PalmOS Is Dead

[Ed Hansberry]

PalmOS, as we know it, is dead. We reported <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41234">last week that PalmSource had halted all non-Linux development</a>, but at the time I didn't fully grasp what that meant. I am still not sure I do, but after thinking about it for a few days and reading additional reports, it is clear to me that the operating system we are all familiar with, the one that is for personal information management, portable computing and wireless connectivity is dead.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2005/20050708-palmosdead.jpg" /><br /><br />PalmSource is focusing entirely on a flavor of PalmOS for Linux, but they are also working on feature phones with the help of their China MobileSoft acquisition, those phones that, while they have a lot of smartphone-style features, are essentially locked. Beyond ringtones and backgrounds, you can't just pop over to Handango and download software for it. What you get out of the box is what you live with. I am sure PalmSource will give it as much a look and feel of the classic PalmOS UI, but for most of us, that just won't be the same. They are targeting this OS to be complete in Q3 of 2006, which means it will be early to mid 2007 before the first phones start shipping. I fully expect this will be <!> <a href="http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5776449.html">what LG will do as a new PalmSource licensee</a>. I am not expecting a new Treo competitor from LG.<br /><br />Once PalmSource gets the feature phone OS out of the door they will wrap up the full blown OS that everyone has assumed will be some powerful 32bit multitasking OS sitting on top of Linux. However, that will be 2007 at the earliest, so you could be looking at 2008 before devices would be ready to ship. 2008! 8O Will anyone care by then? You have Palm aficionados that could be in serious jeopardy hoping their current device lasts that long!<br /><br />Meanwhile, you have pa1mOne, soon to be just Palm, creating the latest revision of <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=frankengarnet">FrankenGarnet</a> which seems to get more unstable with each release and causes more headaches for developers as pa1mOne is notorious for not cluing people in on what changed. I thought it was an eternity waiting almost two years between the release of Pocket PC 2002 and Pocket PC 2003. I couldn't imagine using an OS in 2007 that was hatched in 2002. Between technologies like wireless USB, 802.11n, EDGE, EVDO, over the air video and stuff I haven't even heard of yet, there will just be too many things that a five year old OS can't handle. A perfect example is Skype. There is still no version of Skype for PalmOS. Garnet just can't handle it. Ten months after Skype for PalmOS was <a href="http://www.engadget.com/entry/1016803924623324/">just around the corner</a> you can't hardly find the word "Palm" on the <a href="http://support.skype.com/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=67">Skype site</a>. I would argue there were mobile technologies in 2002 that Garnet, also known as PalmOS5, couldn't handle, but I digress. :wink: <br /><br />You think pa1mOne will wait until 2007 or 2008 for a new OS? Or do you think there might be a Palm device in your future, running Windows Mobile? I see the latter as far more likely to happen versus seeing FrankenGarnet 5.99999.<br /><br />Michael Mace, the former PalmSource Chief Competitive Officer, was terminated. Chris Dumphy is no longer there, along with <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050630/earns_palmsource.html?.v=5">16% of the workforce</a>. PalmSource itself isn't dead. Far from it. But it is now no more than an embedded operating system maker that will fade from the consumer's memory faster than "New Coke!"<br /><br />For years, Microsoft has seen its <a href="http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/854">major threat as Nokia</a> - years before even that article. It was pretty clear once the original iPAQ 3600 was released and Palm kept fumbling the ball on great features that Palm simply didn't have the internal resources to move the aging platform that ran on a Kadak provided kernel to a full blown operating system that could hope to do what devices based on Windows CE were capable of. Even Sony couldn't stem the inevitable decline of PalmOS's market share.<br /><br />When someone has a monopoly people scream that without competition the consumer loses. Well, in general I agree. Don't worry though. Microsoft's toughest opponent in the mobile computing hand-space isn't Palm. It hasn't been since 2001. Microsoft has been shooting over their head at Nokia. Don't look for stagnation anytime soon. :D Oh yeah, don't look for a Palm revival anytime soon either. :lol:<br /><br />I guess I will have to re-evaluate what <i>I</i> use "The Competition" forum for. I am by far the most prolific poster of new items in here and most of those are about Palm. I probably need to get up to speed on what Nokia is doing with Symbian. Doesn't mean I will never post about Palm again. Come on! There is just too much fun in it. :wink: But in all honesty, it just isn't serious competition for the Windows Mobile platform.

[Felix Torres]

I guess I will have to re-evaluate what I use "The Competition" forum for. I am by far the most prolific poster of new items in here and most of those are about Palm. I probably need to get up to speed on what Nokia is doing with Symbian. Doesn't mean I will never post about Palm again. Come on! There is just too much fun in it. :wink: But in all honesty, it just isn't serious competition for the Windows Mobile platform.

In that case you may want to focus on mobile-embedded LINUX.
Even Nokia has made it clear (with their actions) that they see Symbian as inadequate for high-end devices (like their web pad) and are starting to migrate *their* gadgets to Linux.

For my money, the high-end alternatives to WinCE for mobile computing, going forward are:

1- XP &amp; sucessors
2- Generic Linux
3- Linux hosting emulators (Palm, possibly Symbian)
4- Legacy Palm
5- Sony PSP

If the promised cheap XP mini tablets do materialize for the 07 time-frame, we're likely to see the 07-08 market split along the lines of 60% Windows Mobile/CE, 20% Full windows, 20% everything else.

As for Palm one, I am not holding my breath waiting for them to sign up for CE. Gotta remember these folks are mostly ex-Apple engineers.
They'll do Linux before the do Windows Mobile/CE, business case be damned.

ABMers never change their stripes.

And in this case, adopting Windows means going toe-to-toe on an even playing field with Dell marketing and HTC engineering, among others. Given the quality of hardware Palm has been dishing out (never mind the OS) I don't think they'd relish that fight.

I think that in the non-phone market, Palm is damned if they do and damned if they don't.

[surur]

Being a bit bored waiting for WM5.0 I regularly post on POS web sites. Here's a recent excerpt from a Micheal Mace interview.

Some choice but relevant Micheal Mace quotes:

http://www.allaboutpalm.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44

Linux, in particular, helps with developing new product categories because a lot of consumer electronics companies are already working with Linux. So we're talking with them. However, I don't want to hype expectations about that -- just the talking process can take many months, and even if they sign up for a license, then they have to develop their product. That process takes at least eight months, and sometimes closer to two years if it's a phone and has to be approved by a carrier. The more innovative the product, the longer it takes to develop.

So even if someone signed a new license today, it might be mid-2007 before they'd ship a product, if it's something really different and innovative. That's just how the industry works.

Especially as we move into phones, the adoption curve for new versions of the OS gets longer and less predictable. If you want an example of how this works, check out the number of Symbian phones that are still shipping with Symbian 6 and 7 even though the OS is now on version 9.

At the time we announced Palm OS Cobalt, a couple of licensees had very aggressive plans to ship it quickly. Subsequently those plans changed. I think it was a mistake for us to try to predict hardware shipment dates for Palm OS Cobalt, and this is why we're trying to avoid predicting when hardware incorporating Palm OS for Linux will ship. It'll be there when our licensees ship it.

In general, our partners understand these schedule uncertainties, and they prefer that we don't try to predict hardware dates.

When is PalmLinux REALLY expected to be finished as a stable OS?

We're targeting Palm OS for Linux shipment to licensees in the first half of 2006. Please also read my comments above about the difficulty of predicting shipment dates.

So no LG Garnet phone until 2007-2008, or 2009 if its Cobalt?

When will PalmOS 5 be EOL?

We're not doing significant additional development on Palm OS Garnet today. But licensees can continue to ship it as long as they want to (see my comments about Symbian 6 above).

Definitely Garnet then

Can you tell us how many developers/software engineers that palmsource has and the breakdown of what they are working on? How many are working on cobalt? palm linux?

We have about 500 people, most of them engineers. They are spread across three development centers, in France, California, and China. China is the center for feature phone software development; France and California are working primarily on Palm OS for Linux.

vs MS's 1200 engineers

What kind of perks or benefits are offered to palmsource employees to keep them and keep them motivated?

All the usual computer industry stuff. The motiation's not just financial, though -- a lot of us are here because we really like the mobile market and want to help shape it.

After the latest round of lay-offs I bet they are not very motivated now (accept by the very real fear of losing their job!)

Surur

[gt24]

What truely killed Palm overall is the split between the companies. Pa1mOne and PalmSource were one company, however are now two. Therefore, the hardware based Pa1mOne should work on hardware deployment only and PalmSource should be the OS. However, Pa1mOne refuses to use the newer Palm OS 6 because they can "make due" with OS 5 plus 50 million hacks (stability being the casuality). To put it in lighter terms, Pa1mOne wants to control the OS even if that means they are stuck at OS 5 forever.

It is a pity... the Palm OS was quite a competitor back in the day. The OS had some innovative features and concepts. However, due to this nice internal fight between the two halfs of Palm, they pretty much destroyed themselves.

I hope that eventually somebody will step up to the plate and give MS some competition again. MS doesn't do so well when they can be lazy.

As for "the competition", I think it could be a catch-all for all non-MS devices. Let's hope that a leader will emerge from that pack.

[Tim Rapson]

This is it for me. I have had it up to here with PalmOS just like I will never buy another Sony product after the way they lied to me over the Memory Stick format going to 1 GIG. It's over.

My next PDA will be a PPC. Probably a Dell Axim X50v, hopefully they will ad a camera model.


Brighthand has a piece on how PalmOne can't afford to lose it's focus again. Well, for me it is simply too late. They have already missed any chance of being a permanent dominant force in handhelds.

As I wrote there (some points match up with Ed Hansberry's point here which is why I re-registered here to post this.):

.....All the talk about what Palm can and must do to succeed is too late....

Apple is still here for just one reason. They have and have had $Billions to spend on products that hit a niche market above Wintel. They might be able to fritter away even that market if they go through with this latest plan to run on Intel hardware.

Palm has no such war treasury.

I think of myself as a fairly typical handheld user. I am almost certainly going to PPC for my next handheld. Why? well, I want real files, real font, multi-tasking, standard top flight hardware, and such.
This is almost exactly what PalmOne could have produced if they had stayed combined with PalmSource and delivered Cobalt. But, what did they do? Wasted $hundreds of millions, splintered their user base, and gave up their market share dominance and name recognition. Why? To line their own executive's pockets with my hard-earned cash. I have enjoyed the good features of POS models, stability, quickness, even guicker resets. The latest models from PalmOne take up to 4 minutes for a simple soft reset. FOUR MINUTES! I can't go that. And the OS needs resetting more and more often, while each version of WM needs the same or fewer and fewer resets.

Sorry Palm. You could have stayed together and kept your silly executive stock manipulation plans out of this and had a nice set of feature phones, PDAs, and multi-media models out that were selling like iPods. Instead you went for the cash behind door number 2 and a fantasy market of OEMs. But, Apple (when they tried to license their OS) has already proven such a set of manufacturers would never appear.

I don't think anything Palms are or will do can keep them afloat much longer. Ed Hardy's Brighthand article talks of PalmOne pulling in cash hand over fist. That is nonsense. They don't have the money they need to bring out models competitive with those of Dell. They simply don't have the money. The OS won't let them do it. It would take a whole new OS or $200 million in development patches (which again, would make FrankenGarnet even less stable and standard) and there is no way PalmOne is going to do it. No way.

It's sad, but it is what it is. I still have my reservations about WM OS, and still wish for a good Linux PDA in the US, but I will have to take the least bad option of the bad options. Right now, it looks like PalmOne and PalmSource have taken me out their possible market by not delivering anything near the OS that others are offering.

[benixau]

Nokia mobiles are no competitor for me
They lack iSync compatibility in any way shape or form ....
For me - SE smartphones are more of a competitor and other than that .... the iMate JAM is a very nice device - make it UMTS - good bye Z1010 + UX40 ...

[Phillip Dyson]

I read through the first 5 pages of the thread and I think their direction makes a lot of sense for them. This is all contingent upon them actually pullin this off.

Its debatable as to whether MS could infiltrate this "feature phone" silo PS is constantly talking about.

Apparently PS is looking to permeate every phone arena. Just from what I've read, I don't think the platform will sunset as all the predictions keep saying. They'll slump, then re-engineer themselves.

The thing that really interested me was the mention of an open development environment. Partnering with the Eclipse project seems like a very good move. Many companies have had great success by embracing the open source community.


I've experienced these kinds of threaded interviews at other sites (including non-tech sites) and I really like the format. I think things like this would be a great addition to the ThoughtsMedia offering.

[Scott R]

Well, this may be the first Palm-bashing article from Ed that I can't disagree much with. Things certainly look grim for PalmSource.

Ed, I'm not completely sure that you got your dates right, though. I was under the impression that PalmSource bought a usable OS from CMS and just needed to slap a skin and some Palm-compatible PIM-beaming capabilities to it. So, that feature-phone platform could be much closer to being ready. Of course, they didn't talk much about it at the developers conference because there would be no point. It's not based on the Palm OS and it's not even an open development platform. It's, as I understand it, just as I described above: the Palm GUI "look and feel" along with compatibility for sharing PIM data with real Palm OS devices.

Cobalt seems all but dead and I think the simple reason there was that it didn't bring enough new to the table from a tangible feature perspective (for end-users) while introducing enough compatibility problems to cause a lot of work for developers to get their apps working on it. As a result, PalmSource's biggest licensee (palmOne) stayed put. This makes perfect sense given the newer management at palmOne which is more Handspring influenced. Handspring stuck with v3.5 of the OS on their PDAs while other licensees had long moved on to v4.x.

The OS formerly known as Palm on Linux seems to be a long ways off and is the mid-2006 deliverable that I think you confused with their feature-phone platform. Of course, while I believe that the Palm-skinned feature-phone platform may be close to being ready, I'm skeptical that PalmSource will meet the mid-2006 date for their "this is really the one guys" Linux-based product.

One problem that PalmSource faces is that they think too highly of their "world class" GUI. I've always been a big fan of their GUI but their GUI doesn't translate so well to smartphones or landscape-native PDAs. I think they recently realized that and that's where their "Rome" project comes in, which aims to take a fresh look at how the GUI should work non-traditional-PDA designs (with most of the focus likely being on smartphones).

As you said, the current state of Garnet on feature-rich devices is quite the mess. Where the Palm OS was once considered rock-solid stable compared to the PPC, the roles have now reversed. I recently started coding an app for the Palm OS and have had to deal with all sorts of compatibility issues between various 480x320-capable Palm OS devices. The app will work fine on my Zodiac, run upside down on the LifeDrive, and not run at all on the Tungsten T5. Oh, but it runs just fine on the desktop simulators for all three. I think the problem here is that in allowing licensees to tweak the OS to their heart's content, the situation for developers has grown uglier and uglier. It might not have gone over well, but I really think they should have required all licensees to use flash ROM and for PalmSource to OK all code changes and release updates that end-users could install, keeping everyone "up-to-date."

While I can't argue with your doom and gloom predictions for the Palm OS, I still see PPC/WM as severely lacking on the usability and GUI front. After numerous OS revisions, there's still too much screen real estate wasted on window elements (and now they've taken away more space by adding those two soft buttons), MS's official design guidelines still say it's wrong to use a real decent-sized OK button on a form and instead tell developers to include that horrid little round OK button in the title bar, there's no task switching "in the box", and the PIM apps still require far too many taps (and have other usability issues) as compared to even my ancient USR Pilot 5000's PIM apps.

As I've said before, when it comes to modern PDAs and smartphones, it's not a matter of whether the Palm OS GUI is better or worse than WM's. The truth is that they both suck. I'm always on the lookout for someone new to jump into the arena with an all-new high-end-PDA and/or smartphone platform with a designed-from-the-ground-up GUI and easy and open developer tools, but it still hasn't happened. I think that MS may get there, though. They've got a large enough userbase and group of licensees such that feedback concerning the GUI issues will get louder and louder and they'll hopefully put some real money and support behind fixing/revamping things.

[stevelam]

I think that for me Palm was never really an option. When I got my first PDA a year ago I had around £200 to spend. At that time it would buy me a Tungsten E, a Tungsten T2 or an Ipaq H2210. The Ipaq just seemed much better value. A higher res screen, more powerful prosessor, more memory &amp; a screen that wasnt half full of a graffiti pad (in the case of the T:E). It also gave me dual card slots. It just seemed a much better product. Now I have that H2210 and I have a mate with a T2 I can safely say the Windows Mobile was the better choice. You should see his face when I pull up BETAPlayer and play the Simpsons and all he can do is get some really bad quality music out of his speakers. Long live Wiindows Mobile (untill something better comes along at least.)

We can all see that the Palm OS is dead. After all wasnt there talk not long ago about a Windows Mobile powered Treo. Now that really would be good.

[PdaAddict]

I currently own an I-mate Jam (HTC Magician) but I have come accross some pictures showing the new Treo -670, which supposedly runs Windows Mobile. The pictures look real to me and the shape of the devise is different from Treo 650. Does anyone have any information on this? Did PalmOne finally realize they may very well have the best devise yet? I wll swich from my Jam to Treo 670 as soon as I can get one.

[ctitanic]

Well, for me all these is a very smart move. Having the new PalmOS based in Linux opens a big door: Linux Open source developer's community ;)

PalmOS has become a new Phoenix ;)

[benixau]

Nope - PS is going to close it off - no thrid party apps - or at least in the fashion that we know it ... all of them will probably have to come from the carriers via OTA or something - this = $$$

[ctitanic]

Nope - PS is going to close it off - no thrid party apps - or at least in the fashion that we know it ... all of them will probably have to come from the carriers via OTA or something - this = $$$

well according to what I have read, they are planing even to have backward compatibility to make current prcs running in a PalmOS-Linux enviroment ;)

[bjornkeizers]

When will PalmOS 5 be EOL?

We're not doing significant additional development on Palm OS Garnet today. But licensees can continue to ship it as long as they want to (see my comments about Symbian 6 above).

Bwaahahahahahahahahah! Whoooo boy, I damn near fell out of my chair. Shipping stuff with Garnet would be like.. shipping a brand new desktop computer with a 2 gig drive and Win 98...

I'd say *Garnet* reached EOL about two years ago. Nobody wants an old OS. Palm was already bleeding badly and in need of serious help way back in '02, let alone now.

They won't be missed.

[benixau]

Nope - PS is going to close it off - no thrid party apps - or at least in the fashion that we know it ... all of them will probably have to come from the carriers via OTA or something - this = $$$

well according to what I have read, they are planing even to have backward compatibility to make current prcs running in a PalmOS-Linux enviroment ;)

cool - until the the yankee carriers get their mits on it ... then we will see artificial limits on it (Treo650 BT anyone?) etc etc ....

If PS can avoid this then way cool ....

[surur]

If Palmsource released PalmLinux today, it will still be 18 months before a phone gets released to the public. They claim PalmLinux will be available Middle 2006. This means the first phones will be available start 2008. (thats time for FCC certification and carrier testing included). We KNOW it will slip from Mid 2006 in any case.

Add to this the fact that the phone OEM's are not going to be flocking to PalmLinux in any case (what do they have which WM don't?) and that they would have lost all momentum, and I can say its very safe to say PalmSource is a dead man walking.

Regarding WM not being able to cover all the phone bases, I think this MS mobile phone begs to differ.

http://www.coolsmartphone.com/images/stories/spvc550-a.jpg

- 1.3 megapixel camera + Flash
- GPRS class 10
- 240x320 QVGA 262K TFT colour screen
- 64MB internal memory and Mini SD external memory
- USB, IrDA and Bluetooth connectivity
- Video MMS and download and playback
- Java 2.0
http://www.coolsmartphone.com/news1306.html
(On sale now)

I would love to have this phone, just for the music buttons and WMP 10 (for music subscriptions). Its very small too.

The mobile phone networks in Europe get along quite well with MS, and consumer acceptance of MS devices are quite good. I expect they will go from strength to strength.

Surur

[andyb]

If Palmsource released PalmLinux today, it will still be 18 months before a phone gets released to the public. They claim PalmLinux will be available Middle 2006. This means the first phones will be available start 2008.

In the deal where palmOne bought the rights to its name, PalmSource was given the right to continue using various trademarks for three years. So these dates may not be too far out, but when it comes out it will have a new name altogether and may have no ties to Palm as we know it whatsoever.

[PDANEWBIE]

Off Topic -

Tim Rapson -

I am just wondering about your statement about Sony lying to you about their memory cards and the 1 gig size? That comment struck me as I have a 2 gig memory stick currently. Was it perhaps a limitation on the device you were using it with?

[mcsouth]

I will admit that I have often 'railed' at Ed's seemingly heavy-handed bashing of all thisgs Palm, and have occasionally felt the need to argue on their behalf. But in this case, I think Ed is right on the money.

My wife is still using her Palm IIIc pda. Maybe she got lucky and got a good unit (no battery problems - knock on wood), or maybe she just doesn't use it enough to wear it out. The point is, there is very little reason for her to upgrade to a new Palm pda - there is little in the way of OS enhancements to encourage her upgrade. Okay, she is definitely not a power user, but can anyone tell me if Palm has ever managed to get memory card support improved to where it is as seamless as it is on a PPC pda? I sure don't miss all of the third party apps that I needed to use on my Palm M505 in order to get some kind of reasonable usage out of a memory card. As much as I liked my M505 at the time, pda's in general have moved on, at least in the PPC world. However, I'm not sure that I can look at any of the new Palms and see any huge improvements over that M505, other than maybe landscape support, as introduced recently. In fact, I can't say that I have seen any Palm pdas released in the last two years that gave me any pause to consider jumping ship back to Palm. At this point, I feel like my HP 1945 has more to offer than most of the new Palms, and it is approaching two generations old (once the WM5 units come out).

I still keep downloading the latest versions of ShadowPlan as they are released against the possibility of the day I may end up with another Palm OS pda, but those chances appear essentially gone at this point...

[IcemanMN]

Embedded Linux will be the same threat to the PPC platform that Linux is to the Windows platform. I predict that Palm's GUI on top of Linux will be very successful, but I agree that locking it down will drive everyone away.

The reason that Pa1mOne split from PalmSource is, Pa1mOne still has to sell handsets while they're waiting for PalmSource to get its **** together. The current Treo is the leading seller in its market segment, so spare me the obituaries. The next Treo will run Magneto, and will continue P1's market dominance.

[Phillip Dyson]

My wife is still using her Palm IIIc pda. Maybe she got lucky and got a good unit (no battery problems - knock on wood), or maybe she just doesn't use it enough to wear it out. The point is, there is very little reason for her to upgrade to a new Palm pda - there is little in the way of OS enhancements to encourage her upgrade.

But if I'm assuming correctly it sounds like your wife is also not compelled to move to Windows Mobile. Why? Because what she has meets her needs. And she's probably the typical user. So her lack of upgrade is not just an indictment against POS but perhaps also WM.

As for PS locking down the platform to prevent 3rd party apps... that only referred to one of their vertical silos (is that redundant?) not the whole platform.

[surur]

But they are only making phones, and selling to networks, so unless you pay megabucks to get an unlocked device you will be stuck with carrier restrictions.

Presumably with a proper OS with proper security it will also be less easy to hack things to undo the restrictions.

Surur

[mangochutneyman]

woopie, yet another palm os is dead article on ppts... :roll:

We'll see... The truth is that the shift to linux will do more to save palm os platform than destroy it. Palm Linux will basically be Cobalt Api's over linux kernal, so most protein based apps should port easily afaik. In addtion PalmSource has its Feature phone product to compete with the likes of Nokia's Series 40 etc which btw will be a HUGE market, much larger than high end smartphones. PalmOS Feature phone does not mean the death of PalmOS platform, it means geater growth into larger markets. Palmsource wants to be a player in both highend/lowend. In additon, there will still be Cobalt for lisencees in meantime. Garnet has really come to end of its life cycle and it's much easier to design smartphone using Cobalt than Garnet. For this reason, I think it's correct to infer LG probaby lisenced Cobalt for smartphone os as it would make the most sense. Furthermore, it will be interesting to see if any carrier picks up the Oswin/GSL Cobalt smartphone. I think this development would spur PalmOne to release a Cobalt Treo imo...

The biggest negative I truely see is the complete focus on smartphones only. I still think there is a viable pda market and would hate to see palmos become exclusively a smartphone focused platform like Symbian...

[mangochutneyman]

The point is, there is very little reason for her to upgrade to a new Palm pda - there is little in the way of OS enhancements to encourage her upgrade.

jees....I see this kind of statement all time here. It's indicative of how ignorant WM users really are of modern palmos. Just b/c they might have used palmos device 3-5 years ago, they think they know everything about palmos, but they really do not. The only thing that's same is the UI, which while now becoming outdated was preserved in Garnet on purpose. Practically anything that you can do on WM, you can do on Palmos...

[whydidnt]

The reason that Pa1mOne split from PalmSource is, Pa1mOne still has to sell handsets while they're waiting for PalmSource to get its s**t together. The current Treo is the leading seller in its market segment, so spare me the obituaries. The next Treo will run Magneto, and will continue P1's market dominance.

While I would love to see a WM Treo, I'm not sure it's going to happen. If P1 had made the decision that WM was their future, I can't see why they would have given $30 million to PalmSource for the right to the PALM trademark. Heck they could have just bought the company for a few more million.

The problem with P1 moving into the WM world is that they would then have to compete with Dell, HP, etc for the hearts and minds of users. What market share they have maintained is typically from those who prefer the Palm OS, warts and all. Why would they want to alienate those users, only to have to compete to win them back without their only perceived advantage?

[Janak Parekh]

I am just wondering about your statement about Sony lying to you about their memory cards and the 1 gig size? That comment struck me as I have a 2 gig memory stick currently. Was it perhaps a limitation on the device you were using it with?
He's talking about the fact that Sony introduced Memory Stick Pro as a new technology that's not backwards-compatible with older Sony products, contradicting their claim years ago where they said Memory Stick was designed to scale. Many people bought expensive cameras from Sony but found it near-useless as the largest non-Pro Memory Stick on the market (excluding the Select, which was just a hack) is 128MB.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

We'll see... The truth is that the shift to linux will do more to save palm os platform than destroy it.
Maybe, but the main point here is that PalmSource is tight on time, and the current release schedule points to them being years behind in rolling out the solution.

In additon, there will still be Cobalt for lisencees in meantime. Garnet has really come to end of its life cycle and it's much easier to design smartphone using Cobalt than Garnet. For this reason, I think it's correct to infer LG probaby lisenced Cobalt for smartphone os as it would make the most sense.
We'll see. I remain skeptical, as do many others, of the possibility of Cobalt appearing on any device whatsoever.

--janak

[surur]

The reason that Pa1mOne split from PalmSource is, Pa1mOne still has to sell handsets while they're waiting for PalmSource to get its s**t together. The current Treo is the leading seller in its market segment, so spare me the obituaries. The next Treo will run Magneto, and will continue P1's market dominance.

While I would love to see a WM Treo, I'm not sure it's going to happen. If P1 had made the decision that WM was their future, I can't see why they would have given $30 million to PalmSource for the right to the PALM trademark. Heck they could have just bought the company for a few more million. ?

Simple. They know their biggest asset is their brand, not the OS. This way they can sell a WM PALM. They could not do this with only 50% ownership of the brand name.

Surur

[Foo Fighter]

woopie, yet another palm os is dead article on ppts... :roll:

Once upon a time I would have agreed with you, but I think you'll find other web PDA related sites posting similar sentiment now that PalmOS as we know it is dead.

We'll see... The truth is that the shift to linux will do more to save palm os platform than destroy it.

Interesting hypothesis, but wrong. Linux-based PalmOS is nearly three years away, and when it does arrive it will face an impenetrable market owned by Symbian and Windows Mobile. That lack of developer interest today is proof of this. You don't see Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, or Nokia lining up to get their copy of PalmLinux...and you never will.

In addtion PalmSource has its Feature phone product to compete with the likes of Nokia's Series 40

Wrong again. They WILL have a feature phone product....in three years. Too little, too late, and given their financial status, PalmSource won't survive long enough to give birth to this mutant child.

PalmOS Feature phone does not mean the death of PalmOS platform, it means geater growth into larger markets.

True, but you're speaking as though this product is available now. It's vaporware. And the company building the product is on death's doorstep. And you're assuming handset vendors will be lining up to license this OS when it does arrive. That ain't gonna happen. After years of struggling to develop PalmLinux, PalmSource will find an even greater challenge in trying to market it's wares to potential customers. Provided they are still in business at that time.

In additon, there will still be Cobalt for lisencees in meantime.

An operating system that nobody wants? Cobalt is so bad even PalmOne won't touch it. In case you've been living under a rock, Cobalt was a complete failure. It's one of the reasons why Nagel was handed his briefcase.

I think this development would spur PalmOne to release a Cobalt Treo imo...

The only "new" OS future Treo's are likely to ship with is Windows Mobile. And you can bet on that. With the end of Garnet comes a looming calamity for PalmOne: where do we go from here? The operating system that ship on its devices today is dead, with no future roadmap. And its successor won't appear for another 3 years. Where does that leave PalmOne? They can't keep limping along with Garnet for three more years hoping nobody notices the buzzards circling over Garnet's carcass. That means one of two things must happen..

1. Buy back PalmSource and take back control over the whole stinking mess.

2. Go shopping for a new OS.

I'm betting on the latter, because the former would be too costly and wouldn't really gain them anything considering PalmOS market share is shrinking while Windows Mobile is clearly the winning platform.

[surur]

woopie, yet another palm os is dead article on ppts... :roll:

We'll see... The truth is that the shift to linux will do more to save palm os platform than destroy it. Palm Linux will basically be Cobalt Api's over linux kernal, so most protein based apps should port easily afaik. In addtion PalmSource has its Feature phone product to compete with the likes of Nokia's Series 40 etc which btw will be a HUGE market, much larger than high end smartphones. PalmOS Feature phone does not mean the death of PalmOS platform, it means geater growth into larger markets. Palmsource wants to be a player in both highend/lowend. In additon, there will still be Cobalt for lisencees in meantime. Garnet has really come to end of its life cycle and it's much easier to design smartphone using Cobalt than Garnet. For this reason, I think it's correct to infer LG probaby lisenced Cobalt for smartphone os as it would make the most sense. Furthermore, it will be interesting to see if any carrier picks up the Oswin/GSL Cobalt smartphone. I think this development would spur PalmOne to release a Cobalt Treo imo...

The biggest negative I truely see is the complete focus on smartphones only. I still think there is a viable pda market and would hate to see palmos become exclusively a smartphone focused platform like Symbian...

Wow! You've completely swallowed the Kool-Aid. Ask yourself WHEN these things will be happening. Explain to us the time-line of each milestone. Read the Micheal Mace interview for their estimates.

I look forward to reading your answer, and your explanation of why POS will not be irrelevant by the time they come out with a PLinux phone.

Surur

[mangochutneyman]

Nope - PS is going to close it off - no thrid party apps - or at least in the fashion that we know it ... all of them will probably have to come from the carriers via OTA or something - this = $$$

well according to what I have read, they are planing even to have backward compatibility to make current prcs running in a PalmOS-Linux enviroment ;)

cool - until the the yankee carriers get their mits on it ... then we will see artificial limits on it (Treo650 BT anyone?) etc etc ....

If PS can avoid this then way cool ....

Again, Palm os Feature Phone, Palm Linux, Cobalt, Garnet, etc are all totally DIFFERENT priducts. I agree it can be very confusing...

Also, Palmsource is already offerring it's Feature phone interface as result of the CMS merger:

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=7600

http://www.palmsource.com/about/cms_feature.html

http://www.palmsource.com/about/cms_mfone.html

Next gen will integrate Feature phone with the familiar PalmOS UI. Cobalt and Palm Linux are/will of course be open platforms...

[mangochutneyman]

woopie, yet another palm os is dead article on ppts... :roll:

We'll see... The truth is that the shift to linux will do more to save palm os platform than destroy it. Palm Linux will basically be Cobalt Api's over linux kernal, so most protein based apps should port easily afaik. In addtion PalmSource has its Feature phone product to compete with the likes of Nokia's Series 40 etc which btw will be a HUGE market, much larger than high end smartphones. PalmOS Feature phone does not mean the death of PalmOS platform, it means geater growth into larger markets. Palmsource wants to be a player in both highend/lowend. In additon, there will still be Cobalt for lisencees in meantime. Garnet has really come to end of its life cycle and it's much easier to design smartphone using Cobalt than Garnet. For this reason, I think it's correct to infer LG probaby lisenced Cobalt for smartphone os as it would make the most sense. Furthermore, it will be interesting to see if any carrier picks up the Oswin/GSL Cobalt smartphone. I think this development would spur PalmOne to release a Cobalt Treo imo...

The biggest negative I truely see is the complete focus on smartphones only. I still think there is a viable pda market and would hate to see palmos become exclusively a smartphone focused platform like Symbian...

Wow! You've completely swallowed the Kool-Aid. Ask yourself WHEN these things will be happening. Explain to us the time-line of each milestone. Read the Micheal Mace interview for their estimates.

I look forward to reading your answer, and your explanation of why POS will not be irrelevant by the time they come out with a PLinux phone.

Surur

No where in that interview did Mace specifically say when LG signed as liscencee. For all we know it could have been many months ago or just last week. In the same vein we do not know what products, or what lisencees have any products in the pipeline right now...

What can be inferred is that the next gen Treo will arrive by end of this year/early 2006 and that there are already credible rumors for T5 upgrade and next gen Lifedrive. No one is expecting Palm Linux smartphones any time, but there definitely will be more garnet based devices and possibly Cobalt based device finally this year...

[surur]

What can be inferred is that the next gen Treo will arrive by end of this year/early 2006 and that there are already credible rumors for T5 upgrade and next gen Lifedrive. No one is expecting Palm Linux smartphones any time, but there definitely will be more garnet based devices and possibly Cobalt based device finally this year...

I'm glad you get the first part (that PLinux devices will be very long in coming). The second part to get is that Garnet is waayyy past being capable of supporting new devices, as demonstrated by the poor performance of the LD. Trying to last another two years with Garnet will be the end of PalmOne (now palm) also.

Surur

[mangochutneyman]

Interesting hypothesis, but wrong. Linux-based PalmOS is nearly three years away, and when it does arrive it will face an impenetrable market owned by Symbian and Windows Mobile. That lack of developer interest today is proof of this. You don't see Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, or Nokia lining up to get their copy of PalmLinux...and you never will.


How do you know, or me for that matter? Did you know about LG? I don't think you should make such presumptions...

The shift to Palm Linux will actually make it easier for lisencees to develop and design products. For example the lack of basic telephony was one of the probs between palmsource and PalmOne. This will not be such an issue with Palm Linux...


Wrong again. They WILL have a feature phone product....in three years. Too little, too late, and given their financial status, PalmSource won't survive long enough to give birth to this mutant child.


HUH? PalmSource already has feature phone product it's selling right now that it acquired from CMS merger! (see link above) There are already many lisencees in China/Asia using this. The next gen Feature phone will integrate palm os UI etc...


True, but you're speaking as though this product is available now. It's vaporware. And the company building the product is on death's doorstep. And you're assuming handset vendors will be lining up to license this OS when it does arrive. That ain't gonna happen. After years of struggling to develop PalmLinux, PalmSource will find an even greater challenge in trying to market it's wares to potential customers. Provided they are still in business at that time.


That's your opinion...



An operating system that nobody wants? Cobalt is so bad even PalmOne won't touch it. In case you've been living under a rock, Cobalt was a complete failure. It's one of the reasons why Nagel was handed his briefcase.


Cobalt is actaully very nice OS fyi. The lack of Cobalt devices is more to do with stupid Palmsource lisencing policy imo. Plus there's lots of issues between PalmOne and PalmSource regardng telephony support and etc that dissuaded them from releasing cobalt device yet. It doesn't mean the os was bad...



The only "new" OS future Treo's are likely to ship with is Windows Mobile. And you can bet on that. With the end of Garnet comes a looming calamity for PalmOne: where do we go from here? The operating system that ship on its devices today is dead, with no future roadmap. And its successor won't appear for another 3 years. Where does that leave PalmOne? They can't keep limping along with Garnet for three more years hoping nobody notices the buzzards circling over Garnet's carcass. That means one of two things must happen..


Umm... PalmOne already renewed palmOS lisence till 2009. There will be new T series and LD models probably end of this year. Next Treo is already rumored for ~March 2006 release at latest. Earlier WM Treo rumor could be true, but imo it was more of levarging technique used by palm to pressure palmsource. If Palm does release WM Treo, it will probably do so concurrently with palmos version, not replacing palmos version...

[mangochutneyman]

[quote=mangochutneyman]
I'm glad you get the first part (that PLinux devices will be very long in coming). The second part to get is that Garnet is waayyy past being capable of supporting new devices, as demonstrated by the poor performance of the LD. Trying to last another two years with Garnet will be the end of PalmOne (now palm) also.

Surur

Really, have you used LD? :roll: Btw, where's your insider data showing LD sales rates? :wink:

[whydidnt]

Really, have you used LD? :roll: Btw, where's your insider data showing LD sales rates? :wink:

I can't speak for the rest, but I have used a LifeDrive and it is by far the most unstable handheld I have ever owned. Preinstalled applications such as Pocket Tunes often cause a random reset. Resets seem to take for ever. Like most recent P1 offerings we have terrific hardware that is hamstrung by a hacked up 5+ year old OS.

As far as LifeDrive Sales, I haven't a clue to the actual figures, but the fact the LD is available at steep discounts within a month of release leads me to believe that they haven't been flying off the shelfs like the original iPaq.

[szamot]

hopefully this will put the eternal question of "what to get Palm or PPC" from the forums for a while, and the flame wars that accompany them.

[IcemanMN]

The problem with P1 moving into the WM world is that they would then have to compete with Dell, HP, etc for the hearts and minds of users. What market share they have maintained is typically from those who prefer the Palm OS, warts and all. Why would they want to alienate those users, only to have to compete to win them back without their only perceived advantage?

The advantage of the Treo is in its dual nature. No one else has figured out how to build a PDA that works equally well as a phone, e.g. one-handed dialing. Once Magneto arrives, you get the same one-handed capability on the PPC platform that you get today with the Treo 650. It's a no-brainer and they will sell as many as they can build. I hear that Dell and P1 were close to an agreement where P1/HTC would build a Dell-branded Treo running Magneto. I hear the deal fell through only because Bluetooth is still a flaky technology.

I see no problem with P1 selling handsets that run your choice of OS. I'm not sure why they wanted to change the company's name to Palm though.

[whydidnt]

The advantage of the Treo is in its dual nature. No one else has figured out how to build a PDA that works equally well as a phone, e.g. one-handed dialing. Once Magneto arrives, you get the same one-handed capability on the PPC platform that you get today with the Treo 650. It's a no-brainer and they will sell as many as they can build. I hear that Dell and P1 were close to an agreement where P1/HTC would build a Dell-branded Treo running Magneto. I hear the deal fell through only because Bluetooth is still a flaky technology.

I agree with you regarding the Treo and the fact is probably the best converged device today. However, I see two potential flaws in a Windows Mobile Treo strategy. First, everyone else will have access to the new OS, so there will be nothing preventing HP, HTC, etc from releasing a phone with comparable features, ease of use, etc. Palm loses their advantage, then they have to compete on quality and price, something I'm not sure they can do. Second, much of the Treos usability has been derived from PalmOne's ability to hack the OS to make it one-handed friendly. PalmOne will not have that same ability with WM as MS has much stricter guidelines regarding what OEM can do with their OS.

So, while I'm at the front of the line wanting a WM Treo. I still wonder if there is really value for PalmOne to do it, short of not having a better alternative, I guess.

[Cybrid]

jees....I see this kind of statement all time here. It's indicative of how ignorant WM users really are of modern palmos. Just b/c they might have used palmos device 3-5 years ago, they think they know everything about palmos, but they really do not. The only thing that's same is the UI, which while now becoming outdated was preserved in Garnet on purpose. Practically anything that you can do on WM, you can do on Palmos... jees....I see this kind of statement all time here. It's indicative of how ignorant Palm users really are of modern PalmOS.
I'll be the first to admit I haven't kept up with all of Palm's newer offerings but to say Palm is keeping up with WM is a fallacy. I played around with a Lifedrive and I was not impressed.

If they kept to standardized memory formats for one thing. My 7 year old 8Mb CF still runs fine and will do so for most PPC's. I cannot say the same for MS pro/duo/x/x. What about running the same card on another Palm?
My GPS Cf card was not cheap. I need to get atleast a few years of forward compatibility. :(

The screen was "washed out". Someone want to confirm it was 8/12 Bit?
Even my Dell X5 displayed better.

It wasn't altogether all that responsive. It was was kinda like the old Ipaq 3930 2002's with the StrongArm proccessors. Not the vaunted snappy response that PalmerOS'ers claim that Palm provides. The "Bloatware" MS OS was still better.

I still couldn't run a webpage over WiFi and cut'n'paste text into a word doc back and forth without knowing that it shut the webpage off and restarted it again. If it seamless switched back and forth ...Ok! I would consider it an acceptable compromise. A multitask OS is wasted on this single task brain. Seamless switching between single threads could easily compete with multitask in most respects but the key is...it didn't!

[mangochutneyman]

jees....I see this kind of statement all time here. It's indicative of how ignorant WM users really are of modern palmos. Just b/c they might have used palmos device 3-5 years ago, they think they know everything about palmos, but they really do not. The only thing that's same is the UI, which while now becoming outdated was preserved in Garnet on purpose. Practically anything that you can do on WM, you can do on Palmos... jees....I see this kind of statement all time here. It's indicative of how ignorant Palm users really are of modern PalmOS.

Who said I was only a palm os user? I luv my x50v btw...


If they kept to standardized memory formats for one thing. My 7 year old 8Mb CF still runs fine and will do so for most PPC's. I cannot say the same for MS pro/duo/x/x. What about running the same card on another Palm?
My GPS Cf card was not cheap. I need to get atleast a few years of forward compatibility. :(


what does that have to do with the OS??! Palm fyi has always and only ever supported one expansion format which is SD...that's pretty consistant imo. Go blame Sony for their stupid proprietary nonsense if you want. A legitimate gripe would be changing the PUC etc, but even that I can understand...


I still couldn't run a webpage over WiFi and cut'n'paste text into a word doc back and forth without knowing that it shut the webpage off and restarted it again. If it seamless switched back and forth ...Ok! I would consider it an acceptable compromise. A multitask OS is wasted on this single task brain. Seamless switching between single threads could easily compete with multitask in most respects but the key is...it didn't!

Get a diff browser. You can do this on xiino w/o having to reload fyi... Like I said, typical post around here...

[Fishie]

Embedded Linux will be the same threat to the PPC platform that Linux is to the Windows platform. I predict that Palm's GUI on top of Linux will be very successful, but I agree that locking it down will drive everyone away.

The reason that Pa1mOne split from PalmSource is, Pa1mOne still has to sell handsets while they're waiting for PalmSource to get its s**t together. The current Treo is the leading seller in its market segment, so spare me the obituaries. The next Treo will run Magneto, and will continue P1's market dominance.

What dominance would that be?
A million units a year is NOTHING in the phone market.

[mcsouth]

Cobalt is actaully very nice OS fyi. The lack of Cobalt devices is more to do with stupid Palmsource lisencing policy imo. Plus there's lots of issues between PalmOne and PalmSource regardng telephony support and etc that dissuaded them from releasing cobalt device yet. It doesn't mean the os was bad...

I will agree that the screenshots of Cobalt looked promising, but the bottom line is.....where are the units? Saying that Cobalt is a very nice OS is sort of like saying the 2010 Jeep Wrangler is a very nice vehicle based on the appearance of this year's show vehicle. Until a unit is actually released to the public, and can be properly benchmarked and reviewed, it is ludicrous to call it a nice OS.

[Ed Hansberry]

Cobalt is actaully very nice OS fyi.

I will agree that the screenshots of Cobalt looked promising, but the bottom line is.....where are the units?

:confused totally:

Is that how an OS is rated? It has pretty screenshots? Has anyone here actually USED Cobalt? I don't care how the specs read on paper. When you have used it, then you can rate it. Otherwise, Cobalt is a actaully {sic} vaporware that may appear nice on paper, and it has very pretty screenshots. :hippy:

[Tim Rapson]

Off Topic -

Tim Rapson -

I am just wondering about your statement about Sony lying to you about their memory cards and the 1 gig size? That comment struck me as I have a 2 gig memory stick currently. Was it perhaps a limitation on the device you were using it with?


Yes, when I bought my Sony NR70V memory sticks went to 128 MB and they were exactly between the price per MB of CF and SD. Sony showed charts of their cards going all the way to 1 gig.

Then the January or two after I got my NR when I was ready to pay $100 for a 1 gig card, they revealed their new super-duper "compatible" MS PRO and MS DUO and MS DUO PRO. None of those cards work in my NR and there are no cards for it above 128 MB. Just when I was supposed to be able to get a card big enough to have some room for music along with my apps, Sony says SORRY SUCKER! Well, so long Sony for me.

Now, Palm has not outright cheated its users, but they simply are not offering a contemporary OSed product.

[Cybrid]

Who said I was only a palm os user? I luv my x50v btw...
Yes, The X50V rocks. I assumed nothing. It simply strikes me as being amusing that you personally didn't do a "head to head".


what does that have to do with the OS??! Palm fyi has always and only ever supported one expansion format which is SD...that's pretty consistant imo. Go blame Sony for their stupid proprietary nonsense if you want. A legitimate gripe would be changing the PUC etc, but even that I can understand...

It's powered by Palm OS...it's a Palm!!! Even so. I believe I've read compatibility reports wherein SD accessories for one did not work for another.



Get a diff browser. You can do this on xiino w/o having to reload fyi... Like I said, typical post around here... Hopefully xiino is freeware. nonetheless it points to the gripe amongst Palm converts against WM...The apps don't work as i advertised and I've got to buy 3rd party items to actually make it useable. Glad to see Palm is so...."on top of things". BTW It still didn't answer the basic gripe. Garnet is single task and not seamless. Multitask is considerably better. Why not do some homework?
My challenge to you is try this. Take a standard set of tasks you normally do. And Do them on each with a clock running. Post back in a week!

[Terry]

After a month, I've dumped the LifeDrive...into the junk drawer at the office...the current OS just isn't stable...constant crashes and 2-3 minutes to "reboot." I think Palm knows it has hit the end of its OS life. The LifeDrive is nice in that the OS and everything else is on a hard disk...when the battery dies, nothing is lost...that's a clue MS should take from this device. The OS itself is easier to use than the WM and I can read the screen without my reading glasses...but the reboots... :|
I wouldn't mind at all getting a Palm OS "skin" for a PPC.

Now I have a PPC "LifeDrive"... an hx4705 with a 4GB CF MicroDrive (we'll see if the new Hitachi versions of the MicroDrive fare any better than the cr*ppy IBM versions...I lost 2 IBM drives in less than a year). If there was a CF Edge Modem, I'd be in heaven again. The VGA screen is very easy on the eyes, but not as easy as the LifeDrive. Pocket Informant is a true pleasure in VGA though. I'm not happy with the touch pad yet, but I'll get used to it. I also added a PocketPCTechs 128mb upgrade...very helpful for loading everything I want. This is now my new favorite device. Even so, I still use a Blackberry for e-mail and iPod for music. Everything else (calendar, tasks, photos) goes on the PPC "LifeDrive."

[mcsouth]

Cobalt is actaully very nice OS fyi.

I will agree that the screenshots of Cobalt looked promising, but the bottom line is.....where are the units?

:confused totally:

Is that how an OS is rated? It has pretty screenshots? Has anyone here actually USED Cobalt? I don't care how the specs read on paper. When you have used it, then you can rate it. Otherwise, Cobalt is a actaully {sic} vaporware that may appear nice on paper, and it has very pretty screenshots. :hippy:

Ed: My point exactly....as I indicated, the OS may look promising based on nice screenshots, that for all we know were dummied up in Photoshop, but until someone actually ships a unit that can be operated, reviewed and benchmarked for performance, then calling the Cobalt OS a nice OS is ridiculous. Cobalt has to be perhaps the biggest joke in pda history - the promised land that Palm hyped for years has now been released for almost ...what, two years?....and yet not one vendor has announced plans to release a unit with Cobalt. Not exactly a screaming endorsement for this "nice OS", is it?

[Jereboam]

This is very topical for me because I just bought a Treo 650 - still in the honeymoon period but so far it has to be the best mobile device I have used. It whips my P900 for usability and expandability.

I have an hx4700 as my "main" PDA, and must admit to have really struggled with it, in terms of actually, properly, using it. Basically after multiple hassles with everything from syncing to wifi it got relegated to being an ebook reader. A couple of conversation points below -

E-mail

Sorry, but the 4700 sucks at this. Yes, I have tried both the standard WM client and also WebIS' Mail. The standard client is rubbish. Really. Mail is a nice app but glacially slow. Minutes to pick up headers only? Forget it. And this is on fast broadband over wifi.

The Treo is online and instantaneously grabs all my mail. Instant. And this is over GPRS/EDGE.

PIM

WM wins this one, but only because I use Pocket Informant and it is simply the best PIM on any mobile platform bar none. Iambic Agendus on the Palm comes close - but PI in VGA on my 4700 is just stunning. Both devices' standard apps are very ho-hum.

Office-type stuff

MS codes the Office suite and WM and even with WM5 there will still not be full compatibility between desktop and handheld. Hang your heads in shame.

Yes I know you can buy Textmaker etc but that's a substantial extra cost.

Docs-to-Go, while not being 100% compatible and also a cost option, is an extremely well thought out app. The Treo's small screen makes it unusable for anything but minor spelling edits though...

Input

I am never going to buy another device without a built-in hard keyboard. I am utterly convinced that a mobile optimised keyboard is a massive enabler. SIPs, even very good ones like Fitaly, are not good enough. I have the Stowaway BT KB and mouse, and it is just too much stuff to carry and waaay too much hassle to actually use.

Digital Life

Storage. Lots of it. Out of the box. LifeDrive despite flaws is a pointer to the future. Don't market a device as a digital video player, music player if I have to spend hours doing it or hundreds of dollars to enable it.

This also means nice screens (4700, X50v etc). Good media viewers and players. Good graphics hardware (X50v). Strong (replaceable) battery life. Being able to connect with cameras and printers and so on. Why don't current PDAs support DPOF or PictBridge? This would be awesome.

One-Handed Use

Treo is superb at this and it is truly a revelation to be able to perform any task without resorting to the stylus. Wonderful. Let's see if WM5 can match this, I hope so...

Convergence

I've struggled. I've held on to the two-device theory. But it's bollocks. Converged, wireless, telephony-enabled mobile devices are the way forward. The Treo has convinced me of this utterly, despite flaws. Interestingly, my P900 never did. I honestly don't know why.

I agree with a previous poster that the Treo is currently the best converged device available.

Of course, providers have to slash data costs, increase coverage, and be more generally supportive of PDA/Smartphone devices.

WiFi is nice but I want to be connected ALL the time, not drifting between home, office or hotspots. We're looking at 3G or wide-area wireless like Wimax.

Those are the things that are most important to me specifically...

Basically, anyone who has read Peter F. Hamilton's books will know what I truly want ;) .

Oh yeah one final rant - syncing...too much hassle, too many proprietary syncing methods. Unless a syncing standard comes along like SyncML that is properly adopted and implemented and allows anything to sync with anything else I will just give up and go back to pen and paper.

J'bm

[Ed Hansberry]

Cobalt has to be perhaps the biggest joke in pda history - the promised land that Palm hyped for years has now been released for almost ...what, two years?....and yet not one vendor has announced plans to release a unit with Cobalt.
Bingo! They have actually been hyping this since 2001 with OS5 (Garnet) being the interim OS on the way to the big enchalada, OS6.

If people had known in 2002 when Garnet was released that they would be on that until 2007 or 2008 Palm would have gone bankrupt in 2 years. One of the larger vaporware add campaigns in the history of software.

[Jereboam]

Disappointingly this thread seems to have been turned into a PSP/DS debate which is really of zero interest to me...can we split the threads or stay on topic?

[Ed Hansberry]

Disappointingly this thread seems to have been turned into a PSP/DS debate which is really of zero interest to me...can we split the threads or stay on topic?

Yeah. I didn't realize how bad it had become. PSP vs DS at http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41399 .

Keep this to the palm obituary. :nonono:

[lapchinj]

PalmOS, as we know it, is dead...RIP. But they've been on life support for some time. I'm just wondering when they'll finally pull the plug.

...When someone has a monopoly people scream that without competition the consumer loses. Well, in general I agree...I also agree very strongly with that. Even though MS is very pushy but they eventually give the consumer what they want generally (usually after 3 tries). I got the feeling that if there was no competition for Palm, and seeing the way they treated developers and users alike, everybody would still be using a Palm Pilot. There would be no more memory, VGA or even palm based smartphones.

I wonder what will happen with the Trio now that all these people are starting to disappear from Palm? They've had their share of problems with software on it and the Palm OS.

Jeff- :boohoo:

[Jonathan1]

I think I read the same thing about Apple a few years ago. :roll:

Palm OS isn't going anywhere. At some point someone will buy them out and actually DO something with that company.

[Jereboam]

Cheers Ed.

I think Palm One/Source really have an opportunity here. They have basically taken all the criticism there is re Cobalt already, and now have confirmed it's a dead OS.

Mobile optimised Linux? Bring it on. I actually don't care what underlying OS they use as long as they learn lessons from both WM and POS and give it a great wrapper/GUI.

A couple of things I think they have to make sure of:

1. Don't leave developers out in the cold like they have done previously. Actively encourage and assist the people who write great Palm software in transitioning to the new OS. SDKs, dev conferences etc...
2. Don't totally outsource hardware...the Treo and LifeDrive are handsome pieces of hardware with great Apple-esque design cues. Plus people like a brand name...even if we fans know that most devices are made by only a few OEMs (HTC etc).
3. Don't go 100% smartphone, keep true PDAs coming too. Most importantly don't split OS development. MS have learnt from the market and merged the two platforms.

[bjornkeizers]

Yeah. I didn't realize how bad it had become. PSP vs DS at http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41399 .

Keep this to the palm obituary. :nonono:

Whenever you do that, I get this image in my mind of Friendly Gardener Ed, frantically running around with teeny, tiny garden clippers, trimming and fussing over his award-winning rose bushes :D

Carry on.

[Regint]

Symbian sold 6.75mil devices last quarter alone on 180% growth. Those are the kind of figures that make even Microsoft green with envy.

Palm is irrelevent and I'm sure that Microsoft know this.

[Fishie]

Disappointingly this thread seems to have been turned into a PSP/DS debate which is really of zero interest to me...can we split the threads or stay on topic?

Yeah sorry about that, it wasnt my intention either since I simply said I failedto see how the PSP was competition for WindowsCE, I never even mentioned the DS at first but things seemed to have escalated from that.
In any case that discussion is split from here now so.

[Janak Parekh]

I think I read the same thing about Apple a few years ago. :roll:
The difference is that Apple had enough financial footing to ride out the low before OS X was released, and that they were largely able to adopt the NeXT architecture that they bought out. Neither is true for PalmSource. I wouldn't write them out just yet, but they've gotta move fast.

--janak

[Jereboam]

Symbian only sold licenses for a bundled OS - not a single device. Nokia etc sold devices that run Symbian OS.

That figure of 6+ million includes vanilla mobile phones which are not really relevant to this conversation...the vast majority of so-called "smartphones" touted by Symbian supporters are plain-jane mobiles. Not PDAs. They don't even try to be and that's fine - many people just want a telephone. The N-Gage is supposedly a Symbian "smartphone"...nuff said.

I would be interested to know how many P900/P910s or Nokia 9500/9700s they sold - that would be a reasonable comparison against WM and POS devices. I'm bettting the number is substantially lower. Anyone got the numbers?

[Ed Hansberry]

I would be interested to know how many P900/P910s or Nokia 9500/9700s they sold - that would be a reasonable comparison against WM and POS devices. I'm bettting the number is substantially lower. Anyone got the numbers?

No, but you are exactly right. Saying Nokia sold 6M phones is a meaningless number when talking about smartphones. The vast majority are the freebies or sub $50 phones after rebates, not the high powered phones with bluetooth, cameras, email support, the ability to install third party apps, a non-WAP-only browser, etc.

[Fishie]

Symbian only sold licenses for a bundled OS - not a single device. Nokia etc sold devices that run Symbian OS.

That figure of 6+ million includes vanilla mobile phones which are not really relevant to this conversation...the vast majority of so-called "smartphones" touted by Symbian supporters are plain-jane mobiles. Not PDAs. They don't even try to be and that's fine - many people just want a telephone. The N-Gage is supposedly a Symbian "smartphone"...nuff said.

I would be interested to know how many P900/P910s or Nokia 9500/9700s they sold - that would be a reasonable comparison against WM and POS devices. I'm bettting the number is substantially lower. Anyone got the numbers?

Urm, thing is the NGage IS a decent smartphone.
Email clients, productivity software, avantgo(windows mobile smartphones STILL dont have that), mobipocket, realplayer etcetera etcetera all can be used on it, it has a pim suite etcetera.
The NGage is as much a smartphone as any of the windows mobile smartphones.

[Fishie]

I would be interested to know how many P900/P910s or Nokia 9500/9700s they sold - that would be a reasonable comparison against WM and POS devices. I'm bettting the number is substantially lower. Anyone got the numbers?

No, but you are exactly right. Saying Nokia sold 6M phones is a meaningless number when talking about smartphones. The vast majority are the freebies or sub $50 phones after rebates, not the high powered phones with bluetooth, cameras, email support, the ability to install third party apps, a non-WAP-only browser, etc.

No they are not, Nokia in Europe ships around 2 million cellphones per quarter, around half those ship with series 60 or higher, series 60 is a FULL SMARTPHONE OS.
Its a cluttered mess compared with PPCs and a small mess compared to win mobile smartphones but it still is a full smartphone OS.

[Jereboam]

I'm not disputing that Series 60 plus is a reasonable smartphone OS if properly deployed...but small screen, no touchscreen, no SIPs, no keyboard, often no Bluetooth, useless email clients, WAP-only browsers, minimal PIM capability, rudimentary media capabilities and in the case of Nokia at least, appalling sync software, and I do dispute that you can legitimately call most of these devices smartphones.

I'm only up because I've had to send a fax to New Zealand and a little tired to actually pick an actual example phone...but will happily carry on tomorrow...

Symbian's OS is OK in itself but just because a device runs it doesn't mean that it is a smartphone or a PDA.

[Fishie]

I'm not disputing that Series 60 plus is a reasonable smartphone OS if properly deployed...but small screen, no touchscreen, no SIPs, no keyboard, often no Bluetooth, useless email clients, WAP-only browsers, minimal PIM capability, rudimentary media capabilities and in the case of Nokia at least, appalling sync software, and I do dispute that you can legitimately call most of these devices smartphones.

I'm only up because I've had to send a fax to New Zealand and a little tired to actually pick an actual example phone...but will happily carry on tomorrow...

Symbian's OS is OK in itself but just because a device runs it doesn't mean that it is a smartphone or a PDA.

How big are the screens on MS Smartphones and do they come with a stylus?

I rest my case.

[Jereboam]

Don't rest your case quite yet because I happen to think that the current crop of MS "smartphones" aren't all that smart either - in fact I would prefer one of the high end Nokias if it were a choice between them...

So there! ;)

The MS smartphone platform will start getting serious with WM5 and should hopefully go from there (IMHO).

However - one thing that MS phones do is sync well with Outlook/Exchange etc, even now...Noks are pants at syncing.

[Fishie]

Right, so insead of smartphones you want a PDA with cellphone capabilities then.
It wouldve been a lot easier for both of us if you would have just said so from the start.

[Regint]

I'm not disputing that Series 60 plus is a reasonable smartphone OS if properly deployed...but small screen, no touchscreen, no SIPs, no keyboard, often no Bluetooth, useless email clients, WAP-only browsers, minimal PIM capability, rudimentary media capabilities and in the case of Nokia at least, appalling sync software, and I do dispute that you can legitimately call most of these devices smartphones.

I think you're a little out of touch with Series 60.

For the record, every Series 60 released has had bluetooth, has had a full HTML web-browser (Opera or NetFront) and has been capable of playing music and video.

The out-of-the-box e-mail solution is pretty poor but there's very decent third party software available.

Syncing is still Nokia's number 1 problem though. At least Series 60 phones sync with Lotus Notes and Macs out-of-the-box though and, in that respect, they've got Windows Smartphones beaten.

[Jereboam]

Right, so insead of smartphones you want a PDA with cellphone capabilities then.
It wouldve been a lot easier for both of us if you would have just said so from the start.

Why are you thinking that these are different things...? We are not talking mutually exclusive featuresets here.

A smartphone is a converged device, with both PDA and telephony capabilities...

Try syncing a 9300 or a 9500 with a Mac. Ain't happening.

As a quick aside, does anyone else think Lotus Notes is devilware? I shudder to think about it now.

[Phillip Dyson]

Right, so insead of smartphones you want a PDA with cellphone capabilities then.
It wouldve been a lot easier for both of us if you would have just said so from the start.

Why are you thinking that these are different things...? We are not talking mutually exclusive featuresets here.

A smartphone is a converged device, with both PDA and telephony capabilities...


I agree, although you can blame MS for the confusion. How many people call the Treo a PalmOS Phone Edition? Although its debatable that the 3 flavor nomenclature makes sense to identify each one's concentration. I'm clear on it atleast.

IMO I consider WM Smartphones to be smartphones (beyond the obvious) because of their rich PIM functionality and support for even richer 3rd party applications. Touch screen is not a prerequisite.

But so much of it is subjective.

[Fishie]

Right, so insead of smartphones you want a PDA with cellphone capabilities then.
It wouldve been a lot easier for both of us if you would have just said so from the start.

Why are you thinking that these are different things...? We are not talking mutually exclusive featuresets here.

A smartphone is a converged device, with both PDA and telephony capabilities...

Try syncing a 9300 or a 9500 with a Mac. Ain't happening.

As a quick aside, does anyone else think Lotus Notes is devilware? I shudder to think about it now.

No but you clearly dissed the NGage as something claimed to be a smartphone, yet by the definition of the vast majority of people there and certainly Microsofts definition of what a smartphone is the NGage IS a smartphone with moderate capabilities.
Its a capable phone that can run a lot of third party apps(some of which have been requested by MS smartphone users for years and are still not available likeAvantgo) and which by definition is a Smartphone.

[Jereboam]

OK, perhaps the N-Gage runs a smartphone OS (see previous comments) but it doesn't fit into my converged device worldview! So there...

;)

[Fishie]

OK, perhaps the N-Gage runs a smartphone OS (see previous comments) but it doesn't fit into my converged device worldview! So there...

;)

Thats a personal isseu then.
In any case I enjoyed disagreeing with you.
Too bad its over already.

[Phillip Dyson]

OK, perhaps the N-Gage runs a smartphone OS (see previous comments) but it doesn't fit into my converged device worldview! So there...

;)

Well ... I don't know ...
Technically ...

Phone ... PIM ... Game console...

Seems pretty converged to me. :D

[twalk]

I would be interested to know how many P900/P910s or Nokia 9500/9700s they sold - that would be a reasonable comparison against WM and POS devices. I'm bettting the number is substantially lower. Anyone got the numbers?

No, but you are exactly right. Saying Nokia sold 6M phones is a meaningless number when talking about smartphones. The vast majority are the freebies or sub $50 phones after rebates, not the high powered phones with bluetooth, cameras, email support, the ability to install third party apps, a non-WAP-only browser, etc.

No they are not, Nokia in Europe ships around 2 million cellphones per quarter, around half those ship with series 60 or higher, series 60 is a FULL SMARTPHONE OS.
Its a cluttered mess compared with PPCs and a small mess compared to win mobile smartphones but it still is a full smartphone OS.


Uhhh, I don't think that many people here know how many cell phones are shipped. In Q1 2005 alone, Nokia alone shipped well over 50M cell phones, nearly all (95%+) being Series 40 or greater.

And that wasn't even a good quarter for them...

While S40 might not sound like any big shakes around here, what do you actually think is killing Palm sales? PPC? Don't make me laugh...

PalmOS was successful because it was cheap, portable, could do PIM well, and could do a few other things decently, like play games.

S40 devices (and other phones at that level) can do all that "good enough" while also being more portable, a cell phone, and free after contract.

If S40 can put a big hurt on PalmOS, you'd be very unwise to think that S60 couldn't do the same to WM. Q1 2005, Nokia sold about 5.5M S60+ phones, and is on target to sell 4X as many S60 phones this year compared to all WM devices put together sold this year.

However that's small peanuts compared to Nokia's real plans. Because they control both the OS &amp; hardware production, their plan is to force the cost of production down to the point where a S60 phone can be given away for free with contract. At that point (less than 3 years down the road), all the cell phones they make would be S60+.

That would be, at that time, roughly 250M some S60+ cell phones sold by Nokia per year. (That's not counting all the others selling Symbian phones.)

(Moto/Samsung/HP/Dell/etc don't have even close to that same kind of incentive to push WM.)

Despite that huge number, many analysts still feel that Symbian will end up in 2nd place to Linux, because of the huge number of Chinese companies that are looking to flood the market with Linux phones.


Todd

[Jereboam]

I think everyone is missing my point. These are first and foremost mobile telephones. Not PDAs. Not "smartphones". The vast majority of those 250 million "smartphones" will not be used as such, because they are not designed to be...no SIPs, numeric keyboard only etc etc etc please read my prior posts.

And free-with-contract devices are not, what I as a "power user" am remotely interested in, nor would I wager, are the vast majority of this site's readers and the million Treo users, or the XDA/Jam/hw6xxx users.

I bought an XDA. I bought a P900. I bought a Treo. My colleagues use Nokia 9500/9700s, or the Jam. These are all smartphones in my book. My mate's little Nokia, while a nice phone is not a smartphone.

I would say that there is a significant and growing number of business and power users who want more than what Nokia's slightly kinky design department churns out in the millions. Their corporate survival is based on selling as many phones to service providers as possible, in bulk. They have little to no interest in providing a device to end-users. This is where we as customers will suffer, because the service providers as we have already seen will insist that the phones are locked, bound and otherwise restricted to their networks and related services - that means restricted multimedia, limited third party software and who knows? These things are all revenue streams for the providers. It's good business.

And going back to POS, this is why I was originally saying that the move to a Linux kernel is good news...as long as they bring their third-party app developers along with them and stay PDA-centric. Because if they try and produce plain-jane phones the market, and the likes of Nokia for the very reasons that you have given, will murder them.

[Spiral]

Get a diff browser. You can do this on xiino w/o having to reload fyi... Like I said, typical post around here...
I agree with you that most tasks on Windows Mobile can also be done on Palm. However, to do more advanced tasks on Palm you often have to jump through more hoops and its less convenient than on Windows Mobile because of the way the OS was structured for simple tasks (which I agree it is better at). More often you'll have to buy 3rd party software or possible have fewer options (e.g. streaming wifi files)

Because they control both the OS &amp; hardware production, their plan is to force the cost of production down to the point where a S60 phone can be given away for free with contract. At that point (less than 3 years down the road), all the cell phones they make would be S60+.
Well actually most series 60 that are a year or older are free after 1yr contract. The new 3230 might even be free with contract, it was meant to be low cost. I think one of the problems with s60 is that its very slow to update the OS, because it has to go throught the carriers. S60 doesn't have as many applications as WM, syncing isn't very good. Also non-nokia s60 phones usually just aren't very good (my x800 looks good at least), and nokia doesn't offer a wide variety of form factors for s60. On the other hand, with windows mobile, many devices never reach many carriers and reach market quickly, but at high prices (imate ijam/whatever the rebranded versions are called).

In addtion PalmSource has its Feature phone product to compete with the likes of Nokia's Series 40 etc which btw will be a HUGE market, much larger than high end smartphones.
That is the death of Palm as it is today, because its not even close to the full power of palm or its original purpose. And why would people buy those phones when they come out (1 year or 2 down the line), when Nokia (and almost all other phone manufacturers) have been doing the same thing for years?

This is where we as customers will suffer, because the service providers as we have already seen will insist that the phones are locked, bound and otherwise restricted to their networks and related services - that means restricted multimedia, limited third party software and who knows? These things are all revenue streams for the providers. It's good business.
Actually, you've pointed out a problem that is (currently) larger for windows mobile/palm than for S60. To my knowledge, there's never been multimedia/third-party software locks on a series 60 phone, I expect the capabilities exist though (nokia does block using IR/BT to send certain files, like midi but many other channels exist, most phones don't even accept OBEX file transfers). However, it is not different for WM, there are several WM Smartphones (depends on carrier) with application locks. Palm has bluetooth locks on the Treo 650 for Sprint i believe, but its hacked i think.

[Bob at StyleTap]

We share the concerns of many of the people who have posted comments in this thread -- and we have developed software that may influence the way this situation plays out. For those of you who haven't heard of us, StyleTap Platform for Windows Mobile lets you run Palm OS (R) applications on a Pocket PC.

A preview version of StyleTap Platform is available now. It runs both Garnet and older Palm OS apps. Response from users has been tremendous.

We offer a very attractive migration path for Palm users who choose, for whatever reason, to move to the Windows platform -- and an important new market opportunity for the hundreds of thousands of Palm OS developers.

In fact, we plan to offer future versions of StyleTap Platform on other non-Windows operating systems as well. And while maintaining backward compatibility with the old APIs, we will allow new applications, if they choose, to take advantage of more advanced features of the underlying OS.

StyleTap Inc. wants to see this community of users, applications and developers grow and flourish. Even users of Palm OS (R) devices will benefit from this. We invite users, developers and device manufacturers to work with us to make it happen.

Bob Chew
StyleTap Inc.

Disclaimer: StyleTap Inc. and StyleTap™ software are not affiliated with, or authorized, endorsed or licensed in any way by PalmSource Inc., palmOne Inc. or any of their affiliates or subsidiaries. Palm OS is a registered trademark of PalmSource Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Mobile and the Windows logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.