Tams Palm

Don’t ask me why, but it looks like the folks at Access’s are slowly but surely starting to get desperate to get at least some brand attention from their purchase of PalmSource Inc.

Long-term Palm heads will probably still remember the legal spat about the text recognition software used on original Palm OS handhelds – after winning it and doing nothing with the IP for ages, the boys now make it available as freeware(!!!) for Android OS.

An email sent out to a Palm OS developer’s newsgroup reads as follows

To everyone who is using Android and remembers fondly the days of PDAs with Graffiti for input, now you can download Graffiti for Android from the Android Market. Install and grab your stylus or just use your finger to enter text, even without looking, just like you did on your first Palm Pilot!

Download for free from the Android Market http://market.android.com/search?q=pname:com.access_company.graffiti

Now if I could ask a few favors:
1) Have you shipped an Android app that uses text and your users could benefit from Graffiti? Please pass this on and let them know there is an alternative to their current hard or soft keyboard. Or give Graffiti a plug on your site. Email me if you do this and maybe we can quote you in press releases and other marketing, increasing your exposure, too.

2) If you like it, give it a good rating and comment. The more stars the better! Then we can release more free apps.

3) If you have suggestions how you have found success marketing your Android apps, I would appreciate your ideas. My boss’ goal for me is to get this up to the >250k downloads level!

Anyone want to risk a bet when Access Co will be declared bankrupt? The writing is on the wall…

Like the Tungsten x420, Palm’s Foleo will forever be one of the more mysterious devices made by the company with the Orange orb. While the first is known to experts only, the other is popular among professionals and non-professionals alike.

Complex.com has now added the device to its “top-10 short-lived gadget” list:

In case you feel like taking a look, hit the URL below:
http://www.complex.com/blog_galleries/ …

This is a preliminary review, which is being generated on a non-final sample of the PDA32. A full review of the shipping model will follow at a later date!

Given that the PDA32 will likely replace a nice bit of aging Palm hardware, I have decided to give you a special size comparison against each and every Palm OS device I could find in my archive.

When it comes to thickness, the PDA32 is hard to beat. A Treo 650 looks slim:

The same can be said of the Treo 680:

Palm’s Centro is a bit smaller, too:

Don’t even get me started on the webOS-powered Pre:

A Palm TX may be similar in size, but also is thinner:

The Palm Tungsten T3 also is slimmer:

Next to the m500:

Finally, a shot next to the Palm IIIc:

In the end, the PDA32 is fat. However, it is insanely ergonomical (one of the most comfortable-to-hold handhelds I ever saw) and very transportable – I had less issues with the box than I initially thought!

Tune in tomorrow for a comparison against our standard roster of devices.

Vision Mobile is one of many “market watchers” – they gather statistics on all kinds of facts related to the (mobile) world. Their latest report looks at developers and their favourite mobile platforms and application stores.

The first chart is the most interesting. It shows which type of developer likes which sales channels:

Chart number 2 shows the time it takes for an app to hit the road:

Find out more at the URL below:
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2010/07/mobile-developer-economics-taking-applications-to-market/

Given a device as “big” as the Aceeca PDA32, I have decided to give myself at least a few hours worth of hands-on time with the machine to allow my thoughts to settle before writing anything here.

First of all, a proof photo that the machine is real and in my labs. Click it to get the full and unedited version:

Even though this unit is not a final, production unit, it feels very solidly in the hand even though it has but a plastic case. The buttons are pleasant, and the form factor is ergonomic albeit it being extremely “fat”.

Looking back at the device and comparing it to handhelds like Palm’s evergreen IIIc, the PDA32 appears like a very solid and great performer. Of course, its design lacks many niceties which were introduced on later machines – more on that as the review progresses. When compared to today’s devices, the device barely stands a chance.

However, the device’s competitors are non-existent: Palm’s excellent quality control has taken care that most original PalmOS hardware is now in a state of total decay. Thus, a Palm OS head has no real choice – and, if he can live with the fat form factor, will most likely like the device.

As for me, the device has served to awaken beautiful memories of a long-gone past. Memories of a Palm economy where press, software and hardware developers were a small community which knew one another and worked together. Unfortunately, time has moved on…

The PDA32 sample will now face our regular test battery in a preliminary review, and a final sample will pass through the same process in a ceteris paribus fashion.

But these words should have been said in advance…

So far, the Tamoggemon Content Network was completely devoid of Soccer World Cup info. After all, Soccer hasn’t got too much to do with mobile – or has it?

It actually could be the culprit for all kinds of weird network outages on carriers which offer mobile TV services. Hutchison Austria provided us with the chart below, which shows the TV activity over the time of the championship:

I didn’t experience any slowdowns – did you?

All those of you who have been following this blog in order to find out more on a specific, upcoming Palm OS device are advised to take a good look at the video below:

Stay tuned!

Apple fanboys can sometimes behave, well, irrational.

Matt Brenner from unme2 has now sent us the video below:

Take a short look if you feel like a short laugh on Apple fan boys expense…

Big thanks, Matt

Even though our friends from Krusell might not be too well-known among power users, their retail presence among less technically-savvy users is more than on par with our friends and supporters from Proporta.

This allows them to generate interesting atatistics on which phones the “average man on the street” uses – for June, they look as following:

1.(-) Apple iPhone 4
2.(1) Nokia 3720 Classic
3.(4) HTC Desire
4.(3) Apple iPhone 3G
5.(5) Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10
6.(-) Samsung S8500
7.(6) Nokia E52
8.(7) Samsung B2100
9.(2) Nokia 6700 Classic
10.(9) Nokia 2730 Classic
() = Last month’s position.

Apple goes straight to the top this month with the release of the iPhone 4. HTC takes the biggest blow with only one model remaining, compared to last month’s three, while Nokia stays strong with four positions out of ten.

-The incredible numbers of units sold in the first few days alone tells us that the iPhone 4 is here to stay. While it seems that Android manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung lost this round, I’m sure they have something up their sleeves to rival the iPhone. Nokia as well, with Symbian^3 and Meego-based units well under way. This will be an interesting last half of 2010 for sure, says Ulf Sandberg, MD at Krusell.

As always – a big thanks to Krusell for providing us with data…

Palm itself never was too talkative when it comes to device sales – you only hear from them when a device passes the million sold mark.

Mobile Business Briefing now shares the following figure, which states that Palm’s US market share fell slightly:

Not much to add here…

At the first glance, the machine pictured below looks like yet another Acer netbook with a useless glossy screen:

However, the device is interesting. The reason for this is the CPU – the macles blog reports the following:

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The Intel Atom N550 sports two cores, clocked at 1.5 GHz, with 512KB L2 cache each, and supports hyper threading, which results in four threads or virtual cores. It isn’t the first dual core Intel Atom, albeit the first intended for netbooks.

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Adding a second core improves responsiveness and general desktop performance, but it does not solve the main problem of the relatively slow Intel Atom. In fact performance is worse if an application isn’t multi-threaded, due to each core being clocked a bit lower than current single core Intel Atoms.

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This move obviously was motivated by AMD’s extremely attractive and low-cost processors for smallish devices (which tend to be faster, but consume more power) – let’s see what AMD does next.

BrightHand is a large forum for power users. Their users search a lot – as they provide a search engine of their own rather than lend one from Google, they have direct access to the queries “created” by their users.

Given this search data, a report on search activity (and thus power user interest) can be generated. They have just released the report for June 2010, which looks as following:

1. HTC EVO 4G (#3)
2. BlackBerry Curve 8530 (#1)
3. Apple iPhone 4 (New)
4. HTC Droid Incredible (#2)
5. BlackBerry Bold 9650 (#5)
6. LG Ally (New) – Android
7. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 (#4)
8. Nokia E63 (#6)
9. Nokia N900 (#8)
10. Palm Pre Plus (#7)

As usual: hit the link above to find out more…

Even though Donna Dubinsky doesn’t have too much to do with Palm nowadays, she nevertheless is one of the more important persons in the history of the company.

She has recently published a guest article in a local US newspaper, which looks at the advances and the corporate culture of Palm – here’s a key segment:

A great product culture requires an ability to reject conventional wisdom. Time and time again, Palm thought deeply about the right trade-offs for users. When Palm created the Palm V, for example, it made the battery not removable to create a thinner and more beautiful product, a highly controversial decision at the time. The product was wildly successful.

A great product culture also tolerates failure. Palm always developed both evolutionary products — safe products with additional features sought by customers — and revolutionary products, riskier products that might require a few iterations before success. It took three generations of the Treo to create a huge hit.

Read more via the URL below:
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_15431301?nclick_check=1

When Palm was taken over by HP, many wondered what the company intended to do with the goods it had acquired. Some HP heads said that they were not interested in phones, other mentioned printers – the situation reminded careful onlookers of HP’s infamous 5way navigator designs on the late iPaq line.

The video below shows a HP CTO talking on HP’s plans with Palm:

His core message was that HP bought Palm to get into the phone business – let’s see if this really holds true…

Isn’t it strange that Symbian uses a German word to name its monthly user and developer get-togethers, yet never managed to get one up and running in a German-speaking area of the world?

This has just changed, as Tamoggemon is proud to announce the first-ever Symbian Stammtisch in Vienna:

We will hold our Stammtisch on the 9th of July, after my PlumberCon talk on Symbian. The venue is in the Metalab, and attendants of the Stammtisch will be admitted for free from 19h30 onwards. All attendants will be given a full version of LocaNote, TouchCalc, BallZ or other Tamoggemon products as a thank-you gift for attending.

Once again:
9th of July, 20h

Metalab
Rathausstrasse 6
1010 Vienna
Austria

Door password: Stammtisch

See you there – and don’t forget to call me on 0043 676 7886431 if you need help getting there!

The core feature of OLED displays is their ability to turn off “unneeded” light sources behind subpixels – this allows them to offer a completely dark black, and furthermore save power when displaying “partial colors”.

So far, nobody has studied this phenomenon in detail – enter Jeff Sharkey. This Android engineer did just that:

Take, for example, the Nexus One. If powering only the red pixels at full intensity draws a current “i”, then powering all green pixels draws “1.5i”, and all blue pixels “2i”. (These ratios are derived from empirical measurements, and don’t hold in all cases.) Also, it’s worth noting that OLED displays don’t have backlights like LCD, meaning that darker colors draw less power.

If you could power only the red pixels you could save quite a bit of power.

So I started poking around SurfaceFlinger, the low-level window compositer on Android. I brushed off my OpenGL skills and after a few hours I had simple proof-of-concept. A couple hours later I had several filters between red-only and full-color:

…

Even though I am not sure whether anyone of you is willing to give up color display in exchange for longer battery life, hit the URL below to see his amazing numbers and a bunch of photographs:
http://jsharkey.org/blog/2010/07/01/android-surfaceflinger-tricks-for-fun-and-profit/

Today is Independence Day. The 4th of July. And today you can download the new webOS app “Mobile Declaration (Special Edition)”

The app will bring you the Declaration of Independence on your Palm Pre / Pixi. It can be downloaded here.

An old Austrian proverb states that one shall not seek information with the secretary, but rather go straight to the chief. At Aceeca’s, this yields extraordinary results – Alex Topschij just left us a comment with some further, interesting details:

Tam,
… I will be your most reliable source of up to date information. As a small company we certainly have had some real issues getting these new devices out to the market and I accept we have lost some credibility with our previous target release dates. The PDA32-Garnet is VERY close to shipping (yes we missed June), we have shipped a number to beta testers and have made some enhancements as a result of their feedback. One of the main issues was the sensitivity of the touch panel. It is all looking pretty good now and I can arrange for you to get an eval unit next week – just check with Cecile and she will arrange it. I will provide more info on the MEZ1500 (both Garnet and CE) in due course.
Cheers
Alex.

If I see the situation correctly from here, the folks could be in some kind of “perfection madness cycle” – while this tends to sound good, I have personally seen such a situation have terrible effects on companies multiple times in the past. IMHO, good enough is good enough.

But it’s always good to hear something new from Aceeca…

A popular Austrian proverb states that you shouldn’t complain if you are given – even though class action lawsuits tend to bring an extra amount of cash for the managing lawyers, there is no need to ignore possible “income”.

Verizon users are now in for such a “deal”. The Wall Street Journal reports the following:

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A California appeals court upheld a $21 million refund that Verizon Wireless will have to pay to some of its customers as a result of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit over its early termination fees, according to the lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

Each person in the class-action claim is estimated to receive $87.50 after challenging the carrier’s practice of charging a $175 fee for breaking a wireless-service contract early.

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As these class action lawsuits tend to pay out a nice bit of cash for comparatively little work, Verizon users reading this are suggested to investigate this further…

We’ve heard our fair share of reports on the HP / Palm takeovers – the latest report now states that HP is into cleaning up its purchase.

John Paczkowski now reports the following (emphasis by yours truly):

I’m not quite sure, but make no mistake, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has cut some former Palm staffers from its ranks as it closes its acquisition of the smartphone maker. I’m hearing different numbers from sources (once) close to the company, so it’s difficult to put a firm number on them. Sounds like it’s not too, too many though. Double digits, not hundreds. Still: sad and awful

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If HP manages to cut the foul apples from the tree, I don’t consider it sad but rather good – former insiders like Adam Tow have long said that a clean-up is urgently needed.