PalmOne released Tungsten T5 today:

In short:
256MB Storage
320x480 Display
Intel® 416 MHz XScale processor
Bluetooth
$399

I seriously can’t believe Palm released another high priced PDA when their competition can do similar for less money…

There was a time when PPC’s were twice as expensive…what happened?

Dell’s offering x30:

64MB SDRAM, 64MB ROM
624MHz
240x320
Integrated 802.11b + Bluetooth Wireless
~$260 Shipped

Yes, the display is lower Res, and it has half the RAM, but it has integrated WiFi, 200Mhz more and costs ~$150 less! What happened to Palm? If your going to make an all in one machine that costs $400, add WiFi and charge $415.

Is it just me?

Erik

No shit!!! How you re going to get online without wi-fi? Thru the cell phone´s bluetooth connection? Sorry, just not good enough. Seems to me that the thing has just no purpose.

Well, you can add WiFi via SDIO, but its still not intergrated and will cost you another $100+

Erik

Well, I just don´t like having the card sticking out, do you? They should leave the SD for memory cards. Nothing like the built in stuff.

Lourenco

[quote author=“Lourenco”]Well, I just don´t like having the card sticking out, do you? They should leave the SD for memory cards. Nothing like the built in stuff.

Lourenco

I agree 100%...at least the option is open though…but yeah, and especially at this price, with market trends as they are, no excuse for not being internal.

Erik

[quote author=“Lourenco”]No shit!!! How you re going to get online without wi-fi? Thru the cell phone´s bluetooth connection? Sorry, just not good enough. Seems to me that the thing has just no purpose.

+1 i agree “not good;no wifi”

In fact, the SDIO wi-fi card isn´t already compatible with T5. Palmone is still working on the drivers. Anyway, browsing pages thru a Palm OS device really sucks. Have you ever tried?

i like the t3 design a little more

all the t3 needed was wifi.  and then it would have been perfect.

like apple newtons, if palm doesn’t shape up, they’re going to go belly up

Shame shame shame on Palm!

This really is such a disappointment…not that I use a PDA anymore but it’s really lacking considering all the other options available on the market. They’ve had the advantage of seeing what the competition is offering and yet they offer something less capable. It’s almost as if they think the “mystique” of the Palm name is still going to carry them.

The Treo is only going to help them for a little while and they’ll soon be behind in that arena if they keep up this attitude.

As soon as a decent sized PPC comes out (the samsung was but no touch screen) and has support for all the carriers, the Treo days (even the 650, which doesn’t have WiFi either) are numbered.

They have pics of the 650…high-res screen, BT, more memory, but still no WiFi and honestly, not enough memory…not enough for me to upgrade to…

Erik

A pretty blah upgrade, especially after seeing the VGA screens some PPCs are shipping with. The memory scheme is interesting though, I like not having to worry about your data if the battery runs down. I’ll probably try out a Windows Mobile smartphone or stick with my SE S700i for the time being, my CLIE TH55 is collecting dust in the closet.

My CLIE T615C now serves as my glorified universal remote. It actually works pretty well for my basic needs and seems to support most of my stuff which is pretty nice and totally geeky at the same time!

what does it controL? 

i’m contemplating for a new bluetooth phone if the features outweigh the t68 by a mile =]

It currently controls my TV, VCR, DVD/AMP, and miniDisc player. And only two of those items are Sony devices. The others are JVC and Zenith devices.

I guess I’ll comment on this device since I’m a huge PDA fan.

First of all I was very disapointed that this device didn’t have Palm OS 6 (Cobalt) on it.  Cobalt was released earlier this year and Sony (before they dropped from the market) said they would have Cobalt devices by the end of the year.  Now traditionally Palmone releases devices with the latest OSes before anybody else so I figured they would have Cobalt devices about two or three months earlier then Sony.  It seems stupid as stupid can be that they loaded this machine with Garnet (Palm OS 5.x).  Heck Palm Source announced they are already working on Palm OS 6.1 before any OS 6.0 devices have arrived.

Second the device has bluetooth (which I love) but no 802.11 (which I love even more).  When this device was first annouced way back when it was suppose to have two SDIO slots so you could have a Wi-Fi card in one slot and a storage card in the other.  I see that didn’t make the final product.  Personally I would never get a PDA without built in Wi-Fi anymore.

Now my final gripe.  The price, it’s $400.00.  That’s not bad for a device with a ton of features, with the T5 lacks a few critical of.  Last month I bouth a new PDA (HP rx3115) for $300.00.  It include boths integrated bluetooh and Wi-Fi.  Granted is has MUCH less RAM then 256MB (it only has 56MB) but still the price is $100.00 lower for something with Wi-Fi.

I think Palmone dropped the ball on this device.

Just more proof that the PDA-only (as opposed to smartphone) market is stagnating. The most interesting advances over the past two years seem to be more pixels and rotating the screen 90 degrees. (OLEDs aren’t generally available yet) My 3 year old Casio E200 (with BT and WiFi CF cards) can do just about anything a brand new iPAQ rx3115 can.