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Handhelds Hardware

Handspring To Release 65k Color Visor 127

Posted by CmdrTaco from the little-yellow-green-orange-purple dept.
Fervent writes: "Hoping to up-end Palm company's supremacy in the color department for Palm OS, Handspring plans to release a Palm device with support for 65,536 colors. " Also, they're gonna offer a version integrated with a cell phone.
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Handspring to Release 65k Color Visor More

Handspring to Release 65k Color Visor

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  • I use a Visor but I agree with you. I personally prefer the Palm V look. Nice & sleek & futuristic - as you say, futuristic. I do some Palm development at work so I talked my boss into buying a variety of different ones - you know, for testing, yeah that's the ticket. Unfortunately, this was before the IIIc came out :(. I used the V for a couple of weeks and then the Visor came in. The 8MB flash module won out over aesthetics and now my boss has the V. I do miss the look and size of the V tho.
  • Actually that makes a good deal of sense. Since you have to specify the screen mode to use in order to go to a color screen, it'd make sense for them to make it so that you have to specify a call to go to 320x320 mode. That would be a reasonable solution.

    Though I don't think it's going to happen in this iteration unfortunately. Also, I've heard there's a shortage of small TVT LCD displays even at the 160x160 range, so I imagine that'd be even worse at 320x320. Oh well, maybe in a year?
  • Pine vs. something like Outlook Express: it's very functional

    Having to suffer Outlook Express @ work and it's damnable inability to accept email address lists copied (point/right-click,etc) from pine, unix mail, netscape mail, etc. I'd favor whomever isn't trying to foist unnecessary new standars on me. I'll probably hold out for a linux palm then I can run whatever I damn well please. ;)


    It's all true! ±5%
  • Rather than a "cell phone module", I'd rather have BlueTooth in both my PDA and cell phone and let them talk to each other. Let the cell phone browse the PDA's adress book. Let the PDA use the cell phone for communications. Throw in a wireless, ear-clip headset and I'd be in hog heaven doing voice queries on the PDA as well as phone conversations.

  • Visor as a Game Machine? (Score:4)

    by raygundan ( 16760 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @06:53AM (#766332) Homepage
    From the article:

    The Prism will have 16-bit color screen generating 65,536 colors and will be pushed as a game player. It will be bundled with at least one game.


    While i have a couple of games on my Palm, the controls are HORRIBLE. Why palm didn't put an old-NES-style 4-way rocker on one side of the unit always baffled me. At the very least, they could have arranged 4 buttons in a diamond pattern so that reasonable directional control was possible! (the middle up/down thing and the two buttons near it are too far apart, and you have to switch your hands back and forth to use the outside two buttons.)

    So... is visor going to give us better controls since its going to be marketed as a gaming machine? If so... bye bye Palm!!
  • include a rechargable Li-Ion battery (charges in 90 minutes)

    Discharges in how many minutes? These colour displays suck power.


    It's all true! ±5%

  • Re:Conflicts... (Score:3)

    by furiousgeorge ( 30912 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @07:00AM (#766334)
    >Personally, I'd rather keep my cell phone
    >out of my Pilot and vice-versa.

    nah. They problem is that we're reaching the ergonomic limit of cell phones, while manufacturers keep pushing to make them smaller.... Result? i can only dial using my finger nail because the buttons are so @#*&^@#*$ small i can't push normally and not hit 2 or 3. Cell phones can't get much smaller and be useful, so start putting more functionality in the case. I've been wondering how long it would take somebody to combine one with a good PDA....

    Personally, I'm waiting for Samsungs one coming out this fall that's an MP3 player too... now THAT's useful.....

    j
  • Hmm, I think someone should start a company that makes consumer electronics, but eliminates all the feature cruft, and sells them dirt cheap, and *SPECIFICALLY ADVERTISES*, "Hey, look, ours don't have all those useless features you never use, and they cost half of what those dorks charge."

    It probably wouldn't work, but, hey.

  • The solution, IMHO, would be a small enough cell-phone with a built-in modem you can hook up to your PDA over IR (no extra cables). My favorites in this area are the Nokia 89xx series, particularly the 8990. I just got my V, and I am lusting after the 8990 now (costs almost as much :-(...


  • Umm, I have a Qualicomm PDQ (The palm pilot+ digital cell phone) It sucks. Try and take notes on your palm while talking, try and look something up while on a conference call with it (O.k. buy the headset and look like a dweeb, then it will work... I refuse to look like a dweeb) This integration of everything into one, while a neat-o idea, is not pratical. The qualicomms battery life sucks (I spend 30-40 minutes on my phone a day, in digital land it's ok, in analog land, the other 90% of the country, it lasts 3 minutes) it is really easy to crash the whole phone/pda. Basically that phone sits on the desk un-used.

    Besides, what the hell do you need wireless internet for on a underpowered tiny screen? the ONLY time I used it was to check on e-bay bids.. and I tried to use it for work related things, it just dont happen...

    pda+cellphone..... you can keep it, I dont want it.
  • Integrating a cell phone and a PDA like this is really not a good idea. Many people get info through their cellphone and put it directly into their PDA (meetings, schedules, notes, quick calculations).

    How are you going to hear someone on the phone and enter data when you have to keep the PDA on your ear?

    The best solution I can think of is to have a hands-free, but even then you will have a cord to get tangled up in. The cellphone software and OS also have to support thredding/multitasking so you can use other PDA apps (calendar, etc.) while the cellphone conversation is uninterrupted.

    I personally don't own a PalmOS device, so if someone can clarify these points for me I'd appreciate it.
  • The other thing that makes Palms rule is the power consumation. Not I own a Win CE/Pocket device, but reading reviews on Amazon, people say that these mini notebooks typically last about 6 hours before a recharge. My Palm IIIxe lasts about a month on 2 AAA.

    I don't want to cough up cash for a handheld monster that's one step short of a laptop, I just want a device that doles out information like a pocket watch tells time. I carry it in the front pocket and I pull it out to jot down a price, lookup a word, arrange a meeting, or past time paying solitare. It's a quick on, compute, off, back in the pocket. That's what makes them successful.
  • There's a world of difference between a dedicated game machine and a multi-function device like a PDA or PC. Why does my Sony Playstation kick my PC's ass when it comes to games, when my PC has a 333MHz processor and the Playstation has a 34MHz processor?

    Building a computer for one purpose can make that machine a hell of a lot more efficient, because of the massive difference in overhead.

    ---

  • The things I really hate about Wince are how fast they go obsolete, and lack of compatibility between units.

    I have an old 1st generation wince device, and it went obsolete like 4 months after I got it. A coworker bought a Cassiopeia a few months ago and within two months MS had released a new, incompatible OS...

    The device incompatibility is pretty impressive too, since wince devices can be based on a number of processors.
    What? There's no version of "JoeBob's Pr0n Viewer CE 3.14" for your MIPS wince2 device? Sorry!

    True, the wince hardware is far more advanced than Palm, but IMHO, the overall usability sucks. Palm is so much more elegant.
    (And the Palm dev kit is free, which beats the hell out of ~$600 for Visual Studio and the Wince dev kit...)

    --K
    ---
  • I thought the article indicated that the mic on the Visor would still have to be used with the headset.

  • Um, you can already do that. (Score:3)

    by hatless ( 8275 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @08:48AM (#766343)
    I know this was meant as a joke, but reality is already way ahead of you.

    You can get a Minstrel/Omnisky for a current-model Palm and use VNC to remotely-control X and Windows desktops. It's been doable for more than a year now. Granted, since the Minstrel is slow, it would be slow as all hell, but it would work. Snap something faster onto the Palm/Visor's RS-232 port, and it becomes less slow. Though panning around on a 160x160 screen may not be your idea of fun.

    On the other hand, the SSH and TN5250 emulators I've used to connect to AS/400s wirelessly with a Palm work like a charm.
  • I suspect that a lot of the people who are buying PDAs are still techie enough to hate MS. How can Palm compete with the cooler features (MP3 player, voice recorder, first to color, more RAM, etc.) offered by the Win CE devices.

    Palm competes because cool features mean nothing when it's not usable. I had a Palm III first and a Visor Deluxe now, and every time I have played with a WinCE device the UI just wasn't there. If I want to pull up someone's name, I want to do it in as few taps as possible. God help us when we have to start double-tapping.

    As for RAM, WinCE devices need more RAM because the apps are bigger. I can still download PalmOS apps that are 50Kb (that's kilobytes) in size. Most PalmOS users (by reading this you don't count) don't even come close to filling up the 8MB in a VDX.
    ------
    James Hromadka

  • I can think of an extrememly wonderful use for color: Maps. I dont know if you've ever used Avantgo or other map program on the palm, but i for one find it next to useless without color. In this instance (and many others) using color can really communicate a lot more information in the same space. Now if only they could address the resolution/battery life issues...


  • DUH! nokia 9xx0 series pda-phones.
    Rumor has it that nokia is releasing a newer Triband/Colour/WAP/PalmOS version of the 9110i.

    I own one of each and despite the maxwell smart form factor, its damn handy.

  • I don't think they'd have to increase the resolution all that much to make it much more usable. If they increase the screen size to 160x240 like Agenda's Linux-based handheld [agendacomputing.com], it would be much easier to read memos and ebooks in landscape mode. The Newton MessagePad 110-130 had a 240x320 screen, and the horizontal resolution was quite adeqate. Ebooks would be a lot easier to read if more than six words fit on a line.

    -- Randy

  • If you really want to make a cell phone call with the aid of a Handspring Visor why not plug in a Springboard module that does Bluetooth communications?? Then all that's needed is a software app for the Palm OS that handles phone dialing and callerID. I'm purposefully not upgrading my old Nokia 6185 cell phone nor old Palm III until I can get both a PalmOS enabled PDA and cell phone (incl headset) with Bluetooth. (The cell phone part is already covered.)

    I like the idea of having a cordless headset, with the Bluetooth cell phone [bluetooth.com] behaving like a radio base station. Ideally, this should also allow me to use the cell phone as a wireless modem for internet access (like the Metricom Ricochet [metricom.com])

    Then if the PDA is bluetooth enabled I'll be able to also use the cell phone for internet access instead of going the more expensive route of buying a cellphone _plus_ a 33.6 Kbps Palm V(x) modem ($170 excluding monthly access fee) or cell phone upgrade kit.

    Now if an incoming cell phone call is not recognized by my cell phone's stored #s, it will look in the PDA's addressbook. If it doesn't find the incoming call there it will do a reverse lookup via the net or phone company. That way when it eventually displays "TeleMarketer, Inc" on my cell phone or PDA or synthesizes a voice announcement into the headset I will not pick it up.

    This bluetooth connectivity could also inform my PDA that when ClientX calls, my PDA will bring up his contact record and let me know to say, "ClientX, I haven't talked to you since last Tuesday at 3:43 pm when we discussed the software component Bubba will be delivering to you tomorrow"

    Extrapolating this idea. What's to keep me from using a bluetooth headset with: my wired phone on my desktop or as headphones for my walkman or as a microphone feed to a PA system or a walkie-talkie? Also, as bandwidth gets bigger why not have the headset include a monitor/camera.

    This type of system then begins to cover most sensory areas with sound in/out, sight in/out, digital data in/out. The senses not yet addressed would be smell, touch, and taste, but not even the Borgs had those accessories on them!

  • I did. They have none of the above information, at least not findable within 10-15 minutes.

    Thou shalt not tell others to RTFM without having RTFM thyself.
  • "(BTW, Is the IIIc a paletted 8 bit display a la VGA, or do you simply have a fixed set of 256 colours?)"

    It's paletted - for example, FireViewer modifies the palette for color images, and Mandelbrot modifies the palette to a rather ugly set for better fractaliciousness.

    -aardvarko
    webmaster at aardvarko dot com
  • I kind of resent that remark about visor owners buying into the marketing hype.
    (though now that I think of it, it's probably true for the majority)

    I personally bought a visor because #1 it was cheaper than the equivalent palm, and #2 I liked some of the ideas they had for modules. Sure none of them have made it to reality yet, but when they do at least I have the option of using them.

    I think I may be one of the very few who bought a Visor DLX and opted for the graphite version though.
  • The truly frustrating thing with owning a Visor is just that: the promised third-party products have failed to materialize. I have a funny feeling that by the time the useful modules arrive, it will make more sense to upgrade to a new device (one with built-in functionality) like some sort of cell-phone/PDA hybrid.
  • I have a few rebukes to this move. This doesn't shake-up or improve the Palm platform at all. Number one, there are almost no apps available for Palm OS that even use color to begin with. Second, the Dragonball, even at 30MHz, does not have the computing power to take advantage of 65,000 colors. Also, considering the standard resolution of the Palm, you cannot even display half that many colors (approximately 26,000 pixels - I forget the exact dimentions). Being that most apps would use repeated colors for various window widgets and so forth, this increase in colordepth would show no improvement in useablility - and since games typically show a limited number of colors on the display at any one time, why bother? It's a step in the wrong direction. Why not focus on making them smaller (Handsprings are still bigger than my Palm Vx) and cheaper (it still costs the same as my PalmVx did nearly 4 months ago) instead of adding as of yet unneeded features (because if people want something that 'looks' like their PC desktop, they'll probably buy a WinCE device - the rest of us use Palms for pure, serious functionality - not pretty graphics).

  • Include wireless networking and an X Windows server. Then I can run all my apps from anywhere in the house. Do that and they kick Palm out of the market!!

    Yeah! What a great idea! Go after the 0.001% of the market that would want to do remote X display, and increase costs for the other 99.999% of the market that doesn't know what an X server is (or why the "X server" runs on the "client" machine and the "X clients" run on the "server" machine :^) ).

    Please, people, don't disrupt my wishful thinking with nitpicky little points like "reality." Thank you.

    Oh. Sorry. Never mind, then.

  • THe only problem is that if you make it much smaller it gets a lot harder to use. The Visor is still better looking than the plain grey palms. As far as being able to carry, it's much clunkier than a smill notepad but a major improvement over a laptop
  • Part 1, 1st paragraph: "..analysts familiar with the Clié say that growth is unlikely because the unit's resemblance is too close to the Palm V.."

    Part 2: "Analysts expect the Clié to bring in even more consumers."

  • While bringing in new features is nice, consider this: How many times has your Palm crashed? One big benefit of the "keep it simple" mentality is a VERY stable platform. That's not to even mention the speed benefits.

    Personally, I don't expect to see any major advances until several hardware technologies advance such as:

    • Better color screens w/ higher pixel densitity
    • Perhaps, rollup or flexible screens
    • Smaller, longer lived batteries
    • Better wireless comm (BlueTooth?)
    • Much larger (yet cheap) storage capability (audio recording)
    • Voice recognition
    • {far down the road} Integrated video camera with digital recording

    There is still a lot to go into this platform!

  • I suspect that a lot of the people who are buying PDAs are still techie enough to hate MS. How can Palm compete with the cooler features (MP3 player, voice recorder, first to color, more RAM, etc.) offered by the Win CE devices.

    I doubt it. Most of the business people at my company carry PDAs, and the ones that do all carry Palms. Why? Because they actually use the things as PDAs. They're not interested in playing games or listening to MP3s, and while color might help a bit on the UI front, it doesn't add much in the way of real functionality.

  • Palms with A Cell Phone. Yum! Yum!

    Depends how it gets implemented, but nonetheless, Yum!
  • _Finally_, portable pornography that doesn't rely on MS software. Geeks rejoice!

    But on a small 160x160 screen - that could really make you go blind!

  • Agreed - a retractable screen such the ones on the communicator devices carried by characters in the show Earth, Final Conflict would be perfect.

    Jeff

  • Integrating a cell phone and a PDA like this is really not a good idea. Many people get info through their cellphone and put it directly into their PDA (meetings, schedules, notes, quick calculations).

    This would be easier if both devices were connected. Doing it via the Visor's Springboard slot seems like as good a way to accomplish this as any other.

    How are you going to hear someone on the phone and enter data when you have to keep the PDA on your
    ear?

    Just use an earpiece. The Visor already has a built-in microphone, so all the cell phone module would have to add is the earpiece.


    The best solution I can think of is to have a hands-free, but even then you will have a cord to get tangled up in. The cellphone software and OS also have to support thredding/multitasking so you can use other PDA apps (calendar, etc.) while the cellphone conversation is uninterrupted.

    The module would plug into the Visor's expansion slot, so the cell phone circuitry would be separate from the PDA itself. The PDA apps (primarily the addressbook) would merely have to tell the cell phone which number to dial and display any data that the module sent back. These apps could be pre-loaded on the Visor itself or more likely, be installed on the cell phone module and launched automatically when it is inserted into the Visor's Springboard slot. The Springboard slot is set up so that expansion modules can do this easily and transparently.
  • From my experience:

    -When the cost of TFT screens drop (remember it is a $150 device).

    -When batteries are able to hold more energy (more pixels == higher power requirements== increase battery drain).

    -When people start demanding wireless X displays!!

  • How come nobody's come out with a PDA that you can upgrade the LCD in? It wouldn't be too hard to make the LCD slide out so you could upgrade your B&W unit to colour. That way people wouldn't get stuck with as much non-upgradable old tech
  • I use my palm primarily to keep track of my bank accounts and to act as a log of sorts for my autos. I've started to use it to help manage shopping lists (it's very cool to have a list of stuff you get on a regular basis, mark stuff you want to buy and have a very close estimate of what you'll be spending before you walk into the grocery store).

    And it has some VERY nice programs to do that too...

    CE devices can't do those sort of things worth crap. They are handheld computers. Palm are handheld organizers. Two totally different classes of machines, and I can't see how people constantly try to compare the two as the functions they try to fill are nothing alike.

    And for those that complain about the color unit sucking batteries... it isn't a real problem. So far I have yet to have the battery level drop below half. The one time it did was because I forgot to put it on the charging stand before I went to sleep about 5 days in a row. And that was because I was playing with a piece of software that lets your palm pretend to be a remote control and left it on the table (ie: it was on for several hours for each of those nights that I forgot to charge it)...
  • I hope the cell phone module works well. I just got a Motorola PDA phone, the Accompli, and it sucks. I can't beam the contacts to my palm 3 and the os running the phone is really slow. Funny thing is, the Accompli uses the same processor as the palm 3.

    With the new handspring and the phone module, I will probably dump my Accompli and palm3. Ermm... maybe not the palm3, works great as a universal remote control.

  • CE already does this -- there's a Terminal Server Client for at least the HPC versions of CE.

  • it makes things less contrasty for reading in extreme lighting situations, and if it's anything like the Palm 3c's color, it's quite painful to look at for more than, say, 3 seconds.

    That's funny, I have nothing but raves regarding the paperwhite screen, high brightness, and non-gimmicky addition of color to OS widgets. Plus, AvantGo works well with TheRegister, though I'd like to figure a way to point AG thru my junkbuster proxy..

    Integrating it with the cell phone would be bad.

    Definitely. I want a 3G/4G unit with a little video camera and 2-10mbps wireless so I can have a handheld videophone. Anything less than that is a waste of time.. Though integrated wireless IP that is _useful_ (that is, allows me to buy movie tickets in the USA, which no US (W|CR)AP site has been able to do on my SPCS) would be nice, it's not enough to get me to buy a new phone/PDA..

    Your Working Boy,
  • >I've been wondering how long it would take somebody to combine one with a good PDA...

    Actually, Ericsson seems to get there... Their forthcoming R380s phone comes with quite a nice display and EPOC (Psion's PDA OS) as its OS (complete with pen and stuff ;)) Although I've only used the Emulator (for checking the WAP stuff I do), it looks quite useful. Now if only they'd finally get it out ;)

    For the Emulator click here [ericsson.com] (probably have to register, tho).

    For a look at the phone click here [ericsson.com].
  • Palm is Apple, i.e. successful proprietary product that became a segment-buster. The company uses superior software to sell more expensive hardware.

    As this, it has attracted the attention of the big boys. They have decided to enter the segment. Every Apple has its moment of truth, and this is the moment when they still have a choice of becoming Microsoft. It means becoming mostly software company at the expense of the ability to move overpriced hardware ;-)

    As for the Palm, they were given more breathing room because WinCE devices were too expensive; Microsoft could not use its main marketing method that is dumping.
  • Absolutely! The move to 65K colors seems kind of dumb to me at this point in time. The screen only has 25,600 pixels on it. So even if you used one unique color for each pixel on screen you would have 39,936 colors left unused. Since most normal artwork doesn't use 1 discreet color for each pixel, the color space for this device will be massively underutilized until such a time as the resolution of the screen increases.

  • "Hoping to up-end Palm company's supremacy in the color department for Palm OS..."

    Waaaait a minute, color department? I didn't even know that a single Palm OS PDA in existence even had color. Isn't this going to be the First Palm OS PDA with color? (hint: if you want to correct me, give me a link to a picture, I want visual proof!)

  • of course, the IIIC. What a waste, hope Handspring makes a sub-$200 model!
  • When people ask me what I use my Visor for, I normally respond, "It's the notepad I paid too damn much for to lose." Since it was a $250 investment, plus another $30 for a Rhinoskin ShockSuit belt clip, I keep a close eye on it at all times. I've nearly lost my stylus a time or two, though.

    A notepad is definitely the primary function of it for me...as evidenced by the 200+ records in the memo pad app. Secondary use is phone book, and tertiary is calculator. Though the EtherType app (returns manufacturer (and sometimes device type) based on a MAC address) has come in handy a few times.

  • So is Manufacturing Cost. (Score:4)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @10:14AM (#766375) Homepage Journal
    Why it is that geeks can't see behind the curtain for things like this continues to befuddle me.

    It's a simple matter of business economy, and careful planning.

    It costs Palm about another 30% more to make the magalloy Palm V than it did for them to make the earlier plastic-shell Palms. There are some that say that the only reason magalloy was possible with the Palm V line was because of strategic partnerships made with companies such as IBM, who have sufficient weight to pull this off, economically.

    Because the manufacturing costs are higher, and Handspring is still a relatively young company trying very hard to capture market share (and thus, they put more into marketing expenses than the the extremely expensive tool-up required for manufacturing magalloy cases), it makes total sense that they're using the injection-mold plastic cases for the existing Visor line.

    This plastic also has physical limitations such as strength, flexibility, etc. that have to be accounted for in design - and thus, the case is designed the way it is. I personally don't find it terribly unattractive - certainly, it fits well in my pocket, follows the 'bar of soap' design philosophy for personal consumer electronics devices, and it functions well.

    Tooling up a custom manufacturing plant to produce magnesium-alloy cases which can thus be smaller and thinner (due to increased strengths) is not something that I would expect a new company such as Handspring to do, not at all.

    They are doing exactly what they need to do, which is produce good quality devices, at an affordable price, which captures market share and creates happy, satisfied consumers, while also reducing the investment in expensive manufacturing toolup processes.

    Give them a year, and I would say that they'll release smaller, thinner, more fashionable-looking versions of the Visor - because by then they'll have the capital to invest in the tooling facilities for new case materials, and they'll also have the market share to warrant the investment.

    I know for sure that, as a loyal, happy Visor user (been a Palm user since Day One of the PalmPilot track) I will be more than happy to upgrade to a magalloy Visor next year some time, because I trust this company...
  • I most say that I do agree with you about the manufacturing costs and such. It is more of a catch 22 scenario though. People are into things that are little and sleek. Many people bought the Palm V and continue to do so. Why? Because they like the way that it looks. The upfront cost of visor retooling their machine shop to accomadate a new case design would be incredible. However, if they do not they cannot produce what many consumers want, a small sleek pda. It seems like they are screwed if they do and screwed if they do not.

    Jombi
  • Have you tried Astroids? The buttons work remarkably well as controls for Asteroids. Centipede, on the other hand, is an unplayable disaster.
  • Simple:
    - Automatically add incoming callerid calls to phone book.
    - Built-in fine grained call management...
    - Assign call lengths to particular phone book entries. Great for those people who bill for their time.
    - About a billion text messaging applications
    - and I have many more ideas....

    Some points.. it should have an earphone jack.
    It should include some memory for custom messages.

    They are going to make a mint of that idea if it works. I just don't know how they're going to fit all of that inside the the expansion slot.

  • Make it right (Score:3)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:45AM (#766379)
    Include wireless networking and an X Windows server. Then I can run all my apps from anywhere in the house. Do that and they kick Palm out of the market!!

    Please, people, don't disrupt my wishful thinking with nitpicky little points like "reality." Thank you.

  • Um, now. Doing something useful with it, that's another matter.

  • When (Score:1)

    by vapour ( 102049 )
    When will I be able to run Linux on my palm ?
    .
    ..

  • woo! (Score:4)

    by thal ( 33211 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:46AM (#766382) Homepage
    _Finally_, portable pornography that doesn't rely on MS software. Geeks rejoice!

  • Yup, its a catch-22 situation ... welcome to the world of hardware development. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Economy.

    That's why their strategy is a good one - they'll release better-looking and more solidly constructed gear within a year, I guarantee it ...

  • Probably has alot to do with the fact that a nicer LCD than 160x160 can often be damned expensive, the power req's of a color display vs. a b&w display may be large enough that when switching from color to b&w (say, when you're going to europe for 6 months and don't want to bring alot of batteries so switch to the power saving lcd) that the high contrast power setting on the color display blows out the b&w display. That, and screen size/res and memory are normally the only things that differentiate the palm OS platform organizers currently; if you remove that, then palm loses one more selling point. And software/hardware display incompatiblities would be a bitch. Personally i would much rather see a 4 color(white/red/blue/green)/16shade b&w display if they could make one that was less power consuming than the 256 or 65k color displays.

  • Am I the only one who didn't opt for a Visor because they are uglier than snake shit? Ok, I'm not trolling, but these things are still the big bulky boxes they've always been.

    If handpsring were to fit their PDA into a smaller box, wouldn't it be a HELL of a lot more appealing?

    I mean, Handspring is doing a lot of really cool things with PDAs. Their technology ability is great, but I think they lack in artistic appeal.

    Honestly, they could claim a lot of market share by making their devices look 21st century.

  • I can not believe it would take until November 2000 before we could have a GSM enabled PDA.

    Without cables without irda .. just .. a pda with gsm. I was just down the store looking at what palm to buy, now Handspring wins easily.

  • Re:resolution? (Score:3)

    by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @06:24AM (#766387) Homepage
    I agree 100%

    I don't know why they can't put the reoslution up to 320x320 and make it fall back to 160x160 for old apps using a 2x2 pixel group for each pixel.

    Perhaps even those old applications would only see 160x160 resolution, but the fonts, buttons, etc. would all have sharper edges unbeknownst to the application?

  • I think the Cell Phone Module Near part is the best. Finally things are starting to merge. Now if they just put a GPS module in there I'll be set.
    Actually, until the other handheld technology gets better I'm not convinced of the usefulness of color. They don't yet have enough memory to hold many images, definitely not video. Better sound would be nice as well. Wish list, wish list.....

  • I don't want this... (Score:5)

    by vsync64 ( 155958 ) <vsync@quadium.net> on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @06:25AM (#766389) Homepage
    ...and I sincerely hope they don't phase out the ordinary Visor Deluxe in favor of these newer versions, for two reasons:

    1. Color isn't that great. It sucks battery, it makes things less contrasty for reading in extreme lighting situations, and if it's anything like the Palm 3c's color, it's quite painful to look at for more than, say, 3 seconds.
    2. Integrating it with the cell phone would be bad. It's the same reason I probably won't get the MP3 player module or one of those MP3 watches instead of my Rio. I believe in separating essential functions, so that if my Visor dies and loses my appointments, I can call the person and double-check the time, for example. If both the Visor and the phone die, well...
  • I've heard that PalmOS 3.5 is only capable of supporting 8-bit color.

    If that is the case, then perhaps Handspring extended PalmOS3.5 to 3.5h (like they did for 3.1) to support the 16-bit color.

    If that is true, why couldn't they also extend it to support higher resolutions? None of the articles has said one way or the other what resolution the new devices will be.

  • Does this mean there is a chance MAME will be ported to Palm?
    Yummeeeeee!

  • Re:I don't want this... (Score:4)

    by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @06:28AM (#766392) Homepage
    As I've said elsewhere, I don't think the cellphone module is integrated.

    From what I've read, it's been described as being a SpringBoard -- even having it's own battery rather than draining the Visor's.

    Besides, Hawkin's has already commented many times (for example, in the Red Herring chat) that there would be a cellular module. Think of how much more money they can make this way!

  • Re:Why is the Palm OS winning? (Score:5)

    by JatTDB ( 29747 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @06:31AM (#766393)
    They're winning because they keep it simple, and because the entry-level price is so much lower.

    Most people want to use a handheld for very simple things...a phone book, an address book, maybe a few small games to pass the time during meetings. They don't want an MP3 player with just enough space to hold one song, or other such things that really only appeal to those who like to show off.

    One of my coworkers is a big WinCE fan...he's gone through several ones that he's bought, sold, or traded. The other day he decided to play an MP3 through the little internal speaker. It sounded like crap. He said, "Can't do that with your Visor, can you?"

    Of course, I can't, but then again, I paid less than half the price. And since mine is actually small enough to be comfortably clipped on the belt, I get a lot more work done with it. His is on his desk half the time because he doesn't feel like carrying it around all the time.

    I don't need a "real" pc with me at all times. I have a workstation at my desk, multiple boxes at home, and a laptop for the rare occurances when I need that sort of capability away from those places. For everything else, PalmOS works great.

  • i was gonna post something big and long, but i just accidentally hit escape and zapped it all. suffice it to say that the visor OS is in ROM. Palm linux is possible.
  • I heard that Nintendo had planned on pushing the Game Boy Color as a gaming machine -- with a 4MHz processor? Who would want to play anything on that?

  • I was wondering why Sony's Clie sports a jog dial....

    Silly me, I didn't think of the game issue.

  • Although Palm devices are evolving there focus is on speed and ease of use. There is no hourglass pointer on a Palm device because all of the apps are optimized for speed and don't need an hourglass. When you buy a WinCE machine you can be assured that your PDA will be outdated soon. This is because the WinCE apps constantly include bloat, have no regard for memory, and take forever to load. A Palm device with 8MB of memory can have *many* apps with the largest being around 250k. On a WinCE machine bloated apps are several MBs in size and take a little while to load.

    I guess Palm and WinCE PDAs can be compared to consoles and computers. Programs for Palms assume the hardware is going to be about the same across any Palm device, while WinCE programs want you to get a 200MHz StrongARM on a 32MB of memory machine.. and even then your still waiting on the hourglass. Of course, this is an exaggeration, but there is an entirely different philosophy when programming for a Palm. Of course, there are going to be exceptions, but by and large the Palm adheres nicely to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid). This fits nicely to an on the go device and thats why Palm has 80% of market share.

    If you want a shrunken laptop with Windows problems and crashes everywhere get a WinCE device. If you want a real PDA that helps you get stuff done get a Palm.

    JOhn

  • I have a few rebukes to this move. This doesn't shake-up or improve the Palm platform at all. Number one, there are almost no apps available for Palm OS that even use color to begin with.

    A quick search at Palmgear [palmgear.com] turns up 558 color apps for the PalmOS. That may be a small fraction of Palmgear's 6600+ software library but it's nothing to sneeze at.

    Second, the Dragonball, even at 30MHz, does not have the computing power to take advantage of 65,000 colors.

    Then they can use specialized video circuitry to help it out. Maybe that's why it's so expensive.

    Also, considering the standard resolution of the Palm, you cannot even display half that many colors (approximately 26,000 pixels - I forget the exact dimentions).

    25,600 to be exact. He shoots, he scores! :-)

    Being that most apps would use repeated colors for various window widgets and so forth, this increase in color depth would show no improvement in useablility - and since games typically show a limited number of colors on the display at any one time, why bother?

    It could make fonts and maps more readable and allow for sharper undithered images for your Eyemodule [eyemodule.com] pictures.

    It's a step in the wrong direction. Why not focus on making them smaller (Handsprings are still bigger than my Palm Vx)

    Part of the problem with making the Handspring Visor smaller is that the its Springboard slot takes up a lot of space that cannot be used to cram more electronics. Expandability for size, it's a trade-off not everyone can live with but some of can.

    and cheaper (it still costs the same as my PalmVx did nearly 4 months ago)

    This would be the first Visor to even come close to the V series in price. The earlier Visors sell for just $149-$249.

    instead of adding as of yet unneeded features (because if people want something that 'looks' like their PC desktop, they'll probably buy a WinCE device

    But if I bought a WinCE device, I'd have to through away my Flash Module and all my PalmOS apps! With a color Visor I get it all. The apps, the functionality, expandability, and color games, pictures, and maps. I'm not saying I'm going to run out and buy a color Visor as soon as it becomes available -- but it sure is tempting!
  • How has handspring competed on price? Sure you can get the crappy 2MB edition for $179, now beaten by the new palm, but the decent 8MB version is $249. That's about in line with similarly equiped palms.

    Nate
  • So where do PDA's fit on Intel's market roadmap?

    Should we look forward to PDA's running high-end intel processors?

    I can just see the day... managing my contacts and schedule on a P-IV powered Palm. I can carry the 60-pound refrigeration unit in a backpack as I go about my routine...

  • I own a Palm m100. It's design is plastic, but it's very ergonomic, and it looks really nice. I didn't say that the visor had to be metal, just that it needed to look less like a ST:TOS tricorder, and more like a communicator. :P

  • I agree that color isn't really worth it, esp. in terms of lighting and battery (and let's not forget, $$$). I have tried to think of an app/situation where you would *need* color and, apart from really expensive wallet pics of yer family, I can't think of one. Now, as for the Cell/Palm integration, I think it does need to happen. The problem is with the Phone form-factor vs. the Palm. Remember: the Phone can change. No reason to use a hard-button keypad. Make a little Jabra mic/headset that attaches to the top of the Handspring. Make a Dial app that looks like the Calculator. Integrate with phone book, and whammo! Convergence. The problem with the Phone form is that you can't *look at it while you're talking*, thus negating the whole point of having all that wonderful wireless access combined with the phone. The Palm is the right size, has a screen that's very visible in direct sunlight (and is way bigger... WAP can just blow me) ... it just needs a headset and the cell antenna.

  • Insightful?

    The move in computer graphics adapters to 16,777,216 colors seems kind of dumb to me at this point in time. The typical screen (1024x768) has only 786,432 pixels on it. (Even a "high-resolution" screen -- 2048x1536 -- has only 3,145,728 pixels on it.)

    So even if you used one unique color for each pixel on screen you would still have 15,990,784 colors left unused. Since most normal artwork doesn't use one discrete color for each pixel, the color space for this device will be massively underutilized until such a time as the resolution of the screen increases.
    --

  • ...we called 65,536 "64k" rather than "65k."
  • sweet phone. Too bad WAP is so sucky.
  • I JUST freakin' ordered one of these pups after waiting all this time.... NOW they go color. AAAAARRRRGHHHHHH!

  • Read the article It will have lithium-ion batteries. Everyone talks about color draining your batteries, but the 3c can go 3 weeks without a charge, and with the charger in the cradle, it's easy to just let it recharge while you're at your desk. Unless you plan to be away from electricity for more than 3 weeks, in which case I direct you to the /. tagline News for Nerds and ask you to leave. :)

    Nate
  • I know - those things RULE!

    I hope we can actually get one of those in a few years - hi-res/hicolor, realtime videoconferencing, satellite-enabled...

  • Re:resolution? (Score:4)

    by CaseyB ( 1105 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @11:14AM (#766409)
    The move to 65K colors seems kind of dumb to me at this point in time.

    It has nothing to do with being able to see all of the colors "at one time".

    16 bit colour is worth having because it means your applications don't have to worry about working with only 256 colours at one time. They can simply work with the global 16 bit palette, and everything is much easier. So, if you display a photograph, you don't have to dither or quantize the image, or steal colors from other areas of the screen.

    16 bit is probably the upper useful bound on portables though. The jump from 16 to 24 bit is often hard to distinguish even on a high quality desktop monitor.

    (BTW, Is the IIIc a paletted 8 bit display a la VGA, or do you simply have a fixed set of 256 colours?)

  • I belive that motorla's processor can only address 8MB of ram total!

  • umm i thought the low selling price of the palm IIIx had to do with the fact that it had no flashable rom and/or expansion possiblities? In which case, buddy, you're fucked. Next time ead the technical specs ahead of time : )

    Maybe you're lucky and it was the IIIe or similar that had the non-flashable rom

  • I'd rather be able to see more text(with decent font detail) than more colors.

    More resolution is always nice, but the colour screen has it's own potential to improve plain text output, if it uses some sort of sub-pixel font rendering [grc.com].

  • This News.com article [cnet.com] has quite a bit more information on the VisorPhone, including a picture [cnet.com].
  • Unfortunately it's just a kernel and a few (mostly useless) programs (like lissajous).
    --
    Linux MAPI Server!
    http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
  • There's more than color in the new Visor.

    First of all, it will be 64k color (16-bit color) versus Palm's 8-bit color. Still, the screen is expected to remain 160x160 resolution (due to PalmOS limitations) which means, at best, you could display about 1/3 of the 64k colors on the screen at once anyways.

    The new units will also include a rechargable Li-Ion battery (charges in 90 minutes), 30MHz Dragonball CPU (they used to be 16-20MHz), PalmOS 3.5 (for official color and greyscale support, IR syncing, network syncing, etc.).

    Unfortunately, the unit will also be a tad thicker, and come with a hefty $449 pricetag.

    As for the cell unit, I was under the impression it was a SprignBoard that would work in any Visor, not a different Visor model. After all, that's Handpsring's differentiator.

  • Disgruntled Visor Owners (Score:5)

    by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:53AM (#766427) Homepage
    Already, there are some disgruntled Visor owners.

    As one of them, I can say that we've been waiting for some inklink of Palm OS 3.5 capabilities for a while now (for official color and greyscale support, IR syncing, network syncing, etc.)

    However, we don't have Flash RAM, so any OS upgrade would have to be in RAM (no big deal if its small enough), or on a SpringBoard.

    Either that, or we have to foot the bill for a $200+ upgrade after sellng our existing Visors.

  • resolution? (Score:5)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @05:54AM (#766431) Homepage Journal
    When are we going to see more than a 160x160 resolution in these devices instead of more color? I'd rather be able to see more text(with decent font detail) than more colors. I know it's a step closer to being more of a laptop than a palmtop, but still.
  • If you want gaming, go for the Compaq iPAQ. It's got a 206 Mhz strongarm w/ 32 MB RAM. It currently runs Doom, and I believe a Quake port is in the works. Also, you might want to check out games like Turjah [jimmysoftware.com] at Jimmy's [jimmysoftware.com]. There is a problem currently with the buttons, in that it only registers one keypress at a time, however Compaq has said it is fixable and will publish the fix. The nice thing about the iPAQ is that the OS is in flash, so it can be upgraded.

    Oh yeah, it can run Linux and X :)

    -Vercingetorix

  • I can not believe it would take until November 2000 before we could have a GSM enabled PDA

    Ever heard of Nokia's Communicator (the 9110i), or of Kyocera's PDQ (not GSM, but almost)?. Cool stuff, but you have to lug a real brick of a cellphone even if you don't want (or need) to use the PDA stuff.

    That's why I stick to having a Palm IIIx and a Nokia 8210.

    Now, I'm not sure I'd go for the "all-in-one". I mean, what happens if you lose or break your GSM/PDA/Kitch-sink-mega-gizmo? Never keep all your eggs in the same basket, huh.

    Btw (and slghtly OT), the 9110 has a pretty powerful speaker, so you can use a wav file as a ringtone. Just for fun, a friend had put an old phone (ring-ring) sound, you should have seen the faces in the bus when the thing would ring... LOL!

    /max
  • Some of the comments ask whether Handspring can push OS/3.5 to support resolutions greater than 160x160 since they're going to have to hack in 16-bit support anyway.

    As a Palm programmer, I'll confirm it's true that the OS/3.5 data structures are set for 8-bit color depths, so it'll be interesting to see how Handspring gets around that.

    However, there's never been a resolution limit imposed in the OS. Higher res screens should work just fine in the current OS.

    *BUT* most apps would break (or only use the left 1/2 of the screen) since resources (things like buttons, labels, etc.) are all hard coded as to their starting position and length (in pixels), so it'd require quite a rewrite for apps.

    That being said, I think it is time to move on to a higher res screen. It's possible that they could release a hack that'll just double the pixel width of all screen draw routines in the interm to prevent breaking apps (though they'd likely look a bit odd).
  • Where are they going to put the batteries it takes to run this beastie for more than 2 hours?

    got diehard?


    It's all true! ±5%
  • I thought I recalled Palm OS only supporting up to 256 colors. Anyone?
  • Mame has been ported to the PocketPC. Check it out [geocities.com].

    -Vercingetorix

  • Re:Disgruntled Visor Owners (Score:3)

    by spagthorpe ( 111133 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2000 @11:47AM (#766440)
    But you KNEW the Visor didn't have flash when you bought it. Every review I ever read on the Visor before they were available said that there was no way to upgrade the OS like the Palm. The Visor was cheaper because of this. Now you are going to complain that you didn't get the features of the more expensive Palm? Unreal.
    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
  • I happen to have just purchased a Visor Deluxe two weeks ago. That leaves me another two weeks on my 30-day money back guarantee. Therefore, I wish to know: should I sync this thing one last time, toss it back to Handspring, suffer one more PDAless month, and end up with the bestest new technology?

    I don't want color --- it drains power. A monochrome screen is fine by me. What I want to know about are this new processor and the new OS. What does PalmOS 3.5 give me? How fast is the existing Visor processor?
  • The two biggest selling points for the Visor over the palm have been the price and the springboard slot. Well, this new color is apparently priced at $450, which is back up in the range of the Palm IIIc. And the accompanying story that I saw talks about the long awaited cellphone module...which will cost about $300! I thought one of the early things that Handspring said was they were going after the more "everyday" market, not the corporate expense accounts.
  • Personally, I'd rather keep my cell phone out of my Pilot and vice-versa. I use my cell phone _constantly_ and it goes with me everywhere. Thus, I appreciate the tiny amount of cubic volume my Motorola v8160 utilizes. My Palm VII is with me almost as much, but in all honesty I don't need it 1/2 as much as my phone. I'd hate to carry around something as large as the Palm all the time. It seems that any decent PDA needs a decent amount of screen area, so once integrated with a phone, the unit can only get _so_ small and still be useful. What we need is flexible/foldable LCD screens to be affordable. Then my phone could be "unfolded" to reveal a respecably sized screen...

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