA. Further, if it runs 4.1 then that means it will run almost all software written for OS 5 - obviously without support for extended feature (hi-res, mp3, security, etc.), but at that price, it would be great.

Otherwise, I am sure that their existing partnership with Astraware could be leveraged into having one one of their array of shooting gallery games and/or one of their numerous Tetris/Bejeweled clones bundled. Finally, I am sure Ardiri and/or Sega would be willing to throw some games in there for a minimal cost, if only to get their names out to the masses (and for Sega to reinforce their new multi-platform philosophy). Remember, this would be a unit primarily sold through retail outlets and packaged in fancy blister packaging simialr to the m125 graduate thing that's out now--the flashier the better, and having "Sega" on the box would only help their efforts.

Sure, selling truckloads of wireless handhelds to Fortune 500 companies is an important consideration but there are only so many of those entities out there. Selling them upgrades is an even trickier proposition.

Do you know how long I have been posting/hoping for Palm to fit a d-pad into the formfactor and code support for it into the OS? Addressing the concerns of the under-30 crowd takes a little more than TV ads filled with hipsters, techno music, and a few colored m100 faceplates.

Cultivating a whole new segment of the "youth" market is not a luxury but a necessity in this day and age. Just look at past 4 years and the rise of check/debit cards, prepaid cell phones, the whole CD-R/mp3 phenomenon, the aftermarket car tuning market, and instant messaging software. Toyota's even starting a whole new division (Scion, I believe it's called) to address the trendy 20-something types. All of the above are movements which arose primarily from the college and younger crowd. Palm needs to stop focusing on (and targeting their ads) around airport lounges, boardrooms, and hotel convention centers and instead look towards college campuses, Starbucks, and high school benches. That's where they can gobble up some serious new marketshare.

Regardless, everyone else posting here is correct in the fact that Palm needs to be more aggressive to court entry level and first-time buyers.