Tungsten T6: PalmOS 6, finally?

Posted by Scott Laird Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:55:09 GMT

(via Gizmodo) PalmAddict claims that PalmOne is going to release a new model in late April. The T6 specs provided look more like a wishlist then an actual list of features that Palm would build into one of their devices:

  • OS 6 (with scalable fonts)
  • Bluetooth
  • Wavelan
  • 1 GB Flash
  • 3 Megapixel Cam
  • New connector (ethernet included)
  • VGA resolution 640 x 480
  • Graffiti 2 plus (with voice commands)
  • Interface to iTunes (Apple iPod)
  • The device is maximum 200 grams
  • Automatic software update over internet
  • Compatibility mode for pocket Windows is built in
  • Initial price is around $400
  • Launch date approx end of April

I’d love to see this, but I just can’t see it happening. In particular, I don’t see them putting out a new connector–the just changed it with the T5/Treo 650, and it’d be crazy to do it again. Also, who wants wired Ethernet to their PDA? Wireless, sure, but I’ve never heard anyone ask for a PDA with wired networking. I’m assuming that “wavelan” means some form of WiFi; hopefully Palm has finally seen the light on this front and will stop releasing high-end models that are put to shame by low-end PocketPCs.

The funny thing is that I was wondering yesterday when Palm was going to release their next handheld. They’ve traditionally done Spring/Fall releases, but they’ve been falling down lately. Since they’re clearly in danger of becoming irrelevant, the release of a model with even half of the features listed here could go a long ways towards regaining their mindshare. Now a Treo with half of these features would have me jumping up and down. Pity that VGA Treos with WiFi probably won’t show up until 2007 or so.

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PalmOS for Linux

Posted by Scott Laird Wed, 08 Dec 2004 20:50:17 GMT

If you’ve been living under a rock, then you might not have noticed that PalmSource has announced that they’re going to be building a version of the Palm operating system that runs on top of Linux. It’s not completely clear what this means–are they replacing the kernel in PalmOS 6 with Linux, or is this a parallel project, intended to fit into new niches? PalmSource released an open letter to the Linux community that provides a few details:

  • Existing 68k-based Palm apps will work fine.
  • Apps based on the new Cobalt API will need to be recompiled.
  • ARM-based apps for PalmOS 5 aren’t mentioned, it’s probably safe to assume that most of them will break.
  • They’re going to enhance the Linux kernel as needed and contribute their changes back to the community.
  • It’ll be possible to run Linux apps underneath their UI, but if you want a user interface, you’ll need to use their API. In other words, it’ll be possible to run things like Apache and MySQL on PalmOS for Linux, but not X applications.
  • Their licensing model for PalmOS itself isn’t changing–they’re still licensing the whole package to hardware manufacturers and expecting them to port it to their hardware. Presumably, this will become easier when using Linux, because it comes with more drivers and Linux driver programming is a easier skill to hire then PalmOS driver programming.

Of course, that glosses over most of the important issues. Particularly, is any vendor actually going to ship this? Ever? PalmOS 6 (“Cobalt”) was released to manufacturers at the end of 2003, and not only is there no PalmOS 6 hardware available, there aren’t even any rumors of any on the horizon. It’s unclear if PalmOne will ever ship a PalmOS 6 device. It’s entirely possible that the only PalmOS 6 hardware to ship in 2005 will be from afleet of small asian contract manufacturers building for local markets, although Samsung may have something up their sleeves.

Given the glacial rate of PalmOS 6’s adoption, PalmSource will probably be best off focusing all of their attention onto PalmOS for Linux and calling it PalmOS 7, because there’s no way they can carry three software lines–PalmOS 5, PalmOS 6, and PalmOS for Linux. Since current PalmOS 6 applications won’t be binary-compatible with PalmOS for Linux, there’s no way they can call it PalmOS 6.2 and pretend that it’s an extension of the current 6.x line. If they’re going to push a Linux product at all, then they need to push it hard, and they can’t push two “next generation” products that are mutually incompatible.

Which brings up the big question: when will it be ready? After reading their press releases, I don’t thing they’ve been working on this for very long. They certainly aren’t ready to ship anything, and I’d be surprised if they actually have much more then a proof-of-concept port in-house. On the other hand, they have a solid, well-known base to work from, so it’s not like they have to fight with alpha-grade build tools, flaky OSes, and all of the other moving targets that they presumably had to deal with when building PalmOS 6. Porting the current PalmOS to run on top of the Linux framebuffer device shouldn’t be very hard. Adding support for Linux’s network stack might be interesting–as I recall, PalmOS 5’s TCP stack was entirely located in user space, so it the API might not be very close to the traditional BSD socket API, but I don’t really know. Porting 68k apps will be easy; they already have an emulator that runs on Linux and has for years. Adapting it to the new framework shouldn’t require a whole lot of work.

Unfortunately, the one thing that will probably be hardest is the thing that makes PalmOS so unique–it’s filesystem, or rather the lack of one. Traditionally, PalmOS applications don’t really have the notion of saving or multitasking–everything lived in RAM, and switching between programs didn’t involve a whole lot of extra effort. Applications kept their data organized into databases, not files, and they edited the databases directly, without any sort of “save” step. This meant that switching between apps is fast and gives a good user experience for simple applications, but it hasn’t scaled well because it doesn’t provide an easy way to manage block-based storage, like external flash cards or internal hard drives. Instead, PalmOS has had to add an whole extra API for accessing filesystem-based devices, and this has left us in a state where some applications won’t run off of flash cards, and many applications are unable to access data saved on flash cards.

With a virtual-memory based OS like Linux, it’s possible to fake a lot of this with mmap, but that isn’t ideal when you’re dealing with flash cards–it’s easy to wear out most flash cards today by sending them thousands of small writes, and that’s what I’d expect to see when changing a mmaped database. Also, what happens when a flash card is ejected while an application has a file mapped? Linux is never happy when removable devices go away, but causing applications to crash just because the card was removed is seriously user-unfriendly. If mmap won’t work, the big alternative is to copy things to RAM transparently and then copy them back out when done, but that will push the memory requirements up, which will push up costs and limit battery life.

Given all of this, I’d be surprised to see a PalmOS for Linux device before mid-2006, and that’s a long ways away. It’s not clear that the Palm world can wait for another year and a half, falling further and further behind the networking and multitasking abilities of their PocketPC-based competitors. Given that, PalmSource must be feeling a lot of pressure from their licensees to switch to Linux, or they wouldn’t have made this announcement at all.

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PalmOS Cobalt 6.1

Posted by Scott Laird Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:18:56 GMT

This is sort of weird–according to CNet, PalmSource (the software company that controls the Palm OS) is releasing a new version of their software tomorrow. The new version, Cobalt 6.1, is part of their multitasking Cobalt family, announced in January of this year and yet to ship in any product. At the time it was announced, PalmSource announced that the existing PalmOS 5.x family was being renamed “Garnet” and marketed towards smartphones, like the Treo. The new line, formerly expected to be called PalmOS 6, was named “Cobalt” and was aimed towards high-end PDAs.

That was 9 months ago; so far, no “Cobalt” devices have hit the market, although PalmOne is widely expected to announce the Tungsten T5 within the next week or so.

The odd thing about the Cobalt 6.1 announcement is that it’s expected to be aimed towards smartphones. I thought that that’s what Garnet was for?

And how does this fit into the Treo 650, which is expected at the same time as the Tungsten T5? Presumably, the Cobalt 6.1 release is aimed at Treo-like devices, but won’t actually show up in shipping hardware for another 6 months or so. Still, it’d be nice to see a Treo with Cobalt sooner or later.

Update: The Register has a few more details: first, this won’t ship in phones until 2005. Next, 6.1 also includes improvements to the graphics rendering code at the core of PalmOS. They include a screenshot with translucent overlays and drop shadows; maybe the “1-bit graphics plus color” look of PalmOS is finally going away. Clearly, PalmSource’s spin that this release is an upgrade for smartphones is largely spin–sure they’re adding Bluetooth and GSM support to the core of the OS, but a lot of other stuff is going in as well.

eWeek has a few more details; apparently PalmSource is claiming that 11 new PalmOS smartphones will ship in the next year. At least one of them will use this new software release.

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Thanks tons, PalmSource

Posted by Scott Laird Wed, 11 Feb 2004 08:54:57 GMT

Okay, so I posted yesterday that I’ve decided that a PDA without top-notch desktop sync support is worthless, and that Palms are the only PDAs that sync right with OS X. Great timing–according to Brighthand, PalmSource isn’t going to produce an OS X sync program for “Cobalt,” their new name for PalmOS 6.

It’s not really the end of the world–it’s unclear if the basic sync protocol has changed, although the formats used by the native PIM applications is different. So, there’s a chance that Palm Desktop 4 will work along with a small update to iSync (which replaces the native PIM conduits in Palm Desktop). Failing that, Mark/Space has committed to producing an OS X sync solution, and they’ve been pretty good in the past.

Basteges.

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