Palm Ships With 12-bit Screen, Says 16-Bit On Box 326
Launch was among the many readers to point out that "Palm recently announced that they made a mistake in their product description of the m130... it doesn't have the 16-bit screen they advertised. Rather then admit the mistake, Palm is using every ounce of their spinning power to mislead its less tech-savy customers into believing that the palm m130 can display 58,621 'color combinations' rather then the 'more than 65,000 colors' it had previously stated; only a 11% difference. This tricky language is meant to shade the fact that a 12-bit screen can only display 4,096 colors... that's a 93% difference." Have they not learned from the mistakes of history? On the other hand, the screen resolution is 160x160 pixels.
That's ok... (Score:5, Funny)
Bah. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:That's ok... (Score:3, Funny)
As Soon As (Score:2)
Re:That's ok... (Score:5, Funny)
Your sooo write. I guess its because their to busy misspelling they're other homophones.
Re:That's ok... (Score:2)
Re:That's ok... (Score:2)
Why not? Text would be clear as you like.
Basically, the 6-plane colour value was turned into a 2-bit selector and a 4-bit value. The selector decided whether the current colour was pulled from a plain palette register (max. 16 colours rather than 32) or had one of the red, green or blue components modified.
It is perfectly possible to just use a standard 16 colour palette in HAM and have it looking like a normal mode (other than using up more memory and bandwidth than really necessary).
Of course, HAM is at its best when converting from raw 12-bit images as then you can dither as appropriate, so that you change whichever component will get you closest to the desired colour. And of course, let's not forget that at the time JPEG was introduced the Amiga could do a far better job of rendering the pictures than most PCs with their sucky 256 colour palettes.
Re:That's ok... (Score:2, Insightful)
HAM was great for pre-rendered graphics, like scans or Sculpt3D or Imagine animations, since all this HAM arcana could be worked out in advance.
So, while HAM was really cool for letting you do full color 3D rendering, and play it back at 60 fields per second, it sucked hard for any kind of real-time drawing.
Palm giving a refund? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Palm giving a refund? (Score:2)
Start 'New Math'
Thats 4 bits per pixel @ 12.5 cents each.
160x160 = 256000 Pixels.
$12800 per unit
Minus layer fees for the class action suite $12799.50 per unit
Equals $.50 rebate coupon for a per user
Right on AC Brother
SD
Poor Service (Score:4, Insightful)
Since most people probably saw the PDAs before they bought them, they must have been satisfied enough with the appearance of the display at the time of purchase. It would therefore be unlikely that a specification change would convince them to return the PDA and lose any data that they stored on it.
Why is it so difficult for companies to do the right thing, even if it will cultivate a more positive image for them in the long run, at a limited expense?
Re:Poor Service (Score:2, Interesting)
The appearance of doing the right thing, they save some money, and maybe the coupons will get circulated to someone who doesn't have a PDA, thereby getting a potential customer away from Handspring or HP...
Re:Poor Service (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Poor Service (Score:2)
In Palm's case its almost certainly because they are rapidly running out of money. Look at their most recent 10K filing [tenkwizard.com], which shows their cash reserves have fallen steadily over the last three years:
June 2000: $1,062,128
June 2001: $ 513,769
June 2002: $ 278,547
(all figures in thousands of dollars).
I would guess that Palm are very reluctant to dip further into these dwindling cash reserves to fund a recall or other scheme. They believe the short term PR nightmare is better than the risk of running out of money.
The real world is usually more complex and messy than simple ideas of what is "right" or "wrong". Of course sometimes (Enron, WorldCom) it can be pretty clear...
Re:Poor Service (Score:2)
June 2001: $ 513,769
June 2002: $ 278,547
(all figures in thousands of dollars).
So in June of 2000, they had a billion dollars in cash? And now they only have 278 million? What the hell did they spend it all on, Enron stock?
12 bit? (Score:3, Informative)
The m130 actually supports 4,096 colors typical of a 12-bit screen. But by using blending techniques, the company can display 58,621 "color combinations -- approximately 11 percent fewer color combinations than we had originally believed" on the m130 handheld, said Palm spokeswoman Marlene Somsak.
Re:12 bit? (Score:4, Insightful)
does that make weasel words and misrepresentations OK?
this is bullshit marketing crap and they should be punished for it.
dont buy this product. e-mail them and tell them you won't buy any of their products because you can't trust them.
show them that honesty is important in business.
Re:12 bit? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:12 bit? (Score:2, Funny)
Where I come from, a similar effect is achieved with generous application of alcohol.
My people call the technique "Beer Goggles".
Wired just swallowed the bait.. (Score:3, Informative)
From wired:
But by using blending techniques, the company can display 58,621 "color combinations
This is exactly how Palm wants people to perceive the Knowledge Library article. I.e. that the m130 can *display* 58,621 color combinations. This is simply not true.
Now have a look at Palm's Knowledge Libarary article:
Palm is updating its statements of color capability, because it has since learned that the combination of color technologies it employed deliver about 58,621 color combinations, an approximate 11 percent difference.
Note now they use the word *deliver* instead of *display*. The m130 can only *display* 4096 colors at a time, but by updating those colors realy fast, it can create the *illusion* of 58,621 colors. The colors are 'delivered' to the user's mind, by tricking his brain into blending different colors.
Re:Wired just swallowed the bait.. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's just plain BS on Palm's part.
Re:12 bit? (Score:4, Funny)
So if I have a 2-pixel by 2-pixel screen whose pixels display either black (on) or white (off), I can claim my screen supports 5 color combinations:
- Black (4 black pixels)
- Dark Grey (3 black, 1 white)
- Quasi Grey (2 black, 2 white) -- The Margarine of Grey, not Grey enough
- Light Grey (1 black, 3 white)
- White (4 white)
That makes sense, if I've gone cross-eyed and can see only a big blur of the average of colors.16bit = 937936 "color combinations" (Score:2)
a 13-bit screen can display 117242, and a 16-bit screen can display 937936 "color combinations"
Thats WAY THE HELL MORE "color combinations" than 65535.
Thats a bullshit statement anyway you say it.
Re:12 bit? (Score:2)
reminds me of... (Score:4, Funny)
I went to the 24 hour store and the clerk was closing up.
"I thought you were open 24 hours."
"Not in a row."
Sounds to Me Like a Job for the FTC... (Score:3, Interesting)
I do believe reading a quote from Tim where he said that the FTC will not tolerate companies not living up to their promises and misrepresenting their products.
I'll be very curious to learn if we get any FTC action on this.
.sig - Would not a Microsoft employee, by any other name, smell the same?
Vortran out
Re:Sounds to Me Like a Job for the FTC... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps it is about time to file a complaint [ftc.gov] with the FTC and see what they think of Palm and this misleading advertising.
UK trade descriptions act. Were these sold in UK? (Score:2)
Where any of these devices sold in the uk?
In the UK the Trade Descriptions Act [dti.gov.uk] would make a deliberate false description of the device very illegal.
Even if the false description was a genuine error, customers would still be entitled to a refund.
Palm Infocenter has complete story (Score:5, Informative)
if they plan on using palms to view their finances (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Really only has three colors! (Score:2)
93% difference (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:93% difference (Score:2, Troll)
Try this. XFree86 allows -depth settings of 5, 15 and 16 among others. Try firing up a server under 16 bits. Bring up a browser and view a few sites. Then re-start the server at 15 bits and see the massive difference. Now imagine that difference magnified by a factor of 8! 12 bit display would really suck.
And all that assumes average Web needs. If you work with color-sensitive applications (no, Timmy pr0n is not the only thing that needs rich color), the palmtop becomes worthless for previewing someone's work while you're on the run.
Better linkage.. (Score:3, Informative)
- Steve
Re:Better linkage.. (Score:3, Informative)
According to AlexanderOgilvy, H-P's public relations firm for the Jornada handheld devices, an upgrade is simply not possible. (Jornada 420 owners will recall that last year H-P released a software upgrade to the device's display driver to increase resolution.) AlexanderOgilvy also confirmed that H-P would refund the full purchase price of any dissatisfied Jornada 540 series Pocket PC buyer.
Re:Better linkage.. (Score:2)
Still, the article is a pretty negative one considering that I don't think there's a better response HP could have made.. Most companies deny the existence of problems.
I have an iPaq and I'm still miffed about the fact that you can't push more than one button at a time (makes playing games on it very difficult). Compaq doesn't think it's a problem.
= Steve
Death to PDAs! (Score:2)
So sure they've lied about the colours, but then they have to or it doesn't stand out _at all_ amoung similar products with better functionality and PDA/Phones that wipe the floor with it.
Re:Death to PDAs! (Score:3, Informative)
Screen Size
I have an Erricson 68i, and it's cool, but the tiny screen isn't something I really want to read email on. Of course, people say 'Well, it's just for quick mobile messages' but the people sending me email don't know that.
Lots of Applications
Ever browse through the list of applications out there for Palms? People have developed applications for almost any need, from graphing calculators on par with TI-85s to databases that help Landing Signal Officers on aircraft carriers grade landings.
Better Text Input
I am not a Japanese schoolgirl, so I can't type 80wpm with my thumbs on a cell phone...
Better Sync with my Computer (OS X)
Most of the 'Smart' cell phones only offer Windows sync software that works with Outlook.
I think the only product that really gets the CellPhone/PDA hybrid right is the Treo, but I refuse to pay/live with Handspring's very plasticky build quality that feels like a toy.
You forgot the Kyocera 6035 (Score:2)
Like the Treo, it was designed as a phone first and not a PDA, but with minimal sacrifice of PDA features.
Small screen? Only marginally smaller than those of traditional palms. (I think a difference of around 5mm...)
Apps? Like the Treo, fully PalmOS compatible.
Screen? Only black and white, but that's why the Kyocera blows away every other integrated phone (and many pure-phone devices) in battery life. Standby times of a week with the phone portion turned on are not unheard of.
Overall, from reviews of user experiences, the 6035, while having less features, is more user-satisfying. Partly due to the fact that it in general is a pretty tough phone. (It has a few weak points, but in general, many have accidentally dropped it on concrete/down stairs with the phone barely even getting scratched.)
The Kyocera 7135 (Coming out in September or October most likely - Kyo is being VERY secretive about the release date, but Verizon/Sprint reps seem to think Sept/Oct) is going to have a larger display, 16M memory, a flip design so it's smaller overall. Unfortunately, it's giving in to the color-screen fad.
that is just plain wrong (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if my e-mails and phone numbers will even work with the fewer colors?
probably not.
Original pics (Score:4, Interesting)
And, yeah, I do have a Palm M130. My partner recently bought a re-con Handspring at Fry's and I was amazed at the qualitative difference of the tro screens .... *grr*
Blending techniques (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if those blending techniques amount to bleed from one pixel to another, and it's actually poor quality and the user's eyes that are doing the blending.
I imagine those SAME blending techniques would yield 65536 x 65536 colors in 16-bits, and so they are actually significantly more than 99% off the specification.
ok, graphics geeks... factor 58,621. You get 31 x 31 x 61. Looks like 5-bits, 5-bits, and 6-bits, blended. I'm wondering how they came up with that number of colors! Any ideas?
Re:Blending techniques (Score:5, Informative)
By dithering (mixing) 4 pixels in a 2x2 pattern, 16 colors can be mixed into (16-1)*4+1 = 31 colors. By dithering 2x1 pixels, 16 colors can be mixed into (16-1)*2+1 = 15 colors. So, by using a 2x2 dither pattern for green, and a 2x1 dither pattern for red and blue, 31x31x61 colors can be produced.
I do believe this is the correct explanation, but it seems so contrived that I suspect some boss ordered his engineer to invent a reason to come up with a number close to 65536. In a program, it would be much easier to do a 2x2 dither pattern for all three components, yielding 226981 colors.
For interested readers, a transition from one color to another using a 2x2 dither pattern can be as follows.
00 10 10 11 11
00 00 01 01 11
As you see, two colors turns into (2-1)*4+1 color patterns.
Re:Blending techniques (Score:3, Informative)
(16-1)*4+1 = 61
(16-1)*2+1 = 31
(2-1)*4+1 = 5
But you already figured that out, didn't you.
To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, "announcement" and "admission" are two different things. You can announce something unconsciously, through the actions you take. But you can only admit something through an act of will... indeed, the essence of admission is the standing apart and making that act of will. Here, Palm recognized that they used 12 bits, not 16 bits
My issue with Palm's behavior is this: They seem to be changing how they count colors -- falling back on this undefined "color combination" thing -- and they seem to be doing it in midstream without telling anyone. As far as I'm concerned that's tantamount to falsifying data.
What does 58621 represent? (Score:3, Interesting)
16 bit color would be 32*32*64.
12 bit color would be 16*16*16.
When they refer to color combinations, they can't be possible color values for adjacent pixels - that would be a huge number.
Any ideas?
Re:What does 58621 represent? (Score:4, Funny)
Close your eyes and hit your numeric keypad 5 times. You might be close then..
Re:What does 58621 represent? (Score:2)
If you combine two adjacent pixels on a 12 bit display, you have levels from 0-30 for each colour channel. That's 31 levels per colour. 31^3 = 29791 unique colours for two pixel dithering.
That's still not the right number, but they must be thinking along those lines somehow.
Re:What does 58621 represent? (Score:2, Informative)
Say you have two 4-bit gray pixels next to each other, and you want to know how many possible grays you could get with them in combination.
Obviously, you could make them the same shade, which would give you 16 values. You could also make them differ by one, so you have X next to X+1, giving you intermediate shades. You'd think that would give you 32 possible combinations, but in the case of X==15, X+1==16 which is invalid, so you end up with only 31 representable shades. (Making two adjacent pixels differ by two shades is useless because putting shade 7 next to shade 9 is basically the same as putting two 8's next to each other.)
But one of them is 61, you say. How do they get that? Also simple. In this case, you use a 2x2 block of pixels. You can get X, X, X, X, or you can get X, X, X, X+1, or X, X, X+1, X+1, or X, X+1, X+1, X+1 as possible combinations. However, you because of the case where X==15 makes X+1 invalid, you don't get 16+16+16+16 but rather 16+15+15+15 which is 61.
The reader can easily generalize this to color. What they probably did was dither pairs of adjacent pixels for red and green and groups of four for blue, because the human eye has less fovial resolution for blue, or maybe they do groups of four for green because the eye has greater sensitivity to more shades of green.
Thus, we have 31*31*61 colors or 58621.
This, therefore, is a simple ordered dithering technique. The fact that this is transparent to us geeks/mathematicians is of no consequence to either the marketing suits or most people using the thing.
In case you were wondering how many colors you could get using real 16-bit color and the same 2x1
Let's assume we're using 565 color which gives 32 shades of red and blue and 64 shades of green. If we did 2x1 dithering on red and blue and 2x2 dithering on green, we'd get this:
Red: 32+31 = 63
Blue: 32+31 = 63
Green: 64+63+63+63 = 253
63*63*253 = 1004157
If we use Palm marketing speek, that gives us 19.9375 bit color.
160x160 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:160x160 (Score:2, Informative)
"display 58,621 'color combinations'"
Colour combinations?
This is the same as the number of different arrangements of 4,096 symbols in a sequence of 25,600 (160x160).
If the number of different combinations of 2 symbols (binary) in a sequence of n (bits) is 2^n, then the Palm can display 4096^25600 different colour combinations (ignoring symmetry).
That's.... erm...
2 ^( 25600 x log2(4096) )
which is: 2^307200
Cor! Wot a lot of colour combos! (and quite a few of them are probably copyrighted, obscene, etc.)
Re:160x160 (Score:2)
I can't think of a single way to arrange 4096 symbols into a sequence of 25,600; there just aren't enough symbols. I'm not joking here--I really don't understand what you've done mathematically.
Re:160x160 (Score:2)
Re:160x160 (Score:3, Informative)
It is 4096 colour DEPTH. Thats it.
Basicly, that means your stuck with 4 bits of red, 4 bits of green, 4 bits of blue. So, 16 shades of red, blue green.
With a palette based method it could atleast be 4,096 from 16 million, or some-such. it isn't.
I'd be pissed if I had bought one of these.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
MS Wins (Score:5, Insightful)
I own a Palm device, actually an Handera 330. I've had one in some form for 5 years. I like my Palm. I want to keep buying palms, but I won't be able to.
</preface>
<rant>
As much as I hate to say it, it appears to be only a matter of time before Microsoft takes over the handheld arena. Palm, like Netscape before it, is not the suffering saint being crushed by the giant, but rather a bunch of incompetent fools. They have has 95% of the market in handhelds just a few years ago, and what have they done with it? Nothing! They issue late releases that tought minimal imrpovements and then pull stunts like this. If it were not for Sony and Handspring, I believe that Palm would already be gone. Please! Get your act in gear or leave the party.
</rant>
Re:MS Wins (Score:2)
And Apple are falling into the same trap. Aaargh. Microsoft don't need to be evil anymore, they can just sit back and let the competition screw it up on their own.
Sign up as a developer... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MS Wins (Score:2, Informative)
Sony Ericsson P800 [sonyericsson.com]
Symbian [symbian.com]
Tech people have been drooling over this one for a long time
Re:MS Wins (Score:2)
when they came for windows for pen, i did not speak up, because i did not use it.
when they came for palm, no one was left to speak for me
Re:MS Wins (Score:3, Insightful)
I hadn't considered this comparison. It's 100% dead on. Palm are resting on their market share, at a dead stop on product evolution, in precisely the same way as Netscape circa 3.0. They've lost their hunger.
I'll feel as little sadness for Palm's demise as I did for Netscape's. And likely the same disdain when the antitrust lawyers are inevitably summoned in a last-ditch attempt to make some cash on the way down.
Leaving the party... (Score:3, Informative)
(Which blows away WinCE hands-down, period.)
MS will never win because WinCE devices have the same pitfalls that kept the Newton in the niche - They're too big. Palms are smaller. Period. In the PDA market, smaller size and better battery life will go a LONG way to making up for a lack of snazzy "features" like color screens (battery hog), 64M RAM (as if the color screen weren't killing your battery already), and a 200+ MHz processor (User: Hey, my palm lasted for a month on a pair of AAAs, why won't this POS last more than a day or so between charges???)
Yes, Palm's market share has gone down, but probably most of their marketshare loss has gone to Handspring and Sony (Also to Kyocera and Samsung with their smartphone products)... Oh wait, they're paying Palm for the OS anyway. Not that much of a loss for them.
The i705 is a sucky idea, except for the unlimited use factor. The new trend is combining full voice phone capabilities into the device (Kyocera Smartphone 6035 and the upcoming 7135, Samsung i300, Handspring Treos)
Re:Leaving the party... (Score:2)
Exactly. The OS is holding the hardware makers back. Handera and Sony both had to back proprietary hacks to get some of their advanced features to work. Palm (OS) needs to kick it in gear to keep their partners from leaving. Handspring has already mentioned that a PocketPC version of the Treo is not out of the question.
MS will never win because WinCE devices have
But, you forget the one thing they having going for them. Integration! Joe blow consumer wants to be able to move seamlessly from his desktop to his PDA. MS does that out of the box, Palm, does not.
Re:MS Wins (Score:2)
OK the fact that I am the only person to mention Zaurus so far in the thread view probably says it all, even though I am quit happy with my SL 5000D now that I have got the ROM update installed (before the update was a different story)
I think that Palm is out because they are doing an Apple, they are sticking resolutely to the initial 'vision' of a pinhead who cannot understand the difference between an advantage in the introductory phase and a long term advantage. Apple folk still get upset about my comment on their one button mouse, but the fact is that Apple still has not realised that the approach appropriate in 2002 is not necessarily the one that worked in 1984 when a 16 bit machine was high tech and a hard drive super luxury class.
Palm has the same problem, they are going after the filofax market. Problem is that only 5% of the population is super organized Martha Stuart types who compulsively enter every appointment into their calendar... Not only don't I care, I don't want to care. I have a handheld to browse the web while I am in the hot tub, to play solitaire and to do the odd bit of email.
Umm... (Score:2)
I think you meant Symbian...
160x160 is standard (Score:2)
take action (Score:5, Insightful)
Palm, Inc. Corporate Headquarters
400 N. McCarthy Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035
--
This is in reference to the "updated characterization of the Palm m130's color capabilities." I just wanted to let you know that your deliberate attempt to conceal the truth has convinced me that I will NEVER support Palm by buying one of its products. The knowledge base article claims that the difference between the advertised 16-bit display and the delivered 12-bit is 11%, and compares actual colors with "color combinations", using some crazy formula, to arrive at this figure. This is a blatant lie. A 12-bit screen can display only 4096 colors, a 93% difference. You are comparing apples to oranges for the sole purpose of deceiving customers who bought this product and abating anticipated complaints.
This bit of dishonesty is unacceptable and likely indicative of deeper lying dishonesty. Perhaps your marketing division would benefit from the honesty lessons that your financial division should have learned in the wake of the public attention brought to corporate dishonesty in fiscal reportings. I have no wish to deal with a company like yours. It is very clear that your customers are not your first priority, though whether you have made such claims I don't know.
I am a computer science major and tech enthusiast, who both buys many tech products myself and makes recommendations to friends and family who actively seek out my advice; many of them won't make such purchases without first getting my input. Be it known that not only will I not recommend your products, but will go out of my way to recommend against them.
Thanks for your time.
Of course, change it a bit so it makes sense for you.--
Re:take action (Score:4, Interesting)
Otherwise they might just think "Well, we already lost everyone who we're going to lose with this, why bother changing now if we aren't going to get them back by changing, and we're not going to lose anyone else by staying course?"
I think you've got to give them the benefit of the doubt (if they back off and do what you think is right) and write it off as something that some marketing schmutz made a mistake on that the company doesn't stand behind. On the other hand if you think this 12-bit thing is an example of a systemic Palm, Inc. problem, then you need to site other examples that back up your idea, rather than just blaiming it all on this one issue.
Re:take action (Score:2)
"Not only will I not recommend them, I'll go out of my way to tell people not to buy them?"
Jesus, really, thats slander?
slander Pronunciation Key (slndr)
n.
1. Law. Oral communication of false statements injurious to a person's reputation.
2. A false and malicious statement or report about someone.
Can you point out the false statement in his quote, please? I'm assuming he's not going to go around saying, "Palm's Executive Board is comprised of mass murders and pedophiles." He's just saying he'll put effort into telling people not to buy Palm. If thats slander, get me the fuck off this continent.
Re:take action (Score:2)
Furthermore, in some states (such as my state, California), companies which attempt to quell free speech criticism of their products face SLPP ("slap") sanctions. These are quite harsh. Essentially, once a SLPP allegation has been made (to wit: "hey! you're just attempting to quell my free speech with an intimidating lawsuit! you evil corporation, you!"), if the judge agrees that it's an SLPP issue, the corporation must prove adequately the judge that they have a real case. If they do not, they automatically lose, and must pay the _DEFENDANT_ court costs and damages.
C//
Unbelievable (Score:2)
4096 or 58k? (Score:2)
The question is... can they control the frame-rate for each pixel individually, or only for the whole screen at a time? With dithering, you're relying on the adjacent pixel color to "fool" your eye into seeing a color that's not there. With only 160x160 pixels on the screen, the pixels are too coarse and too few to make that work effectively.
The real question is: how many colors can you display on the screen AT THE SAME TIME? Seeing as there's only 25,600 pixels, I'd expect they should be able to display 25,600 colors at the same time if they were going to make their claims above with a "clear conscience".
Then again, I'm in marketing myself... and having a clear conscience is not always possible... q:]
MadCow.
Upgrade your old Palm to 65,536 colors!!! (Score:4, Funny)
* No claim of uniqueness for each color is expressed or implied
** If Gray isn't a color, what is it?
Re:Upgrade your old Palm to 65,536 colors!!! (Score:2)
But you'll definitely see gray. Even if the unit is off.
There is a simple way to resolve this... (Score:2, Informative)
And BTW, to the poster the claimed that since there's only 25600 pixels on the screen that this is not an issue: Get a clue! The color depth has nothing to do with how many pixels you want to display. It's about how many shades you have available, and how faithfully you can represent an image. With 12 bits of color, you only have 16 levels of pure grey. If you had a grayscale image with a lot of contrast, you'd probably see banding because there's not enough available levels to represent the image. This has nothing to do with the total number of pixels on the screen!
Aw hell (Score:2)
(Some of us don't have the 'underlining' turned on!)
Not 93%, but 1500% (Score:2)
"tricky language" (Score:2, Interesting)
What gets me is when they have to fall back on mentioning dithering -- the process of using *multiple* pixels to simulate an intermediate color. I hope they are doing this in hardware and not relying on Palm developers to do it for them.
I think that people are interested in "bits per *pixel*." If 3Com wants to say "5 *effective* bits per pixel," (because they're using hardware-based pixel-flipping techniques) then I think that's acceptable. But if you're going to avoid mentioning pixels and start talking about "color combinations," then I think they've crossed the line of common sense and are trying to be deceptive. We don't care about how many possible colors we can display using 4 pixels -- we want to know how many we can display using *1 pixel*!
Big deal.... (Score:2)
-Sean
Obligatory Simpsons Reference (Score:3, Funny)
If Ford called a V6 engine V8... (Score:2)
Re:Excuse me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Palm published incorrect information which probably led many away from competitors' products. This is serious stuff. Now those people (including me) feel a bit deceived.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:2)
Re:Excuse me? (Score:2)
Sure, only I bought mine on-line [widget.co.uk] & had only got the published spec to go on, as well as what I'd seen of the M5xx colour series which are actually true 64k machines. I didn't have any Handspring machines to compare to - they don't appear to sell here in Ireland (indeed, some of the Palm models are manufactured here).
Re:Excuse me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Excuse me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the blending technique is nothing more than dithering.
From the Palm support site [205.141.210.149]:
The color technologies Palm employed in the m130 handheld to deliver text and images include frame-rate control and dithering techniques. (Frame-rate control turns pixels off or on to deliver a specific shade of color. Dithering uses a group of adjacent pixels to convey a composite color.)
If Palm gets away with this, we will never know the bit depth of video cards, handhelds, cell phones, etc. since companies will be able to claim any number they want because their product's display can dither. I say nip this in the bud and get Palm to admit it only produces 4,096 colors.
And yes, I am aware that they claim it uses "frame rate control" too, but it seems this is nothing more than a pixel flashing so it appears to be a less intense color - surely all displays could do this too.
Some call it Temporal Modulation (Score:4, Informative)
One thing I don't know is how different shades are done on an LCD in the first place. It may be some high-rate temporal modulation in the first place, although I doubt that. One thing I know is that LCD panels have a sinusoidal gamma curve, and this is because brightness levels come from the angle of rotation of the crystals. 90 degrees gives you black, 0 degrees is white. If you were to rotate the crystal by linear angle, it would not be a sinusoidal color response.
Of course, add on top of that the fact that even a linear scale in light emission (luminance) is not a linear scale to the human eye (luma). These are why LCD displays are notorious at having poor color response, and the manufacturers don't seem to be smart enough to compensate for it, even though the math is butt easy to people like our esteemed friend Dr. Charles Poynton.
Oh, and Temporal Modulation is not a linear interpolation. Why is left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because Palm took a universally-understood benchmark -- bit depth in colour -- and advertised an incorrect value. That's either incompetence or dishonesty. Then, when caught, they suddenly want to redefine the universally-accepted benchmark into something that is more palatable to them but incomprehensible to everyone else.
Both the original error/lie and the spin are designed to obfuscate and make it harder to make a rational, intelligent decision. This, to me, implies that even Palm feels it cannot compete on a level playing field... which is why Palm is off my list for my next handheld.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:2)
You know, when technology companies treat their customers as fools, it's usually the sign of a technology company that's going to be appearing on a certain f*ckedcompany.com site shortly...
Note to future marketing gurus: BSing tech-savvy consumers is not a wise career move...
N.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:2)
Re:Why this doesn't matter (Score:2)
The device has been marketed, branded and sold as a having 16bit capabilites, when in reality it only has 12bit capabilites.
It's got nothing to do with asthetics.
Re:Buy a Zuarus! (Score:2)
Or buy the Zaurus developer edition... and have only yourself to blame if the software is crappy =)
Re:No Concerns (Score:4, Insightful)
But beyond that, I'm not even sure your 16-bit v. 32-bit example is a fair comparison in this case. The differences between individual "adjacent" colors get smaller and smaller the larger you make the palette. To argue your case might be like arguing that the difference between .0001 and .001 is the same as that between 1.0 and 0.1; sure, it's only a decimal place, but the resulting error would be far greater in the second case.
Terrible example. Were you planning to use all 4,000 of those colors on your wall at the same time? (If the answer's "yes", I'd like to humbly apologize, Sir Elton John. My mother loves your music.)Re:I own a 130 (Score:2)
Re:Anyone an idea? (Score:2)
Re:Res, Colors... (Score:2)
Doctor Fun on Palm porn (Score:2)
Re:Latest disappointing revelation (Score:2)
Re:Can you say class action lawsuit... (Score:2)
The point is to give the company so much bad PR that they're willing to do whatever it takes to fix the problem.
Even FILING a class-action suit, is usually enough to make the company look like idiots in the media, and convince their shareholders to whack the boardmembers with the rolled up newspaper and get them to fix the problems.
It's worked before, and it will work again.