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There's been a noticeable dearth of new Palm platform smartphones for the U.S. market of late. palmOne introduced the most recent model, the Treo 650, last Fall.
PalmSource licensee Group Sense PDA Limited (GSPDA)—a popular Asian vendor—ended this drought today with the announcement of three new Palm OS phones for the American Market at the CTIA Wireless 2005 trade show and conference in New Orleans today.
The handsets join the Hong Kong vendor's Xplore G18 and G88 smartphones, both of which are not available in this country. Of the three new models—Xplore M28, Xplore M68, and Xplore M98—only the M98 flip phone (see top image) is exclusive to the U.S.
We received a preview of the company's Xplore M-series at CTIA last night. Unlike most other Palm-based handsets (even the Treo Series) the M28, M68, and M98 look remarkably like, well, cell phones.
So much so, in fact, they remind us of phones, such as Motorola's popular and compact MPx220, built on Microsoft's Windows Mobile Smartphone platform.
A GSPDA representative told us the size of the series is no accident. Unlike Windows Smartphones, however, these handsets feature touch screens.
Xplore M68
Group Sense (parent company of GSPDA) managing director Thomas Tam says, "The Xplore M-Series of smartphones feature state-of-the-art design and the ease of use of the Palm OS in a compact form factor we believe North American consumers will appreciate and want to use. The Xplore M-Series tri-brand smartphone also provides greater convenience for travelers."
Xplore M28 Slider Phone
No American carriers - as of yet - have signed on to offer the new smartphones; a definite problem if you want to get your handset into people's hands. The M-Series' unique (for a Palm phone) designs and small sizes should give them a good shot at finding a home with a U.S. operator.
Specs
GSPDA released some specifications for the new smartphones. They appear to share the following:
Palm OS Garnet 5.4
A Tri-band (850/1800/190 MHz) GSM/GPRS radio
1.3 megapixel cameras
MP3 and MPEG4 for audio and video capturing and playback
64 MB RAM & 32MB ROM
2.2-inch, 65,536 color displays
One-handed navigation five-way jog dial
168MHz processors
SMS/MMS/WAP/e-mail/JAVA support
Of course, the phones ship with the standard array of Palm OS personal information management applications and can run over 20,000 compatible software titles. The M68 adds Bluetooth wireless for connecting to headsets, car kits, PCs, and printers. You can add up to 1 GB of extra memory via a Secure Digital card to the M68 and the M28. The M98 uses smaller Transflash cards.
We'll report more details on the smartphones as they become available. GSPDA did not reveal how much they would cost.
