When HP unceremoniously shut down Palm in 2011, it felt like the end of an era. The PDA and smartphone maker's glory days were in the past by then, but it developed a string of hits in the late 90s and early 2000s, and few names in the industry inspired as much zeal and loyalty as Palm Inc. did. To a die-hard community, losing the company was a blow.
Well, now it's back — sort of. A startup out of California now uses the Palm name, and it's serious about breathing new life into the brand. Unlike Palm circa 2010, though, the new team isn't trying to go up against the iPhones and Galaxys of the world. Instead, its first smartphone — known simply as the Palm — is a minuscule device you're meant to carry around when you don't want to bring your main iPhone or Galaxy along. Here's the question, though: Can a smartphone company find success when all it aims to do is build a sidekick?
Gallery: Hands-on with the new Palm | 19 Photos
Gallery: Hands-on with the new Palm | 19 Photos
That we're even considering a question this strange is a testament to the fact that the new Palm has basically nothing to do with the old one. In a past life, founders Dennis Miloseski and Howard Nuk were design VPs at Samsung, and when they started hunting for a hardware maker to help produce the tiny phone of their dreams, TCL agreed and offered them use of the Palm name. (Remember, the Chinese company acquired the trademark from former owner HP a few years ago.) From then on, the job wasn't just to build a curiously small smartphone — it was also to revive and modernize of mobile history's once-great brands. That's a very tall order, especially for such a weird little device.
The Palm packs a 3.3-inch LCD display that's surprisingly sharp — it has a 445 PPI pixel density, putting it in the same ballpark as devices like the iPhone XS Max where clarity is concerned. It runs Android 8.1, though Palm was careful to paint over it with a clean interface full of big, round app icons that's more than a little reminiscent of the Apple Watch's. (Coincidentally, Miloseski and Nuk ushered a handful of impressive Samsung wearables to market, so it's no surprise the Palm feels kind of like a blown-up smartwatch.) Press and hold on an app icon and you'll see a handful of shortcuts to app-specific actions take over the screen. This is pretty typical Android behavior, sure, but Palm deserves credit for adapting the platform's shortcuts in a way that truly seem helpful on this small screen.
