Comments on: Sony T415 Discontinued? (Updated)

I think the idea of a monochrome handheld in an ultra-thin case is a dead issue. The Palm V series was the first, last, and ultimate expression of that combination. Visor Edge and Clie T415 have both failed miserably. Palm m500 has been disappointing, because it's basically just a Vx with an SD slot and USB. There is still a market for monochrome, but it is at the low end, where people aren't that concerned about thin or about hi-res. The m100/105 have sold very well, but they'll be discontinued soon because of lack of expandability and USB. The m125 and the S360 will still be viable handhelds for another year, maybe 2 on the outside.

Meanwhile, people are want thinner/more pocketable also seek color. This most likely includes PIC readers. So I think your comment projects your own interests on the general population, which simply doesn't work.

Except that the term "a good monochrome unit" doesn't fit the T415. It's being discontinued as a natural consequence of its lack of demand.

Why color for a kid's computer...

Then, many years later the SAME arguments that are NOW being made for/against color/mono where made for laptop (portable!) screens. Battery consumption; you don't need color to run word(star/perfect etal) or 123/excel. and what happened? I doubt that you can find one NEW laptop for sale anywhere in the world that has a mono screen (apart from very specialized or rugedized machines)

Same for handhelds/pda's eventually there won't be any mono devices (appart from the VERY low end, just the same as with TV's) everyone will assume color.

Weather it is necesary for your phone book or notepad is irrelevant, tech marches on sometimes just for innovations sake.

I read somewhere that Sharp or Samsung came out with a mono 18" Flat Panel TV they could market for <$200.00 (with tv tuner) but that the first comment that their test marketing subjects made was "But I can't watch TV in B/W!" Heck, if I could buy it I would.. I don't NEED color in the kitchen but I do need counterspace! :)

Color Palmtops will eventually dominate the market.

That said, there will be monochrome Palmtops produced
for a long time. There are at least 2 reasons why:

There are many people who will value battery life
more than color, and a color display will always
require more power for the same contrast ratio.

Aging baby-boomers with declining eyesight will value
high contrast over color and it's more costly to make
a color display with as high a contrast as a
monochrome display with around same power consumption.

(things may change when color OLED panel's become cheap
to manufacture in quantity.)

Monochrome isn't dead; it's just getting focused to
the niches of lowest entry cost, highest readability,
and longest battery life.

The t415 is a bad example of doing monochrome right.
Maybe Sony will fix the display. Maybe they're just
going to upgrade the memory to 16MB or the CPU to
66 MHz to stay competitive. If you look at Walkman's;
Sony produced zillions of models to cover all kinds
of market niches. I fully expect a kid-proof
"My First Clie"(tm) someday soon.

Ugh. I hope we can do better than that. Mono screens with the backlight on still suck power pretty fast.

The screen on the T415 was unreadable under most any condition. If it had even looked nearly as good as any of the Palm monochrome screens, or the Sony S-series, it probably would have sold fairly well.

I remember reading about an Indian PDA that was supposed to do all of these marvelous things for a retail price of about $200.00 and it occurs to me that at the lower price points (<200) people don't seem to care as much about screen quality..

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LC =
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No, I've used the T415. There is is no white. There is no green. The screen was mostly black with a dark muddy brown-grey in the areas that were supposed to be "white". Unless you were looking at it point blank with the backlight on, the entire screen appeared completely black.

All the blacks were dark blue.

All the whites were not-so-dark blue.

All the greys were sort-of-dark blue.

Blue.

Obviously, I was very unhappy with my T415. Add to that the fact that 90% of apps that supported Hi-Res Sony did NOT support monochrome.

How's that for a kick in the nuts?

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If you sing in french while hopping on one foot, the evil birds won't come out of your bathroom mirror.

I had no problem with app compatibility on mine, hi-res or not.

If you don't need any accessories now, you probably won't need any accessories later when they come out. Even if they do come out, a new handheld will come out 2 months after that which you might want.

Although it might be possible that Palm or Sony might standardize some of their hardware, it won't help you if you have a Sony and decide to buy the new Palm.

Say NO to accessories and YES to new handhelds!

They have, and Palm told them no you can't use our "universal" connector.

Someone should design an open standard PDA-dock type connector. Maybe the peripheral makers themselves should do it. The whole thing is stupid, from the dark ages of computing where every company made up their own standards. It is just an RS-232 and USB slave connector combined into a single port.

The T600 series will be with us for some time as it serves as a minimalist color device (ala Palm) with a slim factor. Thats why you have to buy MP3 later. The NR70s serve another need. For those wanting all the bells and whistles these do a fine job. I've never been a fan of Palm graffiti. Why don't they put some Newton technology in there?

Still poised on the brink of joining the NR70V bandwagon, there are still nagging features that most people would have liked. Why can a device with flash memory storage not have any voice recording functionality? Most phones do. Or we may really have to wait for PalmOS 5?

Still, the breath of variety in Palm devices are much more refreshing that PocketPCs, having nothing much between brands to stand out... the spec can almost be photocopied without change. StrongArm 206Mz, 320x240 65K colors screen, 64M memory, give us some originality please!

Aha, see what Sony has done! A Palm device with TWICE the screen resolution of the nearest competitor, really nice of any avid ebook fan. This is what you call product differentiation!

Baloney. We've been hearing about MS module expansion for well over a year, and... well... where's the beef? Other than the silly camera there just isn't anything to be had.

Try this - call SonyStyle or Sony customer service and ask about either the Bluetooth module or the GPS. Find out for yourself how snotty their reps get when you point out availability in non-U.S. markets.

and the Palm Vx was w great device...with a lower res screen and no expansion slot; and on and on and on.

> Because if you want a powerfull b/w device, the only
> one that come to my mind is the Palm M500

HandEra 330

With all honesty I haven't seen a PDA in the price range I would trade my T415 for. Only way I'll give up my T415 is if you pry it from my cold dead hand.

Oh, for you declaring everyone who likes the T415 is smoking crack.... can't afford crack, school costs to much!

Brian
www.geek-house.org

It also has some good features for day-to-day use: the improved Ir (if you got Sony appliances - and I do), the jog wheel, better sound, the vibrating alarm.

The screen readability is at most times disaponting, but can look very good at some light conditions (for example, when I am at my desk at work).

Overall, I belive it has as many good features as any other current offering, and not as many problems as a lot of them.

When the T415 hit the shelves, many of us criticized its horrible screen, which was clearly the worst on the market, hi-res or no hi-res. Sony apologists flamed us for it. We said this thing was a "glorified remote control." Sony apologists flamed us for it.

Now, the T415 appears to be going away, and one conclusion is that it might get cheap enough to be a good buy as a remote control. People, that's all this thing was good for to begin with!

I wasn't the original poster, but yes! Plus the fact that you must flip-twist-fold the keyboard just so you can have a cover for the screen. What a pain in the rear. The NR-series isn't even a PDA anyhow.

But why does it bother you all so much? I can't understand the 'you must twist-flip' argument, either. I mean, I can pretty much imagine the twist-flip process taking about 1 second for someone with even rudimentary coordination. Sure, it's twice as long a time as the 'wrist-flip' maneuver for the included CLIE screen covers, but at least this is more permanent (it ain't gonna flop open on ya when you don't want it to).

If you don't wanna twist flip, then don't. Leave it in the pad form and grab a simple pouch style case. Remember that this gives you the choice of using it clamshell style or pad style.

I guess the thing that confuses me was the following quote in the original message:

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"Sounds a lot like the NR70 series but many don't need all that."
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The keyboard was the ONLY thing the poster did NOT mention in the post. I hardly think of that one feature qualifying as "all that", especially when he/she demanded all those other features.

And finally, what makes you all believe that Sony WON'T release the previously described device? At the rate they're going, that's almost a definite progression on the timeline. It would be silly for their ONLY Virtual Graffiti device to be the NR. Let us gadgetfiends enjoy out 'power device' for now! I don't doubt that something will come along to please you all in the future.

Man, this is such a comment. Damn, I never saw a forum like this one where peoples keep insulting each others for a yes or a no. If you have no arguments to counter his opinion, just shut up please.

The HandEra 330 would be the exception to that.. Its screen is readable in any lighting condition I have seen it in. There is something about the backlight that seems to just blend properly with most any lighting condition.

You never get proper white on m505 anyway. Black and white is much a matter of perception. Look at some TV and you will find out. When the set is the see grey, but watch some Sci-Fi movie and you can see the darkness out outer-space! The screen doesn't magically become darker, it's all perception. If you look close at m505 you can make out the distinct Red Green and Blue elements that make up a pixcel lying side by side. This is much less anoying on hires Sonys but it is there. All current color pixel are made of side-by-side RGB element 1/3 of the size :-)

It would be very interest to see how IBM would compose
black and white OLED displays though ...

Unfortunately the posters on this site are a very poor representation statistically of the PDA market.

I have to wonder how much longer Sony will stay in the PDA market. Typically companies like Sony want to be #1 or #2 in a market area. Despite serious expenditures in R&D and development costs and possibly taking a loss on certain devices, they still lag significantly behind Palm, Handspring and probably Compaq at least.

You mean the 'passion' that the rest of the world sees as some combination of blind, fanatic loyalty and the same sort of facination with bright-shiny-objects that most people associate with magpies or racoons? That makes people pay WAY to much for way too little, because it's 'pretty'?

Hey! I agree with you!

I think you've made a faulty assumption that the volume of posts implies a high volume of people posting. It's very likely that it's only a handful of "Sony trolls," as you call them, who post CONSTANTLY in efforts to support Sony and slam Palm. Since PIC still allows anonymous posting, that's a definite possibility.

While I agree with you that Sony does produce handhelds with TECHNICAL superiority (which is only ONE part of the "buying equation"), I would suggest that the reason you don't see Palm trolls is because Palm supporters simply have better things to do with their time.

Palm M515 is nice looking and quite professional, and yet feature and support (I refer to connectivity with different devices, like Sony that advertise their inter-relation with DVcamera, PC and digital camera)-wise sony still comes out ahead.

An NSX (Palm) and a BMW M5(sony),if you are into cars.

Sony's beat Handspring and Sony on size/innovation. Handera's got some of the spark that Palm gave up under Yankowski, but they've still got the huge form factor.