PDA makers, just be honest about your specs [Archive]

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Ed Hansberry

08-24-2002, 01:00 PM

<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,54727,00.html">http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,54727,00.html</a> Two years ago HP got caught on their color devices claiming they were 16 bit when they were really 12 bit color. Honest mistake? Well, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Seems like the marketing team got ahead of the engineering team. Two years ago HP got slapped on the wrist by the FTC because they supposedly claimed their devices had wireless capabilities. I think it was last year Palm got smacked for the same reason. Ok, that was just stupid. They both said in the fine print you needed extra hardware and a special account, but nobody needs protecting like the American consumer. After all, we sue McDonalds for making hot coffee. The nerve of them! <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif" /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/adrian/doh.jpg" /> Ok, those are honest mistakes. But Palm has been in the news this week for their color deficient Palm M130. What is it with Palm lately? Say what you want about their products, their reputation has been pretty good in the past, definitely something to be proud of. Last year they ignored the problems with their cradles for the M500 series. Then they downplayed it. Then finally several months later they started correcting the issue with affected consumers. Ok, recalls are costly and companies will do whatever they can to avoid them. But the M130? The more I find out about this product, the worse it gets. Based on info from Palm, Amazon still has "Bright and easy-to-read color screen with support for over 65,000 colors" on their site. <a href="http://www.brighthand.com/newsite/palm/reviews/palm_m130_page1.html">Brighthand referred</a> to that, correctly, as a 16 bit color screen. You see "65,000 colors" and you think 16 bit. Palm knows that. 16 bit color screens have 65,536 colors but everyone just says 65,000 colors. So, did Palm think it was 16 bit like HP did? NO! They knew it wasn't 16 bit day one, and they are still obfuscating the issue. <!> A few days ago, Palm spokeswoman Marlene Somsak said "By using blending techniques, the company can display 58,621 'color combinations' -- approximately 11 percent fewer color combinations than we had originally believed" on the m130." Color combinations? What does that mean? Well, <a href="http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_Story.asp?ID=4049">PalmInfocenter</a> has some great info on this. A 16 bit screen has 32 shades each of Red and Blue, and 64 shades of green. 32 X 32 X 64=65,536. Palm tried to match those shades with a 12 bit screen and some neat tricks. They are flashing some pixels quickly between two colors to make a shade the device can't make normally. So, white and red will give a certain shade of pink. Then they use dithering for other colors. The problem is they only were able to make 31 shades of Red and Blue, and 61 shades of Green. This is where the color combinations come from. 31 X 31 X 61 = 58,621. Ok, that is an honest mistake, but the entire thought process is fraudulent. 65,000 colors means 16 bit. Not technically, but that is exactly the conclusion they wanted us to jump to. And now they have been caught. It never delivered 16 bit color and Palm never thought it did, yet they are still trying to weasel their way though this with technical explanations and marketing speak. What is so bad about a 12 bit color device? iPAQ 3600/3700 users knew it was 12 bit they day they bought it. Works great 99% of the time. Handspring Treos are 12 bit color. They don't use mumbo jumbo like "color combinations." They are up front about it. The XDA/T-Moble Pocket PC Phone is 12 bit. It is a beautiful device! The problem is Palm lied. They were dishonest and misleading from the word go. Dithering is not a color and flashing pixels isn't either. If they had just said this was a 12 bit screen with some color enhancing effects, no one would have cared. Those that need 16 bit color would have passed for either a Sony or the M515. Instead Palm came up with this "color combination" mumbo jumbo and because they messed up, they got caught. PDA makers - take notice. Say what your specs are clearly. Be forthright. I don't expect a premium device for $249. I do expect the truth. Let me decide if I want to pay (then) $299 for a 12 bit device or fork over another $100 for a 16 bit color device. Palm has removed that choice from their M130 customers as long as they keep downplaying the issue and refusing refunds. This should make their choice of OEM for their next device easier. So, what do you think? Is this a big stink over nothing being blown out of proportion by web sites and the media or do you think Palm deserves the heat they are taking for this?

welmoed

08-24-2002, 01:13 PM

Indeed, manufacturers need to be more forthright in their specs. However, most people buying these little things don't even know what they are buying. When I bought my HP Jornada, I don't think I would have known the difference between 12-bit and 16-bit -- and, to be honest, I wouldn't guarantee now that I would know what to look for, rather than box specs.

However, when my Jornada got recalled, I got the full purchase price back for it, which enabled me to buy my Casio E-125. So basically I got the use of a PDA for a year for free. :wink:

It still bugs me, though, how software/hardware accessory manufacturers don't put complete compatibility specs on their packages, either. Something as simple as "will not work with MIPS devices" would have saved me lots of time and aggravation!!

--Welmoed

mookie123

08-24-2002, 01:32 PM

How do they get 31x31x61?

if it is frame rate I can somehow understand above calculation because the those numbers are based on the concept of numerical assignment of each pixel color possibilities.

but dithering are color created by the illusions of two or more pixels, so they cannot be represented in those number.

another questions:
- if indeed the 58k number is true, how come in gradient test m130 screen looks like treo90 instead of m515?

Shouldn't it nearly match m515 instead of the same as treo90 if the dithering and frame-shift actually work?

-Why didn't Palm brag about all these complex technology when they launch m130? 12bit screen is certainly nothing to be ashamed of considering there is iPAQ and Jornada, but saying they have this software technology that turns cheap 12bit screen to behave nearly as good as 16 bit is certainly something to brag about in handheld arena. Why did Palm say in their launching press release that m130 and m515 has the same screen capabilites?

what's more, how come Palm doesn't put the 58,621 number in their revised web site m130 specification? It now just says "thousand of colors" instead of 58k. Is Palm ashamed of their own assertion?

Grey

08-24-2002, 02:09 PM

I don't seem much difference in this an Hp saying their 38xx has an SD slot! Only to find out later that their so called SD slot is really more of an MMC slot than anything! Then Hp says it doesn't do IO because it's just a 1 bit slot. So they release the 3900 and make a big deal about it being a SD IO slot, but where is the SD IO hardware? Turns out the 39xx is also just a 1 bit SD slot.

HpCompaq also claims that their screen will display thousands of colors, I don't know about that. I do know that it will not display the advance color picker screen, with each color as a separate color. That screen doesn't have room for thousand of colors, it doesn't even have a hundred colors on it! To me, if it can't display 100 colors correctly, I don't understand how they can claim to display 1000 colors, let alone 65,000 plus colors. If it really can display 65,000 colors how hard can it be to display 100 as different colors? I'm not even talking shades here, some colors are not even displayed as the correct color.

Grey

Xaximus

08-24-2002, 02:23 PM

Ya know the saying... "desperate times..."

Pony99CA

08-24-2002, 02:42 PM

Ed Hansberry

08-24-2002, 02:52 PM

another questions:
- if indeed the 58k number is true, how come in gradient test m130 screen looks like treo90 instead of m515?

Shouldn't it nearly match m515 instead of the same as treo90 if the dithering and frame-shift actually work?
Because it only works to the human eye, or so they say. Any test that does a screen shot will catch those flashing pixels in an on or off stage, and a dithered gradient will look, well, dithered. You can see the true colors.
-Why didn't Palm brag about all these complex technology when they launch m130? 12bit screen is certainly nothing to be ashamed of considering there is iPAQ and Jornada, but saying they have this software technology that turns cheap 12bit screen to behave nearly as good as 16 bit is certainly something to brag about in handheld arena. Why did Palm say in their launching press release that m130 and m515 has the same screen capabilites?
My point exactly! Most people going after the M1xx series wouldn't really care and might actually think it was cool that it was an inexpensive 12 bit color device that had some color tricks that made it look better than 12 bit iPAQs and Treos. The problem is this tricked some people that wanted a 16 bit screen for photographs and such from picking a similarly priced Handspring Visor or spending a few more bucks on a M515 or any of the color Clies. And now those suckered consumers have no recourse.
what's more, how come Palm doesn't put the 58,621 number in their revised web site m130 specification? It now just says "thousand of colors" instead of 58k. Is Palm ashamed of their own assertion?
They just refuse to come clean with it don't they? The color count is 4,096. Just print it Palm!

I don't normally advocate class action law suits, but Palm has been dishonest from the get-go on this one and continues to use Clinton-speak.

This suit is a start, but not good enough (http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54744,00.html). HP gave refunds to their customers over the same issue. Why does Palm refuse to do the same?

Pony99CA

08-24-2002, 03:10 PM

This suit is a start, but not good enough (http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54744,00.html). HP gave refunds to their customers over the same issue. Why does Palm refuse to do the same?

They probably should, but let me take the other side. My understanding with the HP issue is that they got wrong components. They wanted a 16-bit display but only had a 12-bit one.

Palm tried to do 65,000 colors but fell slightly short. Whether you like their marketing tactics or not, their device does display more than the 4096 colors that a normal 12-bit display produces.

That's a big difference, I think. Yes, people who really wanted 16-bit color should get a refund, but I don't think it's quite analogous to the HP Jornada issue, either.

Steve

Ed Hansberry

08-24-2002, 03:14 PM

They probably should, but let me take the other side. My understanding with the HP issue is that they got wrong components. They wanted a 16-bit display but only had a 12-bit one.

Palm tried to do 65,000 colors but fell slightly short. Whether you like their marketing tactics or not, their device does display more than the 4096 colors that a normal 12-bit display produces.

That's a big difference, I think. Yes, people who really wanted 16-bit color should get a refund, but I don't think it's quite analogous to the HP Jornada issue, either.
Yup. HP seems to have made an honest mistake. Palm was being misleading and dishonest from the outset. I agree - big difference. Palm should fess up, offer refunds to those that want them and fire the person that came up with the "color combination" spec.

Pony99CA

08-24-2002, 03:41 PM

Palm should fess up, offer refunds to those that want them and fire the person that came up with the "color combination" spec.

I think they have confessed now, as they should have.

I've agreed that they should offer refunds to those who wanted true 16-bit color.

However, I will not agree that they should fire the person who came up with the color combination spec. As a professional software devleoper, I know that the problem could have come from many sources. Here are some scenarios.

1. The person who created the device specification could have specified using a 12-bit display but asked for 65,000 colors so they could market it as if it were a 16-bit display. In that case, perhaps they should be fired.

2. The person who created the device specification could have specified using a 12-bit display and engineering might have said they thought they could get more than 4096 colors (maybe even 65,000). Marketing ran with this and created their promotions.

However, during development, the developers found they couldn't create that many colors, but never told anyone else. In that case, that's really development's fault.

3. Same as above, except that development told marketing and the marketing people didn't care enough to fix the problem. In that case, it's marketing's fault.

There are more possibilities, of course, so I would say firing the person who came up with the concept of more colors from a 12-bit display is going too far.

In fact, they perhaps should be praised for trying something new. It's like the Apple II+ which had six colors (sort of) instead of four and Clear Type (both of which used sub-pixel rendering); they might have been trying to surpass the limits of the technology and fallen short.

Perhaps someone should be fired, but I'm not going to try to guess who. All we really know is that it's Palm's fault.

Steve

Ed Hansberry

08-24-2002, 04:44 PM

However, I will not agree that they should fire the person who came up with the color combination spec.
Not the technology, the termonology, which was done only to confuse and mislead.

gracar

08-24-2002, 06:33 PM

Ed Hansberry

08-24-2002, 07:15 PM

This looks to be nothing more than a chance to gripe about a non PPC - can't see why you're getting so upset on this site - have you purchased one?

Has nothing to do with the platform or a particular company. In fact, Palm has gotten more of my money this year than any other PDA related entity through their excellent Palm Digital Media division.

it is about respecting the customer, and Palm has deliberately missled the M130 buyer from day one with their “65,000 color combinations” mumbo jumbo and to this day they won't just fess up, admit it is 12 bit color and move on. there is nothing wrong with 12 bit color. I cannot figure out why they are unwilling to just say so.

You can be assured if HP or Toshiba has pulled the same stunt, we'd have made this a prime time weekday post. :-)

08-24-2002, 07:49 PM

i think we're all a little jaded hearing about stuff like this.

we're living in a time when it became fashionable to overstate corporate earnings.

now, some companies overstate colors in the spectrum of what their products can display.

enron, worldcom and other companies are not allowed to overstate earnings, handheld manufacturers can't overstate the number of colors on a device. there isn't a pda manufacturer that says a 12 bit display with 4,096 colors has "58,0000" color combinations. go to the art store, go to the oil paint section. look at the boxes, they'll say 12 colors included, or 24 colors included, they do not say 58,000 color combinations. if anyone knows of a pda hardware company that says "color combinations" on pdas, post it here (besides palm that is).

this may have just slipped out or it may just be an honest mistake as they said, but here we are....when this happened to hp they took care of it right away and candidly...if palm did the same so many people wouldn't be upset. it's still not too late, they could say "it's 12 bit, if you want a refund, call us up with the device / serial number" but the clock is tickin, LOUDLY...and soon it might not be possible.

palm was dinged for misleading customers before...
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020306/1/2kfrl.html

when os 5 comes out, they might be under more of a microscope than they expected. i'll be one of the first people to buy a palm os 5 device, i'm going to print out the web site pages and specs, and keep the receipt, cause' ya never know.

cheers,
pt

mookie123

08-24-2002, 08:28 PM

pt,

there was a long discussion about Jornada before they finally fest up. And the entire ppc community was outraged and asking for refund, nobody was being apologetic at all on HP's behavior on laying.

in contrast to current Palm's situation. Tho' it might be just few Palm employees doing a PR damage control on community site. who knows.

you can check some of brighthand/pppassion forum post from around that time.

Regarding OS5.0 being scrutinized by PPC loyalist. Of course it will be. But you have to remember that Palmsource website itself is touting the comparative advantage of Palm OS vs PPC. Something beyond amateur musing, but a corporate marketing strategy.

so you don't have to be hopping mad if people start doing comparison between the two OS'es and found OS5.0 far short of expectation.

08-24-2002, 08:44 PM

pt, there was a long discussion about Jornada before they finally fest up. And the entire ppc community was outraged and asking for refund, nobody was being apologetic at all on HP's behavior on laying. in contrast to current Palm's situation. Tho' it might be just few Palm employees doing a PR damage control on community site. who knows.you can check some of brighthand/pppassion forum post from around that time. Regarding OS5.0 being scrutinized by PPC loyalist. Of course it will be. But you have to remember that Palmsource website itself is touting the comparative advantage of Palm OS vs PPC. Something beyond amateur musing, but a corporate marketing strategy. so you don't have to be hopping mad if people start doing comparison between the two OS'es and found OS5.0 far short of expectation.

haha, i'm the last person to be mad about anything, i'm here to watch, observe, report and poke fun.

cheers,
pt

Rob Alexander

08-25-2002, 04:26 AM

there was a long discussion about Jornada before they finally fest up. And the entire ppc community was outraged and asking for refund, nobody was being apologetic at all on HP's behavior on laying.

You're right about that. Those of us who had purchased "16-bit" PDAs from HP were rightly angry at having been deceived, especially as several of us Jornada 430 owners had questioned the screens with tech support, but had never put two and two together and realized that they had actually done something that far off of the specs. We were also angry that they acknowledged the problem on the new PPC generation, but seemed to ignore 430 owners for quite a while.

But what is different between HP and Palm is that, once HP did respond, they fessed up to their mistake and offered to buy back units from anyone who was unhappy with them. That was a generous decision given that many of the 430 units had been out for a year. I actually didn't take them up on it as I didn't like any of the new PPCs at the time, but it was important to me that I had that choice.

Palm on the other hand has been caught equally red-handed, but is trying to weasel out of it with a bunch of marketing double-talk. There would be nothing to criticize if they would do exactly what HP did. That they didn't is important, even if you don't own the product involved, as it gives you some indication of how you can expect to be treated by the company if you own any other of their products and something goes wrong. There's still time for them to redeem themselves, but if they stick to this stance, they'll deserve the inevitable class action suit and loss of consumer confidence that'll come along. People aren't very tolerant of corporate fraud these days.

Foo Fighter

08-25-2002, 04:37 AM

when os 5 comes out, they might be under more of a microscope than they expected.

Frankly, OS 5 is already a disappointment. It's just a port of OS 4 for ARM compatibles. What really worries me is that PalmSource doesn't have the financial resources to fully develop a competitive modern OS. If OS 5 is too little, too late...I doubt OS 6 will ever see the light of day. The enterprise will standardize on Pocket PC (which seems to be happening already) and give very little credence to PalmOS.

i'll be one of the first people to buy a palm os 5 device,

Me too, but I can't tell when we'll even see these new devices. All of the rumored products hitting the market in September (Acer and Sony) are running OS 4 on legacy Dragonball chips. So when are the "next generation" devices going to hit the market? 2003? How many chances will the market give Palm to get it right?

Jason Dunn

08-25-2002, 05:03 AM

How many chances will the market give Palm to get it right?

Funny, I've been thinking the same thing about the Pocket PC lately. ;-)

Foo Fighter

08-25-2002, 05:17 AM

Funny, I've been thinking the same thing about the Pocket PC lately. ;-)

The knife cuts both ways. Microsoft still hasn't got it right, yet. And just because Palm is in dire straights, doesn't mean the world is switching to Pocket PC.

malcolmsharp

08-25-2002, 04:56 PM

If you are just having a knock at Palm because it's Saturday and you have nothing else to do then say so and move on.

There are very few pieces of software or hardware that meet either user expectations or their specifications on the day they are launched. Upgrades, patches, recalls and the like are the way of life and we all know it.

This looks to be nothing more than a chance to gripe about a non PPC - can't see why you're getting so upset on this site - have you purchased one?

Palm lied... simple as that. If it makes you feel good to pretend it's all the fault of those Palm haters out there, fine... just keep in mind that it was Palm that released misleading info on their own product.

Grey

08-25-2002, 09:41 PM

HpCompaq also claims that their screen will display thousands of colors, I don't know about that. I do know that it will not display the advance color picker screen, with each color as a separate color. That screen doesn't have room for thousand of colors, it doesn't even have a hundred colors on it! To me, if it can't display 100 colors correctly, I don't understand how they can claim to display 1000 colors, let alone 65,000 plus colors. If it really can display 65,000 colors how hard can it be to display 100 as different colors? I'm not even talking shades here, some colors are not even displayed as the correct color.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. The ability to display 16-bit color should mean that each pixel on the screen can take one of 65,536 colors. Are you saying that the iPAQ's display can't do that?

If you're just saying that a color picker dialog doesn't display that many colors, I suspect that's true, but aven a full-size monitor probably couldn't fit a useful dialog in that could make each color easily selectable. That's why they use color wheels or numeric entries instead of boxes of color.

If your argument is that many RGB combinations look similar, that's probably true, too, but that may be a limitation of your eyes. :-) With 32 shades of red, 64 of green and 32 of blue, can someone easily distinguish R16/G31/B16 from R16/G32/B16?

With a Pocket PC's screen resolution of 240 x 320, you can display 76,800 pixels. Given that, I'd think someone could write a program which showed all 65,336 colors on the screen and you could see them all.

Steve
My argument is that the Custom color picker displays an 8 by 6 grid of colors, or if my math is not to bad 48 colors. Now to me it doesn't seem like it should be that hard to set up a 38xx to actually display 48 colors if it can display thousands of colors. If I use microsoft CE Remote Display to view the colors on my monitor, some of them do not appear to be even close to the same color as what is on the iPAQ. Do the same on a 39x and it is very easy to see that the 3900 is displaying a much wide range of colors. But my understanding of what HpCompaq spec. says is there screens both display the same number of colors.

Your argument of "With 32 shades of red, 64 of green and 32 of blue, can someone easily distinguish R16/G31/B16 from R16/G32/B16?" sounds very much like what Palm may have been thinking to me. And if it's hard to distinguish between G32 and G31, what about R16 and R15, or what about B16 and B15? Once you start down that path where is the end? Does it in at G30, or G29, or G27? What if we go the other way, gee the human eye can not see 65000 colors, lets say our PPC does 24 bits of color?

It's a path that I see Hp on with the SD slot question. How can HPCompaq claim to have a SD slot when it can not actually read or write Secure Data? It's a SDIO slot? If that is true where are the SDIO cards? If that is true why can we not plug in a SDIO bluetooth card and have it work?

Grey

Rob Alexander

08-26-2002, 03:11 AM

How many chances will the market give Palm to get it right?

Funny, I've been thinking the same thing about the Pocket PC lately. ;-)

Yeah, me too. After the three-steps-forward-two-steps-back release of PPC 2002, I would have thought that MS would have been anxious to improve their product with a new version. And it would have been a perfect time... with Palm bumbling around with OS 5, MS could make a strong move ahead in the game by releasing a solid, X-Scale compatible OS ready for a new generation of wireless devices. Instead, they seem to be sitting on their hands, not even suggesting that they'll include X-Scale support in their next version. They are doing some interesting work on the phone front, but that's a subset of an already small market. Smartphone might have some serious market potential, but PPC PE is quite limited. If Palm had actually delivered on OS 5, it could have been a real problem for MS, but now they have more breathing room. And, of course, things like this color fiasco don't exactly help Palm.

Brad Adrian

08-26-2002, 01:39 PM

...I would have thought that MS would have been anxious to improve their product with a new version. And it would have been a perfect time...

I think, unfortunately, that becomes the fate of very large companies. They have tremendous resources at their disposal, but they lose a great deal of "nimbleness." My 12-foot canoe only holds a few people, but I can turn it on a dime; the QEII holds thousands, but needs a lot of time and a lot of room to change directions.

Pony99CA

08-27-2002, 05:10 AM

My argument is that the Custom color picker displays an 8 by 6 grid of colors, or if my math is not to bad 48 colors. Now to me it doesn't seem like it should be that hard to set up a 38xx to actually display 48 colors if it can display thousands of colors. If I use microsoft CE Remote Display to view the colors on my monitor, some of them do not appear to be even close to the same color as what is on the iPAQ. Do the same on a 39x and it is very easy to see that the 3900 is displaying a much wide range of colors. But my understanding of what HpCompaq spec. says is there screens both display the same number of colors.

The 3800 series can still be a 16-bit color device regardless of whether you like the colors and regardless of whether the 3800 series reproduces them identically to your PC. You can say that the display is poor, but that has nothing to do with the bit depth of the colors.

Your argument of "With 32 shades of red, 64 of green and 32 of blue, can someone easily distinguish R16/G31/B16 from R16/G32/B16?" sounds very much like what Palm may have been thinking to me. And if it's hard to distinguish between G32 and G31, what about R16 and R15, or what about B16 and B15? Once you start down that path where is the end? Does it in at G30, or G29, or G27? What if we go the other way, gee the human eye can not see 65000 colors, lets say our PPC does 24 bits of color?

It was not an "argument", it was a question. I'm sure the human eye can distinguish R16/G31/B16 from R16/G32/B16, but how easy is it? Do they need to be next to each other, do the areas have to be large, etc. I was not trying to engage in the logical fallacy of the argument of the beard (how many hairs does it take to make a beard).

As for extending my "argument" to say the Pocket PC had 24-bit color, that's clearly absurd (which I think was your intent). The number of bits of color a device has is an objective measurement. Whether the colors represented by those bits are distinguishable or to your liking is subjective.

It's a path that I see Hp on with the SD slot question. How can HPCompaq claim to have a SD slot when it can not actually read or write Secure Data? It's a SDIO slot? If that is true where are the SDIO cards? If that is true why can we not plug in a SDIO bluetooth card and have it work?

My iPAQ 3870 can certainly use SD cards. As I'm not sure what the exact differences between MMC and SD cards are, though, I'm not sure what reading or writing "Secure Data" means, so I don't know whether my iPAQ can or can not do that.

However, the lack of SDIO cards for the iPAQ does not prove a thing. Just because SDIO cards don't yet exist for the iPAQ doesn't mean that they won't. For example, perhaps the SDIO Bluetooth card simply doesn't have iPAQ drivers yet.

Steve

Ed Hansberry

08-27-2002, 05:23 AM

Pony99CA

08-27-2002, 06:11 AM

However, the lack of SDIO cards for the iPAQ does not prove a thing. Just because SDIO cards don't yet exist for the iPAQ doesn't mean that they won't. For example, perhaps the SDIO Bluetooth card simply doesn't have iPAQ drivers yet.
AFAIK, the 3800's are SD only and will never support SDIO. It is a hardware issue. The 3900s do support SDIO.

Yes, I know, but Grey was complaining about the 3900 series with regard to SDIO, not the 3800 series (at least in his original post). I think that he wondered how HP could claim that the 3900s support SDIO if no cards were available, and that's what I was addressing.

His comments about the display were about the 3800.

Sorry that I wasn't clearer about that.

Steve

RedRamage

12-04-2002, 10:34 PM

Yeah, I know this is kinda a dead topic, but I'm just reading for the first time, so sue me...

What is terribly suprising to me is that it's that significantly cheaper to create all this software scheming and manuvering to fake a 12-bit color display into something more. Is the hardware costs of a 16-bit display that much more than a 12-bit display? I mean there had to have been a lot of time and money sunk into the R&D fo flashing pixels and dithering and whatnot to get those extra color options, right?

rave

12-05-2002, 08:07 AM

Your argument of "With 32 shades of red, 64 of green and 32 of blue, can someone easily distinguish R16/G31/B16 from R16/G32/B16?" sounds very much like what Palm may have been thinking to me. And if it's hard to distinguish between G32 and G31, what about R16 and R15, or what about B16 and B15? Once you start down that path where is the end? Does it in at G30, or G29, or G27? What if we go the other way, gee the human eye can not see 65000 colors, lets say our PPC does 24 bits of color?
Just a bit of clarification and useless info:

The human eye can distinguish among as many as 16 million colors, which may as well be R256/G256/B256. Hence the use of the term "True Color" for displays at or above 24 bit color depth.

Anyway, I agree with one of the posts here regarding advertising the unit as having a "12-bit screen with color-enhancing technology". It could have been a plus point for Palm for the innovation, in my opinion.