Rumor: palmOne Working on Palm OS 6 Upgrade

Highly doubtful it will be a free upgrade.

Was upgrading from Windows 95 to 98 free? 98 to ME? ....you get the idea.

If it weren't going to be free, I would think it would have information available at the PalmOne store and not the support website. But that's just common sense (If they'll make sense is a better question).

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But then you jump to the conclusion that they are ready to release the update.

Just because the OS has released doesn't mean that they have an upgrade version ready to release. Of course, it would make sense that they DIDN'T have it on their website until they were close to having it finished (what better way to keep all those annoying 'is it ready yet' emails from coming in).

IF they release an upgrade I will pay for it rather than buying a new PDA. The T3 is perfect for me (for now) only need OS6 to power it.

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Generic Casio > Psion 5> Palm Vx > m505 > Sony N770C > T625C > NR70V > Toshiba e310 > T/T > HP h2210 > T/T3

StarTac > Ericsson T28m > 39m > T68m > T610

It makes sense that a release date will be on the site, and that when it's available for order and/or shipping, it will show up at the store.

Since I don't do any wireless with my T3 except BT, the update doesn't appear to hold much for me.

EXCEPT- the protected memory. Maybe I'll get fewer Fatal Exceptions requiring a reset. A poorly written app, or one that I didn't realize was too old for 5.1, won't take the whole OS with it. (This is a great feature in OS X for the Mac. XP has it, too?)

This alone may be worth the price of admission. But I'd wait until I see what apps break, and how soon the authors/developersdevelopersdevelopers catch up.

No doubt 6.0 will be available with the T4.

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An armed society is a polite society.

PalmOne denies it all, including that any worker of theirs would have said this.

http://www.brighthand.com/article/palmOne_Refuses_to_Confirm_OS_6_Upgrade?site=Palm


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I would be happy if OS6 just took the blue circless from beneath the system icons.

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Woo Hoo! Finally a step forward in right direction from PalmOne. Let's home these are not just unsubstantiated rumors and/or vaporware announcements like we've seen & heard so much of lately (Fossil, Wi-Fi SD etc).

Right, can you count on this so called support person?

Zodiac2/T616

Well, if their OS 6 devices are more powerful than the OS 5 devices, and they stop selling the OS 5 devices when the OS 6 devices hit the market, I don't see how this shoots them in the foot.

It's more "Don't alienate your support base."

Jon Acheson

"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

Sony should be in rather better shape for upgrades than PalmOne as the Clie models typically include more Flash ROM. They need it for the Japanese character set for the Japanese models Clies that own over 50% of the Japanese handheld market.

>>Sony should be in rather better shape for upgrades than PalmOne as the Clie models typically include more Flash ROM. They need it for the Japanese character set for the Japanese models Clies that own over 50% of the Japanese handheld market.

In theory they should - except they have a worse track-record for offering upgrades.

I don't think that recent Sony models have Flashable ROM, except the UX-50.

Handspring Visor Neo --> Sony CLIE PEG-T665C --> palmOne Tungsten T2

>>I don't think that recent Sony models have Flashable ROM, except the UX-50.

My NX80 has over 15mb of flash ROM.

well, you are wrong. all palm os cies have at least 16mb of flash rom. new NX clies have 32MB flash rom. and UX has got 64 mb of flash rom.

some of the TTs has got pathetic 4MB of flash! TT2, TC, T3 has got 16MB

16Mb should be enough. They might need to move some 3rd party apps out to RAM. Hopefully Kinoma Player since its useless.

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Generic Casio > Psion 5> Palm Vx > m505 > Sony N770C > T625C > NR70V > Toshiba e310 > T/T > HP h2210 > T/T3

StarTac > Ericsson T28m > 39m > T68m > T610

It looks to me that 5.4 will be for lower end PDAs and smartphones only. To justify an investment for an upgrade , PalmOne would rather provide OS6 instead of OS 5.4 which is only a minor release.
nick

palm os 5.4 does not have to many new features. a lot of what is being implemented in it has been implemented by licenses such as Sony because its just an upgrade from 5.3 which was for china and japan

As a fellow T|T owner, I feel ya. I highly doubt that Pa1mOne will create an upgrade path for T|Ts to move to OS6 - I suspect that the 16mb memory limit inherent to the original T|T may have something to do with it. Also, while the T|T has flash ROM, it may not be a large enough heap to deal with OS6. Add in the fact that the T|T uses an OMAP processor (vs. the XScales P1's been using lately)...

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What do you think, sirs?

Plus, the T only has just enough flash ROM to hold OS5, OS6 will be larger, therefore not fit.

Although palm os 6 is probably larger, it was rumoured to be designed to fit in the same space as palm os 5. I don't know if palmsource actually delivered on that. Theoretically it should fit on the flash rom of the T|T, just without all the extra features that require more memory. However, i have low hopes of palm os 6 coming to the T|T, unless someone wants to hack their flash rom and palm os 6 to make it work :).

Palmone originally promised us a os 5.2.x upgrade, and we're still to see that materialize. We have a capable processor too, if palm will ever publish an api for the omap's dsp. Being the first arm palm, you'd think palm would treat us with a little more respect.

Unfortunately, the T|T reminds me more of a failed project in progress than an actual finished product. I was devoted to palm before the T|T, however this lack of support has pushed me over the edge. I know i'm ranting here, but if an 18 year old can notice an unfinished product, imagine what a corporate user with no devotion to a product line will think. That is after all the market the T|T was originally targeted at, wasn't it?

>>Although palm os 6 is probably larger, it was rumoured to be designed to fit in the same space as palm os 5.

Not a rumour - a statement from PalmSource's Michael Mace:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=4496&curpage=2#69710

from the article:
"We're designing Palm OS 6 to be upgradable onto Palm OS 5 hardware. In other words, we're looking at the footprint of products like the Palm Tungsten T and we intend to work within those constraints."

Now there is no way in hell we can take this to mean that OS 6 - including PACE and OS 5 APIs that will also be part of the newest OS - will fit in its entirety on 8MB flash that most T|Ts have. So im not exactly sure what he was thinking here. Though i doubt that PalmOne will give upgrades to OMAP devices (the T|T, T|2 Zire71, etc), if it did there would have to be some sort of compromise (at least on the small flashROM devices such as the T|T - dont know of the other OMAP device ROM sizes). Maybe they would have to drop PACE for devices with this upgrade? Other OS 6 specific ('advanced') features? Because it is going to be more modular (or so it has been stated by PalmSource) it should be easier for lisesees to make customized version of OS6 for different devices, allowing them to add and drop features/modules/components to fit said device.

I sure hope PalmOne will finally get the point: there are a lot of unhappy T|T owners. The last "patch" costs ~600KB of precious RAM, the digitizer problems (which also affected my T|T), the absent of Photo software, the lack of DSP API's for our OMAPs etc.

They should know that unhappy customers are bad customers.

If not PalmOS6 (which might be too bloated for our T|T..) then at least an update to 5.2+.

one post that mentions the incorrect rom size is http://www.palminfocenter.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=14582 . I can't find the original post at the moment though...

Palmone has already stated that they are not planning a os 5.2x upgrade for Tungsten T users. They most likely will not learn from this. The only upgrade path for a T|T user is to buy a new palm, since realistically speaking palm will most likely be unable to fit an upgrade on the US T|T's.

Here's an idea: an app that lets us delete / overwrite data in flash rom, allowing us to remove all of the PIM apps that many of us already have replacements for (in ram or card) anyway. Does jackfash allow that? And yes - it would be very dangerous, and users would inevitably mess up thousands of palms with it:)

JackFlash doesn't do this, but it's sister-product JackSprat does it quite well. Although there have been some issues with the latest beta of JackSprat on the T3 (see the PalmOne forums on this board and Brighthand), I think that most people have been successful in removing various apps that they don't want in their flash ROM and then replacing them with those that they do (ie, rip out RealPlayer in favour of AeroPlayer/PTunes, or remove the Calendar app in favour of DateBk5).

Just a rant, but I bought a TT instead of a Sony because of Sony's apparent inability to upgrade the OSs on their PDAs. If Palm doesn't offer an upgrade for the TT, it'll likely be my last Palm. I spent too much money on that thing to buy another one in less than a year.

I have an e-mail from Palm about 6 months ago claiming that an OS 5.2.1 upgrade was in the works for the Tungsten T|T. I seriously doubted it then and I seriously doubt it now.

As far as any upgrade is concerned, I'll believe it when I see it.

If either upgrade is ever available, I'll buy it (my wife has my T|T now and I got a T|3 for Christmas).

Yeah that makes sense,I've been drooling all over the thought of Wifi SD. Maybe mid-March.

Zodiac2/T616

it should be much easier as a lot of the changes in os 6 involve new wireless APIs, as well as a more modular aproach with the new APIs in general. i would imagine that will make writting drivers for devices easier.

reminiscent? the palmone dude's comments are cut and pasted from that brighthand article. what's up with that?


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Looks kinda fishy to me...