“Palm and AT&T Wireless said they plan to have the Tungsten W, the handheld maker’s combination phone, e-mail device and organizer, on store shelves by the end of the month. The two companies were set to make a formal announcement about the launch of the Tungsten W on Tuesday, but held off because one element of the certification process for the device had not been finalized with the PCS Type Certification ReviewBoard, a wireless certification board.” Read more at ZDNet.
If Palm is downplaying the cellphone abilities, what is it then? An overpriced organizer?
I’ve always wondered why the ports in these types of devices aren’t firewire or usb… I suppose there is some technical reason… does usb or firewire require too much space?
“If Palm is downplaying the cellphone abilities, what is it then? An overpriced organizer? ”
i think it is supposed to be more like a RIM device, data and really email centric.
The official Palm page is finally up here, with pictures
http://www.palm.com/products/handhelds/tungsten-w/
Sadly, no fashion conscious executives will be using this device any time soon. Likewise, the 5 way rocker is in the wrong position for one handed use. The phone part is a hands-free attachment, an interesting compromise that prevents the Treo-stuck-to-the-face look, and must be quite comfortable.
On the downside, it is behind a bit technologically. It uses a 33 mhz dragonball processor, (66mhz processors have been available for over a year). It uses palm os 4.1.1, an odd choice for the originator of the OS to use a dated version. It does have 16MB Ram, which is a good amount for a Palm organizer… though once again they fail to “blow away” the competition.
On the connector note: there is no technical reason why it couldn’t be firewire or USB. Everything from the Archos Jukebox to cheap $29 webcams can utilize standard USB ports, and the connection cables for these devices come out the other end as USB, yet contain no circuit boards. They’re segmenting the market, plain and simple. If you prevent your market from buying peripherals from any other suppliers, you can charge monopoly prices on said accessories even if you don’t have monopoly status over the larger market. Sad but true, this little “feature” has prevented more innovative ideas from succeeding on the PDA than any other impediment.
I hope they market this thing well.
I’m in the market for a hand-held (looking at the zaurus) and I have an AT&T cell phone and AT&T broadband. If they come up with an incentive of something along the lines of “at&t customer only pay extra $x (single digit!)” to integrate it with their existing services, I’m sold.
What are the chances of that happening, thought…
The originators of products that get licensed out to cloners never seem to make as great an impact on the product to consumers as the cloners do. Is there some kind of standard answer to this? Look at licensed PalmOS devices compared to Palm devices and Mac Clones as compared to the Macs that came out at the same time from Apple. The clones usually made for better products in general.
I agree about the comment regarding the rocker being in a bad location on the unit for one handed operation.
Because they need to be “noted” as true innovators and not only cheap cloners.