Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 04 Oct 2004 15:05:32 GMT
Well, PalmOne has announced the Tungsten T5. Here’s a quick summary, compared to the Tungsten T3:
- 16 MHz faster (400 vs 416)
- Includes 160 MB of usable flash without a SD card (worth around $30 or so)
- Automatically backs itself up on power failure (BackupBuddy VFS works for me, $15)
- No slider, so the T5 is slightly larger.
- Still no WiFi (although Palm’s WiFi SD card works)
- Same OS
That’s pretty much it. It’s amazing what Palm can do with a year’s worth of R&D, isn’t it.
The only good news out of this whole debacle is that we have an official release date for the Treo 650: October 25th.
Posted in Handheld and PDA | Tags palm, rumors, treo, treo650, tungsten | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Wed, 29 Sep 2004 18:16:21 GMT
Okay, almost everyone agrees that the Tungsten T5 will be released on either Friday, Monday, or Tuesday. As Brighthand points out, Amazon has almost certainly leaked a picture of the T5, but there’s still no real consensus on the specs. It’ll most likely have 32 MB of RAM and 256 MB of memory-mapped flash, bluetooth, and no WiFi, but even that’s in doubt. Even the OS load is up for debate–early rumors suggested that this was the first PalmOS Cobalt (6.0) handheld, but none of the more recent rumors have addressed it. Given that, it’s probably still running 5.2.
That’s all fine and interesting and all, but I’m much more interested in the Treo 650. The rumored specs haven’t changed at all in months, and it’s clear that at least one carrier will be selling it by the end of November, but the actual announcement date is still unclear. Brighthand thinks it’s due out the same time as the T5. The Register disagrees.
There are only Treo 650 three questions left unanswered:
- Which wireless data specs will it support? Current rumors suggest it’ll do EDGE on GSM networks, but that’s unclear.
- Will it support the Palm WiFi SD card? Since the Treo 650’s specs are very close to the Zire 72, and the 72 supports Palm’s WiFi card, the prevailing opinion is yes, but it’s a close thing.
- When will it ship, and which carriers will be first? As mentioned, I’m trapped with AT&T Wireless right now; they’ve claimed that they’ll ship a Palm-based EDGE-capable smartphone this year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the Treo 650. Sprint is rumored to be the first carrier to ship it, but Verizon is also generating a lot of rumors. I find that kind of odd-it took them 9 months to ship the Treo 600, and they don’t have a good record with Bluetooth phones (to put it mildly). T-Mobile will probably be late to the party–it took them 3 months to ship the Treo 600, and they’ve been spending a lot of effort pushing other high-end phones lately, like the iPaq 6300 and the Sidekick II.
Update: More rumors. First, it looks like the T5 and Treo 650 share a docking connector. It’s already been established that the Treo 650 uses a different connector from the Treo 600. It’s also been rumored that the Tungsten T5 uses a new connector–neither the old “Universal Connector” nor the mini-USB plug that new low-end Palms have used. According to Palm Infocenter, J&R.com has added a few T5/Treo 650 accessories to their database already. Amazon also has a few items, and they all list next Tuesday as the availability date. So, at this point, it looks like they’ll probably both show up on Tuesday.
Posted in Handheld and PDA | Tags palm, rumors, treo, treo650, tungsten | 1 comment
Posted by Scott Laird
Mon, 30 Aug 2004 04:52:10 GMT
Rumors are swirling about the next Tungsten-series PDA from PalmOne.
I like Engadget’s rumor. Their T5 is a 320x480 tablet, similar to the Clie TH55, but with PalmOS “Cobalt”, 128 MB of RAM, a 520 MHz CPU, Bluetooth, and WiFi. They have a photo, but you can’t really trust fuzzy pictures these days. It does look right, though.
Brighthand has a different rumor. Their T5 has 256 MB RAM, a 400 MHz CPU, and (probably) just Bluetooth.
Brighthand’s specs seem kind of unlikely to me–the 400 MHz CPU means that it’s not using Intel’s current generation of XScale CPUs, and 256 MB of RAM is probably excessive–none of their current models ship with more then 64 MB.
Either way, we should know in a couple months. All of Palm’s high-end PDA are getting long in the tooth.
Personally, I don’t think I can buy a model without a keyboard. The current Tungsten C is okay-looking, but I need bluetooth to talk to my GPS receiver, and no one really expects Palm to update the C anytime soon, if ever. That leaves the Treo 650 as the most likely contender for Scott’s New Palm Budget.
Update: The one that I liked is a hoax. Nothing to see here, keep moving.
Posted in Handheld and PDA | Tags palm, rumors, t5, tungsten | no comments
Posted by Scott Laird
Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:39:03 GMT
Engadget is running a rumor about PalmOne’s next handheld–the Tungsten T4.
The basic specs look promising–802.11g, bluetooth, 320x480 display, faster CPU, more RAM, yadda yadda. The are a couple little issues with the rumor, though. First, it’s claiming a 450 MHz CPU. I thought that Intel’s newest CPUs are 624/520/416/312 MHz. I don’t know where 450 MHz comes from–an underclocked 520 in an attempt to save power? Also, the rumor calls for 96 MB of RAM, which is unusual. Memory sizes in handhelds are usually a power of 2, so I’d expect either 64 MB or 128 MB. There’s a chance that there’s really 128 MB in the thing, with 32 MB reserved for something else–Sony and Handspring have both done similar things in the past.
Finally, the T4 is supposed to run PalmOS 6/Cobalt. It was announced months ago, but none of the (rapidly shrinking) pool of PalmOS manufacturers has yet produced a handheld that uses it.
All in all, this sounds exactly like the device that PalmOne needs to replace the T3, but it’s still a little short of the next round of PocketPCs. HP has a couple 640x480/128MB/612 MHz models due for release soon, and Toshiba and ASUS already have similar models on the market.
Which brings up another question–since PalmOS and PocketPC handhelds are now using almost exactly the same hardware, is there any chance that someone will start using the same hardware platform for both OSes? ASUS in particular could easily produce a PalmOS version of their handheld without really surprising anyone.
Finally, what about the Tungsten C family? The handheld that I really want is the Tungsten C2–a cross of the T4 with the current Tungsten C. I’m really slow with graffiti, and a keyboard would be great, even though it adds a couple inches to the height of the thing.
Posted in Handheld and PDA | Tags palm, rumors, tungsten | 2 comments
