Writing On Your Palm

What's Your Sign?

5 July 2004

Tapwave's Zodiac handheld has finally landed in retail outlets where it can be seen, held and fondled. And whether you're a gamer or not, it's worth a look.

(This is a co-written review, written with Josh Curry, my writing partner for fiction. My comments are in normal type, Josh's are in bold.)

I had made my decision. I had my Tungsten T3, and I was happy with it. The T3 is really a remarkable device, the best PalmOne's made yet. It had a huge screen, a fast processor, 64MB of RAM and could easily rotate from portrait to landscape and back. Really, what's not to like? I thought I had my handheld for the next year, at least.

But there were things about the T3 that bugged me. For one, the battery life was iffy. Some days I had no problems with it, some days I got home with 9% or less on my battery gauge. My bulky Palm Power To Go battery sled and a car charger were musts, not options. It also bugged me that even the T3 is not immune to the laws of computing, one of which states that data will expand to fill available space. I bought the T3 in large part because 32MB had become too constraining, and in less than two weeks the T3 was nearly full as well.

So when my writing partner bought a Tapwave Zodiac 2, I was less resistant to change than I thought I'd be. He had more memory, an extra SD card slot, the same screen (sorta, see below) and much better battery life. The seed was sown. A few days later, I had one of my own.

My first impressions of the Tapwave Zodiac 2 as I manhandled the less then fully functional demo was, OMG I have GOT to get me one of these. Well before the end of the day I had one. So far my initial impressions seems to have been dead on. For a gamer and a writer like myself the Zodiac is an incredible device.

The first thing I noticed about the Zodiac was the fit and finish. This thing is very well designed, the product of the same designer that came up with the Palm Razor prototype (which eventually mutated into the Palm V), the Palm Ultrathin Keyboard and Palm Wireless Keyboard. The casing is anodized aluminum, matte finished and very tough. The screen is mounted landscape, with the analog controller, home and power buttons on one side, and the four directional buttons on the other. There is no creaking or bending when you squeeze the case, and while the tapered edges make it feel a lot smaller than it is (my first reaction was that it felt about half as thick as I expected), at 6.3 ounces, it's got a nice heft to it. It feels solid and very high quality, in a way the T3 never did (I was so worried about the screws falling out of the T3.).

I'm not a big numbers guy (that's Josh's department, hanging out on Tom's Hardware and obsessing over benchmarks), but let's take a quick look at the specs on this thing. Even though the Zodiac is designed primarily for gamers, on paper this looks like a dreamer's PDA.

The numbers are fairly impressive, a voluminous 128 meg of RAM, dual SD slots, one of them SDIO the other standard. The screen is 320x480 and the backlight can be turned off. The only number that was lower then my TC was the processor speed, a fact that worried me a bit in a gaming machine. It turns out the ATI video card does a good job of making up for the 200 mhz processor. In the benchmarks I've run I've consistently hit around 270, and I get very smooth game play.

The CPU is a Motorola i.MX1 running at 200MHz. This is half the speed of the Intel XScale running in the high end Tungstens, but I honestly can't tell the difference. This may be because the Zodiac, unlike the Tungstens, doesn't do its graphics rendering with the CPU. That job goes to the ATI Imageon video processor in the Zodiac, which has 8MB of its own for graphics. The combination of the two makes for a snappy system.

Let's talk a bit about the Zod's graphics capabilities. I'm a game nut, my PC is built around gaming, I own every mobile gaming device released in the last decade (and a few older then that). I push my PC to the limit, benchmark it regularly and obsess over performance. The Imageon 4200 is a fairly impressive 2D video chipset. It handles 65k colors and with 8MB is more than enough to spur not only standard Palm apps but games and movies as well. Its JPEG/MPEG decoder gives as much as 30 frames a second for some of the smoothest video I've seen. Then you have the X-Forge 3D engine from Fathammer. It's a full-blown 3D Engine and includes collision checking, a physics engine, and network support. Between the two of them you get powerful graphics that don't rely on just the processor speed.

The screen is a gorgeous 480x320 transflective tuned for outdoor viewing. It's not as bright as the T3 indoors with both at maximum brightness, but it's much more readable in sunlight. The Zodiac also gives you the ability to turn the backlight all the way off, something that seems to be physically impossible on the T3. I tend to keep my screen brightness a notch or two above off, and not only does the screen still look great (and less eye-straining for ebooks), but my battery life is considerably longer.

Not that battery life is a big concern on the Zodiac. The Zodiac sports a 1540mAH battery, one of the largest available on a PDA that isn't also a cell phone. The battery is slightly higher capacity than the one found in the Tungsten C, and over 60% larger than the battery in my Tungsten T3. I've been pleasantly surprised so far with the battery life, even with lots of battery-draining activities like Bluetooth gaming and listening to music.

The downside to the Zodiac's power situation is that the charger is unique to the Zodiac, and the Zodiac hasn't sold in sufficient numbers to spur aftermarket accessory chargers. No USB Sync-and-charge cables, no car chargers, no battery packs. While the Zodiac's massive battery will last a long time, it's a much bigger pain in the rear to top it off on the go. Given the lack of a car charger, I'll probably end up buying a second AC travel charger and plugging it into as small a power inverter as I can find for the car. I just can't stomach the idea of listening to music or audiobooks in the car without running the device off the car's power.

So how well does the Zodiac actually work? Was it really worth giving up my T3? First off, the Zodiac was designed for gaming, so let's look at that first. I'm not much of a gamer, but Josh is, so I'll turn that over to him.

The gamer in me loves the feel of the controls. The stick moves smoothly and makes it easy to hit the mark. The button layout is tried and true four button Playstation up down left right, and it even has the shoulder buttons I've become so accustomed to. The only drawback I was worried about at first was the size, I've got big beefy hands that are right at home on the original release XBox controllers (read so big they redesigned the controller within a couple months of release). Surprisingly the svelte and light Zodiac feels right at home on the go, unlike my GameBoy Advance SP where I find the shoulder buttons nearly unusable. As for battery life, with Bluetooth turned on and my brightness just above half, my battery life is about what I had on my TC, until I start gaming, then it takes a bit of a hit.

None of the design means anything if the games suck, so I picked up a few extras to try out. The games it comes with are Acid Solitaire and Stunt Car Extreme. Acid is the best solitaire game I've seen, but it's nothing you can't get on any palm device. SCE however is fairly impressive. First of all it's a game that really takes advantage of the 3D graphics and it looks nice. The graphics quality is about Playstation One level, and for a mobile device that's impressive. As for game play it's nothing all that original but it's solid. Race for points, challenge characters for cars and points, and jump through hoops of fire. It's a good game, one of the better ones I've played.

I picked up a second racer because, let's face it, I have a gaming problem (insert tense laughter here). Spy Hunter isn't your conventional racer, and I remember playing the original all those years ago in the arcade. The PC and TV Console versions of the game weren't that impressive, but I've always had a weakness for nostalgia. Personally I find this version far more satisfying then it's bigger brothers. The graphics are smooth and well done, and the explosions are awesome. I tend to prefer the arcade version where you're put up against the clock, get from point A to point B without getting blown up, and kill as many bad guys as possible (denoted by the black vehicles they drive, just once I'd like to see a bad guy driving a lime green Volkswagen) make sure you don't kill any civilians though or else it'll cost you points at the end. While not as engrossing as some of the other games I picked up this one is definitely fun and will keep my interest for some time.

Depth is the best thing the Zod's gaming line up has going for it. It's not just racing and parlor games, there are all kinds of games available. I picked up a two pack called Z Pak: Adventure that shows off some of the diversity (as a side note be careful there are two Z Pak's available and the first batch were completely mislabeled so to get my Z Pak: Adventure I had to buy Z Pak: Fun which means I had to go download the instructions for the games). Z Pak: Adventure comes with two games: Galactic Realms: Into the void and Legacy. The first is a very Wing Commander type game, you fly a star fighter, you blow stuff up and you avoid asteroids. The game is fun and smooth, and the combat is interesting. The problem I have is that it's crashed once, and reset my save game once. So far the bugs have detracted from the fun, but the gameplay is solid and worthwhile. Legacy is a classic roleplaying game, the controls feel just like the first 3D RPG's all the way back to Ultima Underworld. The graphics are smooth but not fantastic, but so far it seems to have the ability to have me staring at my PDA for hours on end, and not just when I'm writing.

I decided I needed to give a sports game a try just to make sure I hit the entire spectrum so I picked up Tony Hawk Pro Skater. I had played the Gamecube version when I got it for my little sister, and frankly wasn't sure I would get too involved in it, but it seemed like something that I could get in play for a few minutes and leave. I was wrong. Tony Hawk is fluid and looks wonderful. It's a direct port of the Gameboy Advanced version, but it definitely benefits from the Zod's controls. The gameplay is interesting and I keep finding myself obsessing over that insane combo score I need to unlock the next level, it seems I have yet another addictive game on my hands.

Finally I gave a couple of games I had liked but never really gotten into a try on my new device. The first was the Atari Retro pack. I'm a classic arcade fan and let me tell you I love the feel of Atari on my TZ. The second one I tried out was Warfare Inc., a fun game that just couldn't capture my interest on my TC. On the Zodiac it's a whole new game and it looks like I'll be lucky to get anything written with all these new games.

The Zodiac was an easier transition for me than it was for Josh as a writing platform. I had already switched to WordSmith before buying the Zodiac, so using it on the Zodiac was a no-brainer. WordSmith comes bundled with the Zodiac, though the latest version downloadable from BlueNomad.com works even better with the Zodiac's screen. I didn't have to deal with Documents To Go's flaky behavior (see below).

WordSmith is amazing on the Zodiac. The landscape screen layout is a natural fit with my Palm Wireless Keyboard, and the Zodiac fits pretty well in the keyboard's tray. It's a little two wide, so doesn't sit flat, but it props up enough to sit stably. I might Dremel out part of the keyboard to make the Zodiac fit properly, but it's really not necessary. The FineType fonts look great on the Zodiac's screen, and the 200MHz processor is more than fast enough for spell checking.

Out of the keyboard, the Zodiac still feels pretty good for writing. Switched into portrait orientation the Graffiti area works just as it would on any other PalmOS PDA. I was able to retrofit my Zodiac with Graffiti 1, which made it much more comfortable. There's a trick to getting this to work on the Zodiac. After installing the Graffiti 1 versions of Graffiti_Library.prc and Graffiti_Library_enUS.prc to the Zodiac, you have to open Graffiti_Library.prc in Filez or another program that lets you edit the database properties. Change the Version_ID to 525 or higher, then reset and everything works. Obvious, isn't? Shoulda seen that before...

As Mr. Kirvin's writing partner I try to write as much as possible. Unlike Jeff (well until he changes his mind again) I was using Documents to Go, and it looked wonderful on the screen landscape. Then Docs to Go freaked out and had to be completely removed, after a little research I found it was a known issue and there are rumors of a Tapwave edition of Docs to Go coming out. Now I've put Docs to Go back on for Spreadsheets, but I'm using WordSmith for writing until they get Docs to Go fixed. The drawback with the hardware is it sticks out slightly in my palm wireless keyboard, but it's still totally functional and I barely notice. I also love the music software, I have an icon in my toolbar that allows me to pull up the music interface no matter what I'm doing and change the song, it even tells me what tracks next. So for writing I give the Zodiac a big thumbs up, although I miss my thumb keyboard, the large screen more then makes up for it. I have to get better at graffiti.

The Zodiac has the best default MP3 player I've seen yet on a PDA, but not good enough to replace Pocket Tunes. It is very cool and designed to work around the joypad, and the alarm clock has the ability to play and MP3 instead of a regular chime (Pink Floyd's "Time" is great for this, with all those alarm clocks at the beginning.). Pocket Tunes is very Zodiac-friendly, fully supporting not only controlling the application with the Zodiac's nonstandard hardware controls, but also doing the same "hold" trick the built-in player does. While listening to music with the screen turned off to save power, the Power button slowly pulses on and off a la Apple laptops. Very cool touch.

As Josh mentioned, video runs much smoother on the Zodiac than on the T3 due to the ATI graphics chip. The nifty thing about the Zodiac is that in a lot of ways it's a throwback to the best ideas of past computers. The landscape layout and dual slots (not to mention the matte black color scheme of the Zodiac 2) remind me a lot of the Newton Messagepad. The dedicated ATI video and Yamaha audio processors remind me of the Amiga, which also managed to perform better than the main CPU would suggest by offloading much of the work to secondary processors. Kinoma runs quite well on this device, and the version of Kinoma producer that it comes with has lots of Zodiac optimizations.

Now the big one. Ebooks. To be honest, I was scared of this one. I didn't know how the Zodiac could possibly be better than the Tungsten T3 at displaying ebooks, and that's how I spend the vast majority of my time with the device. If it weren't a good ebook reader, it would be a wash, no matter how good it was otherwise.

Well, there are compromises. I generally like to read ebooks portrait, as they feel more natural that way. The Zodiac's screen is designed to look best in landscape orientation. When displaying regular text, there's really no problem. But when sub-pixel font rendering is turned on in eReader, the text looks distinctly fuzzy in portrait orientation. This was a hit, but the rest of the advantages to using the Zodiac for ebooks far outweigh this minor disadvantage.

First, the shape of the device is perfect. This is a subtle point, but an important one. The slight hourglass curves of the Zodiac fit perfectly in the hand, allowing for a firm grip on the device without applying unneeded pressure. Depending on which hand you use to hold the Zodiac, either your left thumb or right index finger falls naturally on the right (or "upper" in portrait mode) trigger button, which eReader uses to page down. Page up isn't further way, with light pressure on the ball of the left hand or a slight reach of the right pinky. Within mintues the Zodiac completely disappears and all I see is the ebook itself. The lack of subpixel font rendering isn't really that big a deal on a 320x480 screen, and the ergonomics are wonderful. When I'm lying in bed, I shift the screen into landscape, hold it between my hands and let slight twitches of my index fingers page through the book until I can no longer hold my eyes open.

It's not all wine and roses. The Zodiac is an amazing piece of hardware with many touches that show how much thought and care went into its design. But the software is just different enough from the "standard" PalmOS that not everything works the way it's supposed to. Documents To Go is squirrelly at best, AvantGo has odd graphics corruption and doesn't support the full screen, Plucker, iSilo and other programs have control issues by not supporting the unusual buttons on the Zodiac fully. I'm sure most of these problems are fixable and eReader has already shown that programs can make good use of the Zodiac controls. I just can't wait for either iSilo or Plucker to fully support the Zodiac.

My one big sticking point is the stylus. First of all I don't like where it stows, the back of the device is a bad place and inconvenient especially when I'm using the keyboard. Secondly I had become used to the metal stylus on my TC, which I truly loved. The metal part is fixable, even if the storage point is not. But all said it's a minor thing, I seldom need the stylus since the navigation can be done with just the buttons, and most of my writing is done on my palm wireless keyboard.

The long and the short of it is this, though. The Zodiac is the handheld entertainment console the Sony Clié always wanted to be but never was. For the same price as the Tungsten T3, Tungsten C or Sony Th55, you get the T3's screen with rotation, The C's battery life and the TH55 multimedia. You also get twice the RAM, and extra speaker, extra card slot and controls that work just as well for work as play. If you're looking for the ultimate PDA, the Zodiac is it.

I really love my Zodiac 2. It's an incredible gaming device and a powerful Palm OS PDA. The few things I miss about my TC are completely overshadowed by what my Zodiac 2 does. This is truly a gamers dream, and as for the writer in me, he's so in love with the screen and music software that he barely misses the keyboard.

Jeff Kirvin
Jeff@writingonyourpalm.net
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Jeff Kirvin is available for consulting on mobile technology. Email me today!