Palm's Leaked "Oslo" Prototype: Images, Rumors, Speculation

For about a month, pictures of a rumored new Palm model, code-named "Oslo", originally found at a Thai Palm Users' Group website, have been floating around, and people have been saying all sorts of things about it. This slightly odd-looking device is the first PalmOS 5 PDA I've seen, and seems to introduce a number of interesting features. Since I'm awake, I might as well try to aggregate the rumors from several message boards into one place, and make a few of my own guesses based on the pictures. Bear in mind that this is all rumor, guesses, and opinion, and none of it is guaranteed to be true.

First of all, the image seems to be either "the real deal" or close enough that Palm felt threatened; as the admin of PocketPC Thoughts explained in an edit of his posting, a Palm executive contacted him and asked him to take the images down. Not that this seems to have done much good in stopping their spread.

Some posters were still skeptical, claiming that the image showed signs of Photoshop work—in particular, pointing to the blur at the upper left, on the Oslo logo; others pointed out that this was where the serial numbers that uniquely identified the owner of this prototype had been blurred out for his protection. (It doesn't seem to have helped much; at one of the other sites hosting the image, it is shown with all the numbers intact.)

As to Oslo's features, let's start with what seems to be plainly visible in the photo. Most obviously (from looking at the text fonts in the image), the unit has a Clie-like high-resolution color screen, making it the first non-Sony Palm PDA to do so. Instead of the up/down arrows, there is either a four-directional "gamepad" with a select button in the center (a la the Diamond Rio MP3 player) or a miniature track-ball in a housing (it's hard to tell from the picture); at the upper right are holes for a speaker (according to posts on Palm Info Center, it's a cellphone speaker, the LED at top left is the cell's activation light, and the microphone is concealed in the "gamepad"). And, finally, the bottom part of the Oslo slides up over the graffiti pad, like the Nokia cellphone from The Matrix, so the unit is more compact for pocket carrying. (And someone has even photoshopped the image for an "artist's conception" of what it would look like.)

Speaking of the graffiti pad, there has been a slight cosmetic change there, too: the Home, Menu, and Find silkscreen buttons are there as before, as are the clock and contrast minibuttons at the upper left and right corners of the graffiti area, but the calculator icon has been replaced with a star icon. (Apparently the m705 has this icon, also.) Guesses on the rumor sites suggest that it is either a "favorite app" icon or else it has something to do with wireless/phone applications.

And one last visible feature that has been pointed out: the Oslo seems to be sitting in an m505 sync cradle.

As for features that are less visible, an anonymous poster to Palm Station who claimed to have handed a prototype revealed that the power button was on the top left, the unit has a CompactFlash slot in the top middle, and it also features Bluetooth.

An anonymous poster to Palm Info Center suggests that the Oslo's CPU will be a 175 mHZ Texas Instruments OMAP1510, which combines an 175 MHz ARM-compliant processor with a 200 MHz DSP for multimedia capabilities. A poster to the Bargain PDA discussion (page down to the bottom) goes into more detail on this processor.

Moving from the likely to the interesting, more anonymous posters with claims to Secret Knowledge suggest that the production version of the device will be called the "Fargo," will have 16 megabytes of onboard RAM, will retail at $499, and will ship around October. This seems to be a bit pricey, but not out of line with what one might expect for a color high-res Palm with wireless capabilities, especially being the first of the new faster OS 5 generation.

Other impressions from the discussion boards: some posters were doubtful about the device sliding shut, thinking that instead perhaps it slid further open to reveal a thumb keyboard. Others thought that perhaps a thumb board could snap into place while the unit is open instead (or that it didn't even close at all). There were also repeated complaints that the Oslo did not have the virtual graffiti area of the HandEra and the Clie NR70.

Why the directional pad? Starting with the Palm M series, which had a little clock that could be accessed even when the lid was closed, Palm seems to have been trying to make their devices useful even without fully opening them. My guess is that the pad is partly intended as a two-dimensional version of Sony's jog dial—to allow the user to select screen options without using the stylus. This would make the Oslo (or Fargo) a lot more useful when closed, perhaps even allowing running most minor applications without having to take the stylus out.

Bearing in mind that all of this is rumor, and may be true, partly true, or mostly false, Palm seems to have a nice set of features on their first OS 5 model. Will it be enough to maintain their lead position in the PDA market? That will depend on what Sony and Handspring's OS 5 offerings look like.