There’s a new phone with the word “Palm” on it that’s tiny, intriguing, and has very little to do with Palm beyond that word printed on the back. It comes from a startup in San Francisco, which purchased the rights for the name from TCL last year. It costs $349.99 and will be available in November, but you can’t go out and buy it on its own. It’s only available as an add-on to a current line. Also, Steph Curry is somehow involved.
This is a rather interesting little device, as it seems one of the very phones focusing on being a small device that gets out of your way instead of trying to draw you in. I honestly don’t understand the business model, though – who’s going to buy a second $350 phone you can only get when you buy your primary phone? This seems doomed to fail, even though I’m sure there are quite a few people who’d love to buy a relatively cheap, well-designed full Android phone that isn’t a surfboard.
This is the sort of lock-in I was worried about with eSIMs
I don’t think this is due to e-sim. You can lock down phones pretty well with physical sims. And sim less cdma phones were also really easy to lock down.
I’ll grant your first point, but traditional SIM phones could be unlocked by third parties. It’s not clear how this will be possible with an eSIM.
If you’re running but want something small but bigger than an apple watch? I mean watches are $300 +. Or maybe if you’re going somewhere like the beach where there is a greater chance of theft or damage, you might want to bring a cheaper phone? Like if i worked at a nuclear power plant, I might use one.
But yeah, niche.
Maybe for some people it’s “cheaper” than their main phone, but not exactly cheap…
PS. Why would you want one if working at a nuclear power plant?
Which is where the designers of this product shot themselves in the foot. There is no market for contract carrier-locked “secondary” phones. What Verizon could do is offer this as a secondary phone to a contract that already includes a primary phone (and do some SIM-cloning thing), but they are too greedy for that.
Isn’t this essentially a smart watch without a wrist band?
I mean, I’m not a fan of the increasingly huge smartphone screens (after about 5.5 inches, why not go for a tablet?), but this seems… silly.
You say you don’t get it, but you hit it right on the head.
It’s doomed to fail.
That’s the Palm way. I say this as someone who still owns 3 Touchpads, a Veer, and all the accouterments.
A product looking for a solution to solve. Is a device the size of the Nexus 5 “big”? Are you willing to sacrifice screen size to have a smaller phone? Most people won’t.
… just get a cheap as chips feature phone for 1/10 of the price?
Else, I really don’t get it.
while it is in many ways a silly idea – and a luxury (as a second device)…,
IF it came with a standard nano-sim slot and was available unlocked – I can imagine investing in one for the odd occasion when I wanted a small smartphone-lite. Camping, running, night-out, festival.
But it needed that std Sim slot. AND probably a 1200/1500 mAH battery.
next time…
OnePlus ?
You could buy for a lot cheaper a used iPhone 5s
Not locked, cheap to buy.
The iPhone will still run all the latest apps & OS, will be super easy to setup (just login to iCloud and all you apps + data is automatically synched)
Another option is something like this
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01MSVVEU8/ref=psdc_3379583011_t2_B017R70EJ…