Rumors Abound about the new Tungsten

Palminfocenter is reporting that Palm may release a new product, tentatively nicknamed the Palm X. It is supposed to replace the Palm T5 and a release date is presumed to be in October.

(Picture Courtesy of Engadget.com and Palminfocenter.com)


The new device supposedly supports the following features:

1. Palm OS Garnet v5.4.9
2. 312 MHZ Xscale Processor.
3. 320 x 480 pixel display.
4. 128 mb non-volatile memory.
5. 802.11b and Bluetooth 1.2
6. SDIO Expansion Slot.

Not readily confirmable is the following:

1. Internal Camera.
2. Internal Voice Recorder.
3. Price of $299.00

My take on this:

I think that the addition of the 802.11b is a good one, along with the NVFS (nonvolatile memory, allowing you to let the battery run down and not lose the information in the machine). However, I would think that Palm would have been able to put a faster processor in this machine and begin to add not only SDIO card slots, but Memory Sticks for pictures. When one considers that the leading selling digital cameras are Sony's, it only stands to reason that this should be included. (While on the subject, whatever happened to the Lifedrive Memory Stick Adapter)?

The price point is quite appealing, because this is the MSRP and not the "street" price. It will make those holding sacred the unrelenting PALM TUNGSTEN 3 (Debatably the best Palm product ever made :) ) look to upgrade, since the T3 goes for about 250.00 on Ebay. Although, not lost in this comparison is the fact that the T3 has a faster processor. That is somewhat surprising. However, as I stated before, the Garnet Operating System is not compatible with multitasking, thus Palm may believe that the processing power is not really needed.

For medicine, I think that if the price is 299.00 retail and by January it can be found for about 240-250, this is a very good Palm. It could become a better seller than the Zire series, which is by far the most popular new Palm for healthcare providers at the moment.

What is not mentioned is the lack of a hard drive. I would suspect that without a hard drive, this is probably faster in "real life" than My Lifedrive. At least at the point of entering data. However, I think that many of you know my opinion of hard drives in the Palm. If you can have a fat-32 system on a solid state device, then I believe that this is the best option for speed, weight and size. The battery life is also better on these products (ie. Ipod nano, Tungsten T3).

I certainly hope that the bugs are worked out in Garnet. The glitches found in the Lifedrive are by now historical and just downright annoying. A stable operating system is needed, particularly when using a handheld device.

Nevertheless, if this product appears as mentioned above, I think it would be a good addition to the Palm line and bodes well for the possibility of a magnificent upgrade to the Lifedrive line (hopefully with solid state materials ---> Just read that Samsung is creating a 16 gig card to rival the disc drives).


LDD.