Underwhelmed - The Tungsten T5
I had high hopes for the T5. I really wanted to like it. But really. This is it?
Let me say this up front. With the T5 on the market, the Tapwave Zodiac is still the best Palm Powered device on the market. Why? Because with one notable exception, it does everything the T5 does, only better.
Let's look at the exception first. The T5 is the first PDA to use nonvolatile flash memory. It took until now for this to be financially viable, and I look forward to more devices using flash in the future.
Now let's look at how that flash is actually used. The device has 256MB, of which 41MB goes to partitioning and the system heap. That leaves 215MB. Of that, 160MB is a dedicated Flash Drive, which shows up as a VFS volume in the system. That leaves only 55MB of actual PalmOS system memory. While you can store ebooks, dictionaries, Audible books and music on the Flash Drive, the "256MB" T5 really has about the same memory available for programs and data as the T3, and half that of the Tapwave Zodiac.
The unique gimmick feature of the T5 is that 160MB Flash Drive can be used on any PC or Mac just like the keychain drives so common now. You just have to enable "Drive Mode" on the T5 and plug it in to a USB port with the USB cable you're also carrying around. Even if this weren't lame for making you lug around a cable, it's only 160MB! As many of my regular readers know, I work at CompUSA. We sell 256MB flash drives on sale for $50. On sale days, even 1GB flash drives sell for under $100. So PalmOne really expects people to pay $400 for a 160MB flash drive?
The T5 also introduces the new Multi-Connector, the successor to the Palm Universal Connector as PalmOne's proprietary, only-buy-our-brand-accessories connector. It would seem that PalmOne's brief flirtation with the standard five-pin Mini-USB connector and standard round DC power jacks was just a low-end, cost-saving thing. They don't actually plan on passing on the savings and convenience of using industry standards to the customer. The Treo 650 will also sport this new "innovation."
The T5 looks a lot like the runaway-success Tungsten E, but a darker gunmetal gray color. It's a plastic housing, making the T3 the last of the metal-bodied Palms. It's a bit thicker than the E, probably to make room for the 1300mAH battery. While this is about half again the size of the T3's battery, it's still smaller than the 1540mAH battery in the Zodiac. It comes with Bluetooth, but no WiFi, so you can spend even more money on PalmOne's WiFi SD card.
This would have been a stellar E2, but as the flagship of the PalmOne line, it's just a lackluster disappointment. The sad thing is that the PalmOne faithful in the web forums (a decided minority after this announcement) sound remarkably like Republicans after the first Bush/Kerry debate*. They're resigned, apologetic. "Yeah, we know this was a dud, but we'll do better next time." The question is, will there be a next time? Tapwave, HP and Dell are going to slaughter the T5 on either price or features. We know PalmOne is focused on the Treo, but are they really ready to make their flagship product a smartphone?
* I tried to keep mobile tech and politics separate now that I have LiberalMedium.us, but a good analogy is a good analogy.
Let me say this up front. With the T5 on the market, the Tapwave Zodiac is still the best Palm Powered device on the market. Why? Because with one notable exception, it does everything the T5 does, only better.
Let's look at the exception first. The T5 is the first PDA to use nonvolatile flash memory. It took until now for this to be financially viable, and I look forward to more devices using flash in the future.
Now let's look at how that flash is actually used. The device has 256MB, of which 41MB goes to partitioning and the system heap. That leaves 215MB. Of that, 160MB is a dedicated Flash Drive, which shows up as a VFS volume in the system. That leaves only 55MB of actual PalmOS system memory. While you can store ebooks, dictionaries, Audible books and music on the Flash Drive, the "256MB" T5 really has about the same memory available for programs and data as the T3, and half that of the Tapwave Zodiac.
The unique gimmick feature of the T5 is that 160MB Flash Drive can be used on any PC or Mac just like the keychain drives so common now. You just have to enable "Drive Mode" on the T5 and plug it in to a USB port with the USB cable you're also carrying around. Even if this weren't lame for making you lug around a cable, it's only 160MB! As many of my regular readers know, I work at CompUSA. We sell 256MB flash drives on sale for $50. On sale days, even 1GB flash drives sell for under $100. So PalmOne really expects people to pay $400 for a 160MB flash drive?
The T5 also introduces the new Multi-Connector, the successor to the Palm Universal Connector as PalmOne's proprietary, only-buy-our-brand-accessories connector. It would seem that PalmOne's brief flirtation with the standard five-pin Mini-USB connector and standard round DC power jacks was just a low-end, cost-saving thing. They don't actually plan on passing on the savings and convenience of using industry standards to the customer. The Treo 650 will also sport this new "innovation."
The T5 looks a lot like the runaway-success Tungsten E, but a darker gunmetal gray color. It's a plastic housing, making the T3 the last of the metal-bodied Palms. It's a bit thicker than the E, probably to make room for the 1300mAH battery. While this is about half again the size of the T3's battery, it's still smaller than the 1540mAH battery in the Zodiac. It comes with Bluetooth, but no WiFi, so you can spend even more money on PalmOne's WiFi SD card.
This would have been a stellar E2, but as the flagship of the PalmOne line, it's just a lackluster disappointment. The sad thing is that the PalmOne faithful in the web forums (a decided minority after this announcement) sound remarkably like Republicans after the first Bush/Kerry debate*. They're resigned, apologetic. "Yeah, we know this was a dud, but we'll do better next time." The question is, will there be a next time? Tapwave, HP and Dell are going to slaughter the T5 on either price or features. We know PalmOne is focused on the Treo, but are they really ready to make their flagship product a smartphone?
* I tried to keep mobile tech and politics separate now that I have LiberalMedium.us, but a good analogy is a good analogy.
2 Comments:
At 8:31 AM, Anonymous said…
Sorry just wanted to say that the T5 is most definately not the first PDA to use nonvolatile flash memory. All of the Apple Newton Message Pad range (the device for which the term PDA was coined) used nonvolatile flash memory and the first of them was released as far back as 1993.
At 2:50 AM, Anonymous said…
""Even if this weren't lame for making you lug around a cable, it's only 160MB! As many of my regular readers know, I work at CompUSA. We sell 256MB flash drives on sale for $50. On sale days, even 1GB flash drives sell for under $100. So PalmOne really expects people to pay $400 for a 160MB flash drive?""
I personally wouldn't touch this. I'm quite content with my Zire 71, and will be more agitated when I'm get into the market for wireless internet, more RAM, and other features I'd like to see from P1, but I can still ppl buying this. It's not gonna sell like hotcakes, but ppl who work with Palms and need the memory will find the large hi-res screen, lots of memory, and ease of use to be assets. You CAN carry a seperate 1GB flash drive and PDA, for more capacity and cheaper than the T5, but the flash on the T5 is integrated with the PDA, so ppl can store tons of (relativley speaking) music, pics, office files, on it and still have access to them. They can work on them and it'll be modified. The multimedia can be accessed by the T5 directly. I think this is the convenience the T5 is trying to tout
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