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Will the mystery new Treo - or is it Foleo – save Palm? |
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In just a few hours time, Palm founder Jeff Hawkins will unveil the 'mystery device' worked on for years at the D: All Things Digital conference – will it be enough to save Palm?
With the Treo’s design remaining largely unchanged for the last three generations, amid mounting design competition from the likes of Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Blackberry and others, including Apple’s iPhone, of course, leading to mounting speculation on the future of Palm.
Mooted to be a buy-out target, while pundits and consumers debated the merits of the Palm’s interface and its design, with some pondering where a true ‘next-gen’ Treo would emerge, Palm’s existing Treo 650, 700 and 750 designs have continued selling well in the face of the Blackberry, the BlackJack, the Nokia E61 and other similar devices.
But now comes news of a mysterious new device from Palm, headed up by the current CEO Jeff Hawkins (and creator of the first truly popular ‘personal digital assistant’ or basic handheld computer, the Palm Pilot), giving news of the project an extra cachet and ‘cool factor’ that makes the mind twinkle at all the digital possibilities of just how good it could be.
Is it a new ‘Super Treo’, taking the existing Treo platform but dramatically slimming it down, adding higher-end features, a bigger screen and more, or is it the rumored and supposedly confirmed Foleo device, a handheld computer with ‘full size keyboard’, a ‘large’ screen and ‘up to’ 5 hours of battery life, yet is still small, a Linux operating system, the ability to edit ‘Office’ documents, browse the web and do email – but only if synchronized, presumably via Bluetooth, to your existing cell phone. A price of US $499 was listed.
The Foleo story is based on a supposed RSS news feed from Palm, presumably accidentally sent out before time. Doubts exist as to its authenticity, but already some users have expressed disappointment that the Foleo doesn’t itself contain a cell phone, but has to be paired to your existing phone, meaning yet another device to have to carry around.
There’s also no mention of Wi-Fi, nor memory capacity, memory expansion slots, the exact screen size, it’s digital media capabilities (mp3, video etc), battery removability or a host of other details, further adding credence to the theory the Foleo ‘RSS news feed’ of a ‘press release’ isn’t legit.
Still, if the Foleo is real, and can be made to reliably and effortlessly sync to your Bluetooth equipped phone every time, without fail, and truly delivers a desktop quality browsing, email and ‘office software’ editing, viewing and emailing capability, and can be brought down in price so it’s not as expensive as a full size laptop, and does actually ‘just work’, it does have an appeal as a laptop replacement.
However, there are too many ifs and buts to come to any real conclusion, especially when Jeff Hawkins will unveil Palm’s secret before the digerati’s best and brightest at the D: All Things Digital conference today in just a few hours time.
Whatever the new device ends up being, Palm’s Treo line is due for a design overhaul. The Treo is still quite popular, especially now that it’s also available in a Windows Mobile flavor, but in a world of iPhones, UMPCs, Intel’s upcoming ‘Mobile Internet Device’ or MID, the Smartphone Pocket PC platform, Palm’s mojo does need topping up, and the Foleo, if real, seems a step in the right direction, although seemingly without its own 3G or better Internet connection.
Let’s see what magic Hawkins and his team have conjured up, and let’s hope it lives up to the hype – the tech world needs the competition and the inspiration to take us from the current generation of technology to the next.
Jeff Hawkins and Palm have done it before. What the tech world wants to know is - can they do it again?
Submitted Date: May 31, 2007
Source: iTWire
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