Win some, lose some - Trium dumps Pocket PC

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.silicon.com/bin/bladerunner?REQUNIQ=1014407848&30REQEVENT=&REQINT1=51537&REQAUTH=21046&3010REQSUB=">http://www.silicon.com/bin/bladerunner?REQUNIQ=1014407848&30REQEVENT=&REQINT1=51537&REQAUTH=21046&3010REQSUB=</a><br /><br />"Mitsubishi's mobile arm, Trium, is planning to ditch the Microsoft operating system from its forthcoming range of PDAs. According to well-placed sources close to the situation, the next Trium PDA will be built with a new operating system based on Sun Microsystem's mobile java architecture, J2ME. "<br /><br />The article goes on to state that the Trium Mondo didn't do to well. One of the European PPCT authors can jump in, but wasn't the Mondo only sold as a connected GPRS Pocket PC? That pretty much eliminated the US. I also don't know the price point. Given that iPAQ's have had such huge success in Europe, even eclipsing Palm for one quarter last year, it isn't the Pocket PC OS that is the problem. I also thought this comment was a bit odd: "Microsoft's new platform for mobile devices, codenamed Stinger, is too big. You need 32 to 64KB of memory to run the operating system and a hugely powerful processor."<br /><br />Uhm.... SmartPhone and Pocket PC are two different things. And 32-64KB of memory is too much? Actually, I wasn't aware that SmartPhone would fit in that small of a memory space. I guess their idea of a smart phone doesn't include enough RAM for users to store contacts, emails, appointments and web content. Maybe I am out in left field, but the whole java thing has left me yawning for years. No one has been able to explain why J2ME is any different.<br /><br />Thanks to Chris Coulter for the link.

[kagayaki1]

Well, as we can all see, the future success of PDA rests in fulfilling the feature hungry users. I think most of us who have been following PDAs for any length of time would agree that greyscale died about a year ago.

Compaq tried to take a big step into the Enterprise market by offering their 3100 series iPAQs. But, as they stated around September, just before the PPC2002 launch, their discontinuance of the 3100 series was due largely to customer demand for at least a color screen. Compaq learned their lesson, and they no longer make the greyscale PDAs.

Perhaps Mitsubishi should have followed the same logic here. While the Trium had good features and good battery life, it was greyscale. Breaking into a market that was sceptical about phone/pda combos (and perhaps still is, as indicated by the recent Jornada 928 poll on this site) is probably even harder to do with a 1999-like greyscale screen. Once you fail, try again with a color screen.

I agree with Ed; it likely was not the software. And they should have tried some kind of bundle deal with US cell phone distributors. &lt;sigh> Too bad.

[sesummers]

http://www.silicon.com/bin/bladerunner?REQUNIQ=1014407848&30REQEVENT=&REQINT1=51537&REQAUTH=21046&3010REQSUB=

... And 32-64KB of memory is too much? Actually, I wasn't aware that SmartPhone would fit in that small of a memory space.


I'm sure they mrean 32-64 megabytes, not kilobytes. And they're probably counting RAM plus ROM. That does sound like a lot, and if it costs $40 for that much flash ROM plus RAM, and you're trying to build a $200 device, it's too much. OTOH, it's pretty short sighted to reject the platform for that, and how much processor power is a Java system going to need to overcome the interpreted VM?

[Ed Hansberry]

I'm sure they mrean 32-64 megabytes, not kilobytes. And they're probably counting RAM plus ROM. That does sound like a lot, and if it costs $40 for that much flash ROM plus RAM, and you're trying to build a $200 device, it's too much. OTOH, it's pretty short sighted to reject the platform for that, and how much processor power is a Java system going to need to overcome the interpreted VM?

Well, then they are wrong. I think there will be some low end "stingers" with 4MB of RAM. Pocket PC's need 32-64MB. These aren't Pocket PC's. I know they don't need 32MB to work.

[Kirk Stephens]

I don't see how Mitsubishi thinks they will do any better with a Java based operating system. Windows CE is only now starting to make some headway in the fight for market share. It has taken Microsoft years of continual inovation to get where they are. Does Mitsubishi really think that Sun's Java Based OS is going to be a big hit right off the bat? They should have stuck with Windows CE.

[Jason Dunn]

The Mondo was an interesting product, but it was a 1st generation product - very few first generation products are successful. Trium has their work cut out for them with the Java phone concept! :roll:

[Marc Zimmermann]

The article goes on to state that the Trium Mondo didn't do to well. One of the European PPCT authors can jump in, but wasn't the Mondo only sold as a connected GPRS Pocket PC? That pretty much eliminated the US. I also don't know the price point.


The Mondo is a dual band GSM phone that doesn't support the frequency band that you'd need in the USA. I'm not fully sure about the GRPS capability, but I don't think that they ever offered it except in a few samples that were distributed. As far as I'm awarem the most versions brought to market were plain GSM models.

Anyway, I'm using the GSM Mondo quite frequently and think that it's a fine device. You have to accept the fact that it doesn't excel in both the Pocket PC and cell phone parts. The combination makes it worthwhile if you can come to accept its limitations.

For example, the device features a 166MHz StrongARM which is quite a bit slower than the 206MHz version. Then, the unit only has 16MB of RAM with no way to expand memory, virtually eliminating any way to install more applications. The phone app uses about whopping 3MB of program memory, so you can't afford to use much of the storage memory except for contacts, appointments, notes and emails.

However, the device allows you to put it to your ear, use a headset or as a speakerphone (unlike the brain dead Siemens SX45 that only works with a headset). You have some nice integration of the phone and Contacts app (right-tap a contact and dial any of the numbers) as well as Inbox (SMS messages are read and composed like emails).

It's sad to see them discontinue building (or rather selling as the Mondo is manufactured by HTC, like the iPAQ) Pocket PC devices. This unit was very solidly built and I haven't found any hardware quirks.

[paolo]

Ed - On the subject of why J2ME is any good...

The first reason it is exciting is that Java Enterprise Edition has for some time had many of the features necessary to put together .NET type services that Microsoft are only now beginning to build. Add to this the ability to "write once, run anywhere" and an extremely powerful language set and you have the beginnings of a very interesting framework.

Imagine then being able to create powerful applications that run on any handheld device without recompilation and are able to talk very easily with applicaions running on high-end enterprise servers. Bingo! You have just thought of J2ME.

Yes the Microsoft camp will flame me for this view ("you can do all this in .Net, C#, XML, machine code..") but the fact remains that Java had it first and is still better thought out than all of MS's products put together. :wink: