Comments on: Bradley Says New palmOne Handhelds In April

But have you considered the cost?

At the current cost, most of you already don't want to buy the Treo 600.

Higher resolution screens, higher resolution cameras, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, long-life battery, and any other improvements to the Treo 600 will only cause the retail price to go higher.

Would you pay for a Treo with everything on your wish list if the retail price was $1,150?

Of course, there is also the issue of bulk and weight. The more bells and whistles you add, the bigger and heavier the Treo might grow.

1. As much as I applaud the thought, I don't think Cobalt is April-close. This concept is almost uptopian in nature. You can't get smaller, thinner, lighter and WiFi AND the battery that would be required to make it all happen. The T|3 (I think, don't grill me here) saves some screen juice when its slider is closed, extending battery life, and the battery life is horrible anyway. To truly have a device with all the features, you'd need a monster 1500 mah battery, and that kills the smaller, thinner, lighter part.

2. Same problem with the Treos. I think that putting such a big screen on a communicator is counter-productive at this time. After all, what's the two biggest battery minders you own? Your phone and your Palm, right? Put 'em together and whaddya got, a battery vortex. Add a 320x480, and you might as well get a battery belt (should I patent that?).

Now a fuel cell is what we need.

Then where do you put the buttons?

The T3 slider allows the buttons+navigator and the HVGA display to overlap, which allow the unit to fit in your pocket. Sony had to stick buttons on the back of the TH55 to keep the size reasonable, which is not the preference of many users (gamers?).

That said, a 320x320 screen would draw almost the same amount of power as a 160x160 screen. The main power draw isn't in the number of pixels; it's in the backlight, which would stay the same size.

I think the Tungsten T series will always have a slider. It's a hallmark of the series. If you don't want a slider, wait for the Tungsten E2 (or whatever).

The display refresh power is proportional to the number of pixels. That's why models with hires displays have a noticeably shorter battery life even with the backlight completely off.

Amen !! And get rid of that battery-hungry Intel processors !!

Regarding Treo or other PalmOS based smart phones, until unicode is supported by the OS I am not interested at all. Not everyone lives in USA you know.

Tungsten E2 with 320x480vg screen, bluetooth, SDIO, universal connector, decent mutimedia capabilities, and 3rd party aps on CD-ROM not in ram. I need this device, and I need it now! Am I asking too much? Are you guys with me?

I would translate "improved multimedia" capabilities into not much more than basically better quality headphone output and mp3 playback (and a better Real player pre-loaded), alongside a 1.3mp digicam in the Z71 replacement that will also do video capture. Also posssibly an option to store voice memos as MP3s. Finally, I wouldn't rule out something along the lines of a swiveling camera ala Sony or the first Veo SDIO camera for the new Zire and an image assist light or a real flash.

Well, that does make for a substantially more intriguing comment, doesn't it? As nice as HD would be, I don't think the economic are there just yet for Palm (having far less buying power than Apple or Creative) and just imagine the support woes--if they can't make a Tungsten slider non-wobbly after 3 tries, imagine how flaky a first-time HD integration would be!

I am going to agree with you about 128mb of onboard memory or a split memory system like Sony's employed as of late. It's amazing how many reviews of the T3 comment on how not being able to store MP3s in main memory is a "negative aspect". Also, perhpas the beleagured Sandisk is going to try and team up with POne to...drumroll...bundle 128mb Sandisk SD cards with the next batch of Tungstens!

Hmmm, my Treo 600 has replaced my Rio 300, my Handspring Visor, and my old Nokia. If I had an old, old digital camera it would have replaced that as well. Who is to say that a Treo couldn't "some day" replace an iPod. The only thing it would probably couldn't duplicate exactly is the physical interface, but that may even be enhanced by searching for a song with the keyboard as you mentioned. Batteries are getting better and hard drives more effecient all the time. There's going to be a point, maybe 2 years from now, that the Treo (or a similar smartphone) has the capabilities of today's iPod.

"The PDA has it's own battery life, the USB HD mass storage device has it's own. Sort of like the Enfora WiFi case approach."

My Handspring Visor and Nokia cell phones had their separate power sources. Now they share the same one, and I quite enjoy having to only manage keeping one device plugged in. The key is to be able to power down the components you don't need. In a PDA with a hard drive it would make sense that you could power that down when you don't need that kind of storage. One short term limitation I could live with would be me manually having to copy from the HD storage the files I want to the main memory in bulk, so it wouldn't have to access the HD much, but I'd still have everything with me. Sure that wouldn't be a true iPod replacement, but it could easily be down with today's technology.

Current Models:
-Zire EOL
-Zire21 $75-$85 MSRP. New POne palogo on case & packaging. Will be absurdly cheap by the tiume "Back to School" August '04 rolls around.
-Tungsten E. Either EOL (mostlikely) or MSRP reduced to $169ish to clear remaining inventory. New POne logo on case & packaging if not EOL.
-Zire71. EOL
-Tungsten T2. EOL
-Tungsten T3. MSRP reduced to $350. New POne logo on case & new blister see-thru packaging like the Zire71. Updated ROM apps, uniform screens & build quality improvements. No ROM updates for existing owners.
-Tungsten W. On life support. More rebates for new AT&T activations & dimished exposure as POne sells thru remaining stock. Will probably gradually fade away until Treo 610 launches (midsummer)?
-Tungsten C. MSRP possibly reduced by $50. Rebates will continue, but probably for $50 instead of $100. New POne logo on case & new packaging as mentioned above. Updated ROM apps & screen digitizer problems resolved. Possibly (but unlikely) the addition of stereo output to the headphone jack. ROM updates for existing T|C owners.

New Units for April '04:
-Zire31 (or whatever) specs as rumored (8mb ram, SD slot, 5-way navigator), $100-$120. Color 160*160 screen similar to m505. Will be $100 or less by fall '04.
-Zire 72 (or whatever) 1.3mp digicam w/ image assist lamp or flash. 32mb RAM. Bluetooth. Blue case like Z71. 320*320 screen. MSRP of $250. No UC, just USB & charge port (Zire line will uniformly be UC-free)
-Tungsten E2. 32mb RAM. Fixed form factor, similar design to current T|E but in a darker color. 320*480 screen. MSRP of $250-$300. Bluetooth. No voice recorder. Universal Connector (selling point for Tungsten line from here on)

In fall '04 we will see a BT & Wi-Fi TC2 with OS6, 128mb memory and a 320*320 screen. We'll also see a T4 which will basically be a T3 but with 128mb memory & OS6 and an ATI Imageon graphics controller for pwerful 2D performance. Dual SDIO slots remain an outside possibility. PalmOne will also USB 2.0 enable their OS6 handhelds and may upgrade the ancient USB cradle in the process. Sandisk wi-fi drivers will be released June '04, buggy as a bait store but functional.

To answer Mike's concern:
Nah, they'd probably just keep the same SKUs on them. Same as having retail boxed hard drives from Maxtor but newer drives actually containing 10gb more than is stated on the outside of the box. I bought a 40gb HD 3 years ago and was elated when I opened the box and saw a little sticker that said "congratulations-you have a 45gb HD instead of 40gb!" No mention of it anywhere on the packaging. Same applies to different firmwares on CD/DVD burners or to generic retail brands like Hi-Val or Buslink--they might say a 52x CDRW but it might be a rebadged Lite-On, an Acer, or another brand but all with the same SKUs. Also, remember when the PC games industry switched from big boxes to small boxes? I would hunt around for the "larger" box version of a game b/c usually they had marked both prices the same but the big versions usually came w/ a printed manual. So I wouldn't expect too much confusion to be created by updated T3 & TC packaging.

It supports CF, which is all you'd need to put a 4GB microdrive in internally (just like the iPod mini).

But regarless, my Ipod example only requires USB host (of which the Intel xScale supports 2 host ports and 1 device port), and a USB mass storage driver.

"Going over USB would be slow,slow,slow."

Compared to what? The PDA is the bottleneck, not USB. Our devices would be hard pressed to saturate even a fraction of USB 1.1 throughput.

(Screen off of course!)

Alessandro