A palmOne handheld with 4GB and WiFi?
By Peter Rojas 
posted March 17th 2005 3:46PM
posted March 17th 2005 3:46PM
Replacing yesterday's completely laughable rumor about the Tungsten T6 with one that seems just slightly more plausible, now palmOne's new handheld (which according to the rumor isn't going to be called the Tungsten T6 or have any kind of Tungsten branding at all) is supposedly going to have 4GB of internal memory (we're guessing all Zaurus SL-C3000-style with some sort of microdrive), built-in WiFi, and be bigger than the current Tungsten T5 (which it'd have to be to fit the drive). Again, this is all totally unconfirmed, but this new Palm is reportedly going to come come out next month.
I think I have to call BS on this one. I hope it's all true, but I haven't seen that kind of innovation from PalmOne for a long time.
The T5 is not pocket size at all. I had hoped there would be a smaller unit like the iPaq 4100 series. I personally have decided my next PDA will have to be a phone also. Two units are just to much bulk for me.
Won't believe anything until I see it, yeah Pa1mOne, KNOWN for their innovation =/
i seem to remember hearing about cool forward thinking innovative features for the Treo 650 too. instead it turned out to be about 18-24 months behind in innovation.
and by april? puuuhllleeease.
though i guess they would want to replace dead in the water feature-poor designs with better ones sooner than later... i just don't believe it.
Not interested. Swap out the WiFi for a GSM phone, now we're talkin'.
why just 4gb? if you're gonna put a microdrive in it, it might as well be a 5gb, or 6 if they can snag some off of whoever's making them for apple.
if it's true, i'd buy one, as long as it's not as expensive as the pma430, or if i don't buy a 12" ibook first.
Screw GSM. Way too expensive, and way too slow.
How about built-in high-speed broadband? Not likely from PalmOne though, the leaders in non-innovation. :-)
First, let's assume for a moment that this device is more than vapor...
The existence of 5 and 6GB microdrives means 4GB microdrives are cheap. P1 would use a 4GB drive to keep the price below a certain threshold. (They would probably keep it at 480x320, too, as a VGA screen would be too expensive.)
I think this may be an extension of the Zire 7x line, which was geared toward entertainment. The first two features Palm plugged with the Zire 72 were the camera and the MP3 playback, both of which become a lot more viable with a built-in microdrive. The initial rumors said this PDA had a 3MP camera.
Now add the Wi-Fi. Now you're talking about emailing your photos or uploading them to any web site you want directly from the PDA itself. No need for a PC. If it's got Bluetooth, too, you can use it with an EDGE phone to do the same thing from anywhere that isn't a hotspot.
So now you've got a device that could (but probably won't) replace both your digital camera and your MP3 player, plus let you do PIM, email, basic web browsing, gaming, blogging, and whatever else a Palm can do. That's not a bad little device...
For those who are not current Palm users, bear in mind that Palm software generally requires less space than Windows software, so 4GB would go very, very far. Yes, user data and photos is roughly the same size anywhere, but Palms generally carry less overhead to start with.
But who cares about the size? It still amazes me that Palm refuses to make a GSM/WiFi device.
Craig:
2-3 years from now, when most of the country is blanketed in EVDO and HSDPA, *nobody* is going to care about a GSM/WiFi device. That's only one reason why you don't see such devices now.
But the important thing is that this is going to be THE iPod killer!!
J/K BTW
C'mon guys. PalmOne folks have to wake up at some point. It seems reasonable that they would make a power PDA. Remember though that this will be a Tungsten, and they want it to carve its own niche, and not compete with the Treo 650 or T5. 4G Microdrive+WiFi would fit in nicely with that logic.
Permanent4,
It's possible that EVDO will be the big thing in two or three years, but I won't be using the same PDA then as I am now. Besides, companies don't have to come up with the one PDA that everyone will buy -- that's why there are different models for different needs. Plenty of people would buy a GSM/Wifi phone today.
If this things real I would give my left, um, arm for one. I like to keep my phone separate. Especially when I have bluetooth. When I was in the navy the shipyard the security guys liked to confiscate (read steal) camera phones and pdas, but my Nokia 6310i was fine. I still like to keep the two separate as I don't like talking to bricks.