Cameron's Thoughts

Tungsten T3

While the last couple of days, the big PDA news has been the UX handhelds. Sony actually announced two handhelds in the US, nit just the UX50, but also the UX40 sans WiFi. But today there have been pics going around from China showing a prototype of the Palm Tungsten T3 handheld. The Tungsten T2 hasn't even been released, but it looks like they are already testing this model that will probably be available by the end of this year or early next year.

Based on this article from The Inquirer, it looks like the updated Tungsten device that they are describing. So, this device might even be out by November. My Clie NX will be a year old by then, and might be ready to retire :). If this is the same device that's described, then it will be running Palm OS6, though that's not shown in the screenshots. Probably the prototype is running a modified version of Palm OS 5.2 since OS6 isn't ready yet. From earlier screenshots at Palm InfoCenter, it looks like OS6 will natively be hi-res+ (320x480) like the device shown. Sony and Garmin already have devices with hi-res+ screens and Tapwave has a device on the way. The Clie UX is rumored to have the OS6 API's built-in for it's hi-res+ screen and so will the Tapwave device. I bet Palm will wait until OS6 is actually out until it has a device with the OS6 hi-res+ API.
I think that a hi-res+ screen is a must on any device I own in the future. The screen is amazing to look at. Plus, this TT3 looks fairly slim, especially compared to some of the recent Clie devices. I hope this device is really coming by the end of the year. I would miss abandoning the Clie platform, but if Sony doesn't put something like this on the market by then, I've have no regrets moving to a Palm device. Sony was keeping way above Palm with the quality and technology of there devices, but now Palm has Sony beat. The Tungsten C, and now the Tungsten T3. Sony better have something up their sleeve, and it better be something better than the toy of a PDA, the UX-50.

Posted on Saturday, July 19, 2003 at 4:13:47 AM