More, more, more LifeDrive pics
By Peter Rojas 
posted April 5th 2005 9:35AM
posted April 5th 2005 9:35AM
Hate to say it (well, not really hate to say it, but you know what we mean), but palmOne's supposed new LifeDrive handheld is looking more and more like a reality. Either that or someone out there has way too much free time. Anyway, these new pics have surfaced over at PalmAddicts that show the LifeDrive in a bit more detail. The latest round of specs? 4GB of memory, 320x480 display, 416MHz Intel processor, built-in Bluetooth and WiFi, an SD card slot, built-in speaker and mic, and will have a retail price of $549.
That looks so nice but it doesn't follow with all the other Palm products created. I just don't believe that Palm is actually going to make that. I would be willing to put money down to say this is a photoshop pda.
Wow. Girthy.
Ugh. Photoshop Lensflares. I don't believe it to be true.
Looks kinda neat, but the only way I am even remotely interested in this thing is if they are using it to develop technology for the next Treos. Stand-alone PDAs are a shrinking and crowded market, yet the smartphone and variations thereof is a growing one.
That being said, if this comes with the software to play videos and music well, it could be a winner. A portable media player, that is also a wireless capable full PDA. I would hope the would enable some kind of hands-free operation of the music player via the hard buttons, to make it a truly usable player.
This is quite cool. If you are going to carry an MP3 player, it may as well be a kick-ass PDA too!
Why would a PalmOne marketing photo include FileZ, a freeware utility ... albeit a powerful one. Cannot imagine P1 bundling it b/c of the tech support nightmares. I have doubts.
all it would take is one 3d model, and we could be seeing any number of renderings. (I'm not saying that this is fake, however.)
It shows the SD slot on top, I wonder what the other card-like thing sticking out the bottom is supposed to be. The text for the description line pointing to it is cut off at the bottom of the picture.
On second thought, maybe that's the sync connector...
Hate to say it, but apart from a pretty package, this appears to be a tool for catching up to the state of the art for PPC. It needs some feature to make us say "wow". Genuine iTunes integration would be a nice bandwagon to hop onto at this point, giving it an edge on the PPC crowd. I think I'll stick with my T3 or, perhaps, a Treo.
Juergen and Pat make good points. The pics look like crap, and Palm would never create marketing photos that obscure the product with artificial lens flare. Palm marketing photos do not, as far as I've found, have references to any third-party apps.
Not that I think an integrated 4GB drive is a bad idea -- it would certainly make a PDA competitive with the iPod mini/Zen set and perhaps reinvigorate the non-smartphone market. But I'd expect it to be smaller, not have that retro button layout, and be available with BT only at $400, with WiFi at $450.
4Gb, just in time for 6Gb drives to litter the electronic landscape.
What's so frickin' hard about partnering with a drive vendor and offering user-replaceable microDrive storage? Is fear of success that overwhelming?
-C
It would only be worth it if it had a VGA screen.
The callouts on this picture don't match Palm's usual "numbered list" style. (http://www.palmone.com/us/products/handhelds/tungsten-t5/specs.epl) It's possible that Palm could be changing their look, but it's unlikely. The craptacular lens flare really puts the nail in the coffin, though. No corporate marketing department in the world would put such a cheesy effect into a collateral piece, especially since there is no light source! Especially unlikely considering palm's "suit and tie" image for the tungsten series.
I like that it has a speaker. I miss having a speaker on my MP3 player.
Well, this may not be true. But one thing that can be taken from the response from these rumors is that the market is ready for a PDA with enough memory to realistically function as an MP3 player.
So, even if this is complete crap, I don't think we'll have to wait long for something like this. Maybe not from PalmOne which usually sees the world though 'all business' glasses, but from someone.
The interesting thing is, it's smaller than it looks.
Check out the size of the SD card slot and the stylus. If these pictures are accurate, this thing is about two-thirds the width of a Tungsten E, and about the same length. It's probably slightly thicker. Basically, it's iPod-sized.
That's a form factor that should do well for them. Though, the price...
If this is a fake then it is the best fake ever. This is the third set of pictures, each showing a progression – the prototype, the crappy photos, now the promo material. Yes the lens flare is bad but everyone said the leaked T5 promo material was fake because it contained loads of spelling mistakes, so nothing should be a surprise. And what is that in the bottom left of the picture? It has been cropped off something – that attention to detail in a fake would be genius!
This thing is packing an Intel? How lame can you get?
if this one exists then its interesting.
even more interesting if one could say hook it up to a lcd, keyboard and mouse with a more powerfull cpu and boot a fully usable gui enviroment off it :P
who needs network transparent desktop access? i bring it with me ;)
like say a lcd imac without a hardrive. instead you plug it into the firewire/usb2 port and presto. maybe have a portable cd/dvd drive that can allso work as dvd player or a portable cd player (hmm, didnt phillips make something like that?).
if you need a laptop then bring along something like a tablet with attachable keyboard and pad/ball/stick combo and a sttachmentpoint for the pda. stick some phone electronics into the pda and you dont need sync or anything like it as you bring your work enviroment with you :P
i wish this wasn't a fake....
People talk of the demise of the PDA .. something like this would stay that death for a while longer. I like PDA(s) because of their ability to be the all in one device. MP3 player, phone, organizer, gameing machine, mini pc, emailer ..etc... i'd buy one with a 4 or 6gb hd .. good screen versitile memory slot solutions .. wifi, bt, and whatever other features can be packed in there ... and ..(drum roll) ... i'd pay upwards of 6 or 7 hundred dollars for it. .. as long as it was quality and offered those things..
This thing is packing an Intel? How lame can you get?
I would MUCH rather have something like this for movies and music instead of the lame-ass PSP.
I find it sorta creepy that I was actually listening to "Rebel Yell" as I came across this post.
Didn't PalmSource file for a trademark on something that sounded like a new file transfer/sync protocol a month or three back, at the same time they TM'd "Lifedrive"?
This box has a hard disk and WiFi. We *know* the T5 is designed to work in drive mode as external attachable storage. The OBVIOUS next step is to make the LifeDrive a network attached storage device -- you carry your personal files wherever you go and access them from whatever PC or Mac you're working on as a remote drive. No wires, no fuss.
And it's a PDA and an iPod on top. Add a PalmOS Skype client and it'd even double as your next phone. This makes *huge* sense if you think convergence, and from the existence of the Treo range, Palm have clearly been thinking in those terms for some time ...