One way to look at Foleo, which sports a large screen and full-size keyboard, is as a smartphone peripheral on steroids. Even so, whether it'll find a market or, as Palm insists, there's a market already waiting for it, remains to be seen. Overall, the buzz for Foleo, since Palm co-founder Jeff Hawkins introduced it a couple of days ago, has not been good. The obvious question is: What, yet another device to carry around?

Foleo arrives with basically two functions: To allow smartphone owners to access e-mail and the Web with a much larger screen and keyboard, and to have e-mail automatically synchronized between the two devices.

Otherwise, Foleo is pretty much a blank slate waiting to be expanded upon by outsiders. Palm these developers will bring out the device’s full potential, something Apple doesn't need for the iPhone.

Nonetheless, contrary to previous statements, it appears Apple will open up the iPhone to third-parties anyway. At theThe Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference, Steve Jobs all but said Apple would eventually allow outside development, during a sit-down with the The Journal's tech-guru Walt Mossberg. It turns out security concerns were Apple's main reason for originally giving third-party application development the cold shoulder, at least that's what Jobs asserted.

Mossberg asked: "All indications appear that the iPhone is closed, we'd love to develop apps..."

Jobs replied: "This is an important tradeoff between security and openness. We want both. We're working through a way... we'll find a way to let third-parties write apps and still preserve security on the iPhone. But until we find that way we can't compromise the security of the phone. I've used third-party apps... the more you add, the more your phone crashes. No one's perfect, and we'd sure like our phone not to crash once a day. If you can just be a little more patient with us I think everyone can get what they want."

Allowing third-party software development is a prerequisite, some say, for a mobile handset to be considered smartphone. While the iPhone could very well change that, all the major smartphone platforms (e.g. Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, RIM BlackBerry, etc.) allow for a community of developers to create software.

Because of this, consumers have access to all sorts of software - for work, play, lifestyle etc. - for most smartphones today. If Apple follows through and opens the iPhone up, there’s no reason to believe Jobs and company, not to mention consumers could benefit in the same manner.

Also, while the iPhone is viewed almost exclusively as a consumer device, that could change. Enterprises may become interested in deploying them. Far stranger things have happened. Should this start to happen, it would help the iPhone's chances in the broader business market if corporate America could develop its own in-house software for the device.

Palm Opens Foleo
Foleo, the notebook computer-like inaugural product in Palm's new mobile companion line, may have generated more huhs than wows—the opposite of January's iPhone introduction—but I think Palm has the right idea by bringing over the third-party software model it basically invented with the original PalmPilot (and that's lead to over 25,000 Palm OS applications) to the Linux OS-run device.

In fact, the most interesting thing about the Foleo could be its Linux OS, which some speculate could lead to an increase in open source software development in the mobile space.

Palm plans to ship the software development kit (SDK) for Foleo about when the device first becomes available this summer.

No matter what your first impression of the mobile companion product is, skeptical or not, perhaps you'll be pleasantly surprised should its utility expand due to the creativity of developers, carving out a niche for Folio far wider than Palm originally intended.

At $499, the ultra-slim, 2.5-pound device today has a pretty narrow window from which to attract customers. It targets those who don't require the full power of laptop but would still like a large screen and full keyboard when reading, editing and responding to e-mail, including attachments, and accessing the Web than is possible directly through a smartphone.

During the webcast introducing the mobile companion, Hawkins said Foleo was "conceived of five years ago," but it didn't make sense then. Palm basically had to wait until the smartphone market matured and the devices themselves became suitable for what Hawkins had in mind, which was to develop a device that enhanced a smartphone's capabilities.

The full-size keyboard defines Foleo's footprint, as having a typer any smaller would defeat the whole concept behind the device. Hawkins believes Foleo is the smallest device with a full-size keyboard.

Another important ingredient, he added, is Foleo's instant-on capability. In fact, it only has two states, on and off—there's no suspend or shutting the device down. You never have to worry about saving data.

Hawkins did not specify how much solid-state memory the device would ship with. You can expand the amount of storage through an external SD slot and a Compact Flash slot located inside underneath the battery. Both memory card formats come in many different sizes, upwards of several gigabytes, so lack of storage shouldn't become an issue for users. Palm said it would post a list of all compatible cards as it gets closer to launch.

Since e-mail is Foleo's primary purpose, Palm added a button to launch the device's messaging application. As soon as you turn it on, you'll see the messages and folders from your smartphone, with everything all synced up.

Foleo's e-mail client supports Palm's VersaMail application on the Palm OS front. The company is talking with other e-mail application providers to extend support to their software as well. As for Windows Mobile, since Foleo is compatible with Pocket Outlook, it should already work with most third-party messaging software, because these applications plug directly into Microsoft's mobile e-mail application.

Palm's director of marketing Paul Cousineau demonstrated how Foleo features a four-step setup process, which includes entering the type of smartphone you have, the carrier you use and clicking next. You then press the e-mail button to sync all messages and folders from your Treo for the first time. He used a Palm OS-run Treo 755p for the demo.

Unlike with a much smaller device, a smartphone like a Treo for example, Foleo's e-mail application offers a preview pane, taking advantage of the added screen real-estate, in addition to its full-screen mode for reading messages.

For navigation, there's a trackpoint on the keyboard, along with a scroll wheel that rests, according to the Hawkins and Cousineau, conveniently right next to your thumbs when they are in typing position. The scroll wheel allows you to move in any app without changing the position of your fingers on the keyboard.

In addition to being able to surf the Web wirelessly with Foleo over Wi-Fi, you can access the Internet through a wireless Bluetooth connection to your smartphone, which would serve as a modem.

While you can bring up flash animation sites on Foleo and rapidly switch between applications, multimedia support appears to be the device's main weak spot for those looking for a moderately-priced laptop replacement. Hawkins said it had to do with the power of the processor. This is disappointing, but could be solved in future iterations of the device.

According to Hawkins, Foleo's five hours of battery life is for real usage. He compared it to a cell phone - you charge Foleo over night and use it all day without a recharge.

"It is our intent to support every smartphone we can," Hawkins explained. That includes, in addition to its own Palm OS and Windows Mobile Treos, other devices built on Microsoft's mobile-device platform as well as Symbian and RIM BlackBerry smartphones.

In terms of security, you can use the Treo to lock and unlock Foleo. So if your Treo is within range of a Foleo, it automatically lets you in, and when you move a Treo out of range, Foleo locks up. Securing the device through a password is also possible.

Although Foleo's screen resolution isn't standard, when you output video via its VGA port, it streams out at 1024 x 768.

Even though Hawkins said Palm didn't design it as a standalone device, Foleo does have the potential to support a wide variety of applications. He thinks (banks on, it seems) there will be a very broad range of third-party developers who will create software for the device, greatly expanding its capabilities.

If he's right, then perhaps Foleo may gain a wider audience than many expect. Whether Palm shareholders are patient enough to give Foleo the time it may need to gain traction and for developers to come onboard is another question.

Whatever you think about the iPhone, Foleo and their future fortunes, and the expectations for each are widely divergent, they have at least one thing in common; each has the potential to become centers of mobile-application development. And that can only benefit consumers who use all different types of smartphones.

The extremely high initial demand for the iPhone gives Apple a lot of time to iron out any issues it has with opening the smartphone up, so it can comfortably give outside developers a go at creating software when it's ready to.

Palm, on the other hand, seems to be banking on outsiders to bring out the full potential of its latest mobile device.

For more on Foleo and the iPhone, see links below.