Palm Touchstone Product Line in the Works?

Posted By: Kris Keilhack Monday, April 13, 2009 10:44:54 AM

An interesting article has appeared on PreThinking concerning the possibility of future Palm Touchstone devices. Initially making its debut at CES in January, Palm's novel Touchstone charger appeared to be a one-off device to compliment the Pre. The article links to a video taken at CTIA where a Palm representative clearly states that the Touchstone will be a complete line of accessories. Catch the embed after the break.

"The Touchstone is the name of the entire line of products. This is the first Touchtone product in that family… this is the charging dock."

The article also contains some novel possible usage scenarios in regards to using hidden data-transfer capabilities of the Touchstone's inductive charger back, such as music playback docks and short-range device-to-device data tranfers, analogous to the old Palm OS IR beaming.

You can see my earlier Touchstone impressions piece from CES.

Update:
Engadget has received some new info on the Touchstone dock. A listing for it was found in am internal Sprint computer system that shows a possible retail price of $70 at launch.

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With a name like 'Touchstone', I guess we SHOULD have expected th

SeldomVisitor @ 4/13/2009 4:43:25 PM #

70 bucks.

For a phone charger.

Fat Middle?

Uh...no.

RE: With a name like 'Touchstone', I guess we SHOULD have expecte

vetdoctor @ 4/13/2009 5:41:50 PM #

It'll be on sale at Christmas for $50, 1/2 price by June 2010 and free with a new Pre not long after.

RE: With a name like 'Touchstone', I guess we SHOULD have expected th

SeldomVisitor @ 4/13/2009 5:46:55 PM #

I think it gives a better hint of the price range for the Pre itself...

What other Prods?

LiveFaith @ 4/13/2009 7:30:40 PM #

What else is on the way then?

RE: What other Prods?

SeldomVisitor @ 4/14/2009 6:39:54 AM #

Is there an echo in here?

RE: What other Prods?

AdamaDBrown @ 4/14/2009 7:17:41 AM #

I suspect that there really isn't a "there" there. HP tried a similar tack with the iPaq 210, talking up how there were going to be all sorts of accessories, sleds, docks, all this neat stuff so the device would do different things if you plugged it into the car, versus your desk, office phone, etcetera.

In reality, not a single one of them ever materialized because companies want big sales of their hardware before they invest in making accessories. But people want to know there's accessories available before they purchase. So hence the game they play. Everyone here probably remembers the big promises that Palm had around the "Athena" multiconnector and how it was going to provide all these great things for your new devices.

RE: What other Prods?

hkklife @ 4/14/2009 12:14:14 PM #

Adama;

Going back a bit further....remember back in '00 or '01 or so all of the cool SDIO-enabled peripherals that were shown off by Matsushita & Toshiba etc? Palm was onboard that bandwagon in '01 with their m500 line, showing all of those nifty little GPS modules, wi-fi cards, digicams etc. That was probably the last time I fully drank the korporate kool-aid and believed it, as far as expcting SDIO accessories that never materialized. And the HS Springboard debacle (now being replayed in miniature fashion now with the LG Versa cell phone with its promised "accessory sleeves") shows how these waiting games for peripherals always becomes a chicken or the egg scenario.

Yep, we never even got an official Athena-based product that supported audio-in or video-out other than Gary @ TCL's cool Labtec boom mic headset! And remember Colligan's promises of the forthcoming Palm wi-fi SDIO card drivers for the Treo 650?

Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->?