Comments on: GSPDA M28 Palm OS Smartphone Hits Asia

Only things I would be concerned with are the battery life and its build construction. Too bad I just bought my TH55 and a Nokia 3660 this year...

pen & paper -> m515 -> Zire72 -> TH55

Maybe I'm missing something here, but what's with 176x220 rez? What are the extra "16" pixels used for on the width? This is not the same aspect ratio as an HVGA screen. "Virtual grafitti" area only increases screen by 25% (44 of 176 pixels) according to these #s. It seems that all Palm OS apps run only as square screen while some proprietary fone functions can access the extra. This is the way the original Samsung's did it. What a waste of real estate.

Now, what has puzzled me for years with hardware designers is why the screen real estate as a ratio of frontal area is not maximized. The Tungsten T3 used a slider, the S-E P900 uses a flip away keypad, the TH55 did this pretty well for a tablet and the iPaq 19xx & 41xx designs (outsourced ironically) probably had not only an elegant form factor, but also very little wasted frontal area.

This is the first thing I look for in new designs. Why not wring every ounce of frontal area possible for use as screen real estate? Why waste all that area around the screen? Have you noticed how little wasted space is along the edges of a Treo 6xx?

Why do I bring this up? Because maximum screen real estate is a huge factor in the usefulness of a PDA. Conversely, minimum form factor is the other huge factor in PDAs. It seems to me that the "best world" would be to have a small pocketable form factor coupled with a huge screen.

I realize that several obstacles make this more difficult than I am making it sound. You have buttons, d-pads, front speakers, thickness, power requirements of large screens, screen cost and even screen hardware which extends outward. Nonetheless, this GSPDA reminds me of the now defunct HP Jornadas with all that "wasted" size beside & below the screen. That fone has enough space down there to put a Treo-like keyboard.

Anyway, this whole design issue reminds me of how American car companies kept designing long & narrow cars with short wheelbases, long after some Japanese and Euro makers began to "stretch the wheels to the corners". The simple physics of wider tracks & longer wheelbases allowed smaller cars to have better handling and better ride at basically no mfctr cost. Now take a look at the new Ford 500 sedan, many Chryslers etc. They've finally began to do the obvious and viola ... people love it!

Hopefully, one of the Palm OS liscensees will seize this opportunity to pick up load$ of award$ simply by superior design. The link below is the point made (albeit ugly) on a Zire 71.

http://churchoflivingfaith.com/images/71vg.jpg

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Hmm... doesn't seem true at all. In Asian countries like Malaysia, piracy is so rampant that no one will buy software for Palm OS. Here the PDA/phone sellers even provide what they call it "free software - for life" to all buyers of PDA/phones. What it means is that you can get ANY software at all - cracked, full version from the place you bought your PDA/phone - for life. Just tell them which software you want, come back tomorrow and you'll have it for free... That's how it works here. Works for ringtones and logos too..