Quickies: China, Memory Card Adapter, Bluetooth, and More

Posted By: Ed Tuesday, June 11, 2002 8:02:47 AM

PalmSource's David Nagel told Reuters that it will release a version of the Palm OS for the Chinese market, considered by many to be the most important growth market in the World over the next several years. The Chinese version of the Palm OS will be out within a year. -PR

The Pretec CompactTRIO Adapter is a Type II CompactFlash card that allows HandEra owners to use Memory Stick, SD, and MMC memory cards. It sells for $50. -Ed

Last week, Texas Instruments announced the BRF6100, a Bluetooth chip which combines a Bluetooth baseband, digital RF and antenna switch, all in a 6mm by 6mm package, for significant savings in power and size. It will allow device designers to include Bluetooth functionality for a total system cost below $4 in volume quantities. -PR

Palm Glitch is a site designed to help answer questions about glitches that hamper Palm OS handhelds and software, the ones tech support is befuddled by. There is also a companion Yahoo Group for discussing and sharing glitches and cures. -J. Kevin Wolfe

Some users may experience temporary problems as the Australian Palm User Group moves to a different web server. -Sandro Hogan

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CompactTRIO

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 8:19:56 AM #
330 owners could already use SD and MMC, but now you can use two of them at once. Probably good for people with the TRGpro as well. Looks like it would stick out a fair bit though.
RE: CompactTRIO
Coyote67 @ 6/11/2002 10:39:27 PM #
How come no smartmedia? Odd.

---------------------------------------
When you have a Clie shoved up your mouth, you can only talk in vowels.
RE: CompactTRIO
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 11:20:49 PM #
Smartmedia is slowly making the exit, that is why it does not support it compared to the other more popular media.

Chinese Palm OS

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 9:27:17 AM #
I think it is bounded to happen. Palm (well, PalmSource) take the innovation from licensees and put it into the 'standard' Palm OS as part of the condition of licensing. That's why we have Color (handspring), VFS (sony?), Japanese Palm OS (IBM), USB (Handspring).... don't know if Palm OS 5's Hires origin from Sony...

Now Acer has native Chinese Palm OS device, hence it is natural that Palm will have it soon.

RE: Chinese Palm OS
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 9:49:38 AM #
> That's why we have Color (handspring)

Greater than 8-bit color, I believe.

> don't know if Palm OS 5's Hires origin from Sony...

Not even close.

RE: Chinese Palm OS
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 10:15:27 AM #
PalmOS 5 API's will be different from Sony but Sony will be helping PalmSource to port their API to PalmOS 5 so existing Hi-res programs work
RE: Chinese Palm OS
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 12:16:02 PM #
> Sony will be helping PalmSource to port their API to PalmOS 5

Not from anything I have seen. Hi-res in OS 5 is done, no "help" is needed. Do you have a source/reference for this?

RE: Chinese Palm OS
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 12:17:33 PM #
i think he don't mean the API, but the idea.

there's no wonder that why Sony brings Hi-Res to the Palm OS first.

if you are a Asian you will know why.

RE: Chinese Palm OS
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 4:48:34 PM #
I think Palm writes this chinese themself.

Since Acer already has one, if Palm decides to use
that one, they can anounce it now.

Many one man companies have written Chinese OS for Palm
before. And they have been widely used.
It is a wonder that Palm still needs another year to ship a Chinese OS.

RE: Chinese Palm OS
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 11:25:27 PM #
"It is a wonder that Palm still needs another year to ship a Chinese OS"

One year is too long with such hyper competitive business environment. Good luck to Palm

Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 10:41:09 AM #
I think this is very good news for not only Chinese Palm users but for all Palm users. It certainly can't hurt to expand the Palm market in the most populated country in the world, not to mention for all the other Chinese speakers wherever they are.

I'm not sure what this means for the native English speakers who also like to have Chinese capability on their Palm. Right now I can load a third party Chinese OS without the "baggage" of complete localization of the built-in apps and menus. That's exactly what I want. Hopefully the option for English localization will be built-in because if there is a standard Palm Chinese OS, maybe that third party market will dry up. I don't want a complete Chinese system, just the ability to read and _write_ Chinese on my English system.

Another thing I'd be curious to know is how they intend to handle handwriting recognition. I hope they license GoGoPen or some other recognition system and don't expect Chinese users to only use PinYin, ChangJie or another of the alternative "spelling" methods.

BTW, for all you developers out there, it's a really good idea to make your programs "play nice" with Chinese from the start. It's going to be a really big market someday.

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 11:24:41 AM #
That's a common idea among Chinese system users.
But I doubt how many people will need it?
Since Chinese PalmOS 5 is going to happen.
Which means more people with less English read/write capibilty can enjoy the powerful of PalmOS.
Personaly, I think it the number will be larger.
Larger than the person who only need to read/write Chinese.

Remember, power user are always one the top of the pyramid. Not the majority.

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
popko @ 6/11/2002 12:10:37 PM #
A complete Chinese system is needed if Palmsource want to see success when pushing into that market. The current method has mainly been offering 3rd pardy software to mask over the English system. A good example of that is Handspring. Whom has been offering Palm Dragon free of charge when you buy Visors in China and Tiawan. They've been doing this for a almost 2 years now but most of people still perfer other Chinese OS based PDAs. Why you might ask? Well, it takes some reading in English before one can actually setup and run Palm Dragon and that scared some newbies away. Besides, when it come to trubleshooting a English base system, ya got be able to read English.

Another issue is coding. Currently people are useing mostly BIG5, GB5, and Unicode. Which will they use? I'd perfer Uicode not becase I like it but because English based Windows uses Unicode to handel Chinese as well.

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
WhoControlsTheMedia? @ 6/11/2002 12:49:36 PM #
>>>>
I think this is very good news for not only Chinese Palm users but for all Palm users.
>>>>

I wouldn't go so far as saying this is good for *all* Palm users, since most will never have the need to use Chinese. But I suppose it is good for Palm since it will give them inroads into the Chinese market.

But from what I hear there are really cheap PDA's ( < $30) available in China that are very popular. I don't know if Chinese people have the money to shell out $250-$300 for a PDA.

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 12:52:42 PM #
HandSpring in Taiwan bundled with CJKOS, not PalmDragon.
RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 4:26:40 PM #
Where can I get Palm Dragon and other Chinese localizers?

In Palmgear I only found CJKOS.

Thanks

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 4:58:18 PM #
China is already a big PDA market. It is probably
the 2nd largest PDA market already, after US. They
already have a bigger mobile phone market than US.
So it won't a surprise that they will become the largest PDA market one day. ( the price for mobile phones over that are similar to the PDA price here)

The popular pirce range of PDA over there are $100-300.
A few PPC offerings, but the price is too high to be
popular for consummers. Companies like High Tech Wealth
is really a much more succesfull PDA start up than Handspring. They make lots of money while doing it, not like Handspring, only burns money.

Even after Chinese Palm OS comes out, language kits like cjkos will still exist. So English speaking users can always get that.

I would expect there will be PinYin, 5 strokes and
handwriting recongnition input methods available for
the Chinese OS.

In my opinion, if Palm wants to be really succeful in China market, they need to write a special version of
address and date book for Chinese market. Mainly the PIM functions. These functions need to be tuned to Chinese charecters and life habbits there.

Coding is not that important. PDA is a tool. A very intimate tool comparing to PC, etc. People only want to use it. They don't care what is under the hood.

ted

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 10:06:51 PM #
>Where can I get Palm Dragon and other Chinese localizers?
You can fin PalmDragon here-
www.palmaster.com

>Even after Chinese Palm OS comes out, language kits like cjkos will still exist.
PalmOS 5 don't allow hack programs. Chinese system developer need to find some way to solve it. It is still too early to say they will survive.

>I would expect there will be PinYin, 5 strokes and
>handwriting recongnition input methods available for
>the Chinese OS.
Don't forget about ju-yin and chun-jey in put method. It is also quite popular. I think , to implement the input method that would satisfy all the Chinese users would be a big challenge for Palmsource Inc. Just wait and see.

>they need to write a special version of
>address and date book for Chinese market.
Just look into Acer s10. You will find that lunar calendar is inside of the datebook. For address book, I think sorting by popular Chinese last name would be much better than sorting in A to Z.

Mat

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 10:10:51 PM #
>>Don't forget about ju-yin and chun-jey in put method. It is also quite popular.
I agree. These two methods are for traditional Chinese.
The ones I mentioned are for Simplified Chinese.


>they need to write a special version of
>address and date book for Chinese market.
>>Just look into Acer s10. You will find that lunar calendar is inside of the datebook.
For address book, I think sorting by popular Chinese last name would be much better than sorting in A to Z.

It will require more than just lunar calendar. The sorting is one of them.

ted

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/12/2002 7:09:27 AM #
>I think , to implement the input method that would
>satisfy all the Chinese users would be a big
>challenge for Palmsource Inc. Just wait and see.

Here in Japan, we have "gokurakupen."
www.ikeshop.co.jp/mobile/download_shop/gokuraku.html

I hope you'll have recognition method for chinese
like this.

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/12/2002 8:16:57 AM #
>Here in Japan, we have "gokurakupen."
>http://www.ikeshop.co.jp/mobile/download_shop/gokurak>u.html

>I hope you'll have recognition method for chinese
>like this.
Of course we do. We got
1. GoGo Pen
2.Pen Power
3.Hanwan
all of them are great Chinese handwriting recognition program.

GoGo Pen also sold in Japna now,

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/12/2002 5:25:35 PM #
handwriting recognition is good but not the ideal way. unfortunately, handwriting recognition tends to be slow (like Graffiti in a way, thus FitalyStamp, etc.). Also, nothing beats having a keyboard and entering characters from that... which doesn't work with handwriting recognition!

I like handwriting recognition though. mainly to practice my written chinese.

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/13/2002 7:26:24 AM #
"Well, it takes some reading in English before one can actually setup and run Palm Dragon and that scared some newbies away. Besides, when it come to trubleshooting a English base system, ya got be able to read English." (from popko)

Actually when I got my first Palm IIIxe, it came with PalmDragon entirely in Chinese and the Palm manual in Chinese as well. It was I, the foreigner (American), who had the trouble, not the local Chinese. It was very clear to them with the Chinese manual and Chinese installation program. Maybe Handspring did it differently, but that was my experience with a Palm.

RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/13/2002 9:25:45 AM #
Character entry with a keyboard? Yeah it can be quite useful. But I have a number of Chinese friends here in Taiwan who didn't even consider a PDA until they saw that it could recognize handwritten characters. And then some of them specifically bought Palm Dragon even after their "Palm" device came bundled with another Chinese OS simply because Palm Dragon came with handwriting recognition (GoGo Pen). They much prefer writing characters to typing it out in whatever form (Pinyin, Changjie, etc.) Of course YMMV.
RE: Standard Chinese OS-good and bad?
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/13/2002 9:36:15 AM #
Has anyone got links on Hanwan and Pen Power?

Nice option for HE330....

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 2:09:31 PM #
...But with the way the Sony vs. HandEra flame wars on this site go, I'm afraid to put one in my HE with a Memory Stick for fear that it would reject it (kind of like projectile vomiting)! ;-)

On a serious side, this is a nice option and at a reasonable price. I like the idea of being able to use 2 MMC/SD cards at once.

RE: Nice option for HE330....
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 4:19:27 PM #
Not to be left out, it's perhaps not a bad option for the Trgpro either, perhaps more so. On a 330, it merely adds the option of MemoryStick. For TrgPro owners, it opens up MMC and SD as well.

RE: Nice option for HE330....
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 7:01:22 PM #
As was posted above, it does give you a 2nd SD/MMC slot--could be good for transferring files, for instance. May not be for everyone, but there is some definite value.

Bluetooth pricing

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 3:31:15 PM #
If a Bluetooth chip can be as cheap as $4, why are Bluetooth adaptors from e.g. Palm and Sony priced at more than $100? Is there so much more to it than this chip?

- Rene Verheij

RE: Bluetooth pricing
big_raji @ 6/11/2002 4:08:00 PM #
Probably to pay the cost of software development for bluetooth drivers, developing a proper interface with SD/MS slot, etc.

When you think about it, the cost of the 128mb memory module in a memory stick is probably around $2-$4 as well. There's much more to it than that.

---
What's Wrong With This Picture?
http://raj.phangureh.com/picture.html

RE: Bluetooth pricing
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/12/2002 1:18:46 PM #
The current price of Bluetooth devices will drop soon. Many of the products that you see out in the market place today were built on very expensive chipsets and components. The SDIO card from Palm (a Toshiba OEM) is a complete rip-off compared to what the actual Toshiba COGS are for this product. The IPAQ with embedded Bluetooth is only $50 more than the same model without Bluetooth. I'm hopeful that Palm can deliver an embedded Bluetooth products with the same or better pricing.
RE: Bluetooth pricing
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/12/2002 3:12:05 PM #
Rene, the reason this new Bluetooth chipset is news is because it is the cheapest ever introduced. Until now, they have been much more expensive, which is why the products using them have also been much more expensive.

Expect to see cheaper Bluetooth add ons once companies have a chance to include this in their products.

RE: Bluetooth pricing
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/12/2002 5:28:06 PM #
Not really. Broadcomm and many other companies do produce chips that are only a few bucks more at most. TI is not even the first with a one chip solution.

It's called mark-up and profit margin. :) After all, it is a market in its infancy.

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