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| Rumor: Palm Tungsten T3 With 320x480 Screen |
by Gaurav Mathur, Contributing Writer - 7/18/2003 - 10:14pm EST
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| Is this Palm Tungsten 3 for real? It sure looks it. |
Pictures of a possible Palm Tungsten T3 have appeared on eNet.com.cn, a Chinese website. This new rumor comes on the heels of the Tungsten T2 which is believed to be released on July 27, 2003. According to reports, the TT3 will retain the sliding form factor of the T-series and yet also will have a 320x480 transflective display that can be hidden part of the time. The model also reportedly will have 64 MB Ram with 51 MB user accessible as well as integrated Bluetooth and a new button layout that includes Home, Menu, Bluetooth, and more. The pictures also indicate the TT3 application launcher can be rotated into a landscape orientation. The processor appears to be the same OMAP from Texas Instruments but it is not known if the processor speed has changed. Rumors indicate the clock speed may be 400 MHz. It runs Palm OS 5.2.1.
Additional rumored specs:
- 320x480 Hi-Res+
- Support Both Landscape and Portrait Mode
- D-Pad
- Bluetooth
- Voice Recording
- 64Mb RAM
- SDIO Slot
- Infrared
- 400Mhz CPU
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| Collapsible form-factor and 320x480 screen. Odd, but compelling. |
Scott's Thoughts
I've seen pre-release photos of real devices and I've seen fakes. I'm not sure that I've ever confused the two. This one stumps me. On the one hand, the photos look genuine. On the other hand, something about this device seems very un-Palm-like. Hiding real screen space behind a slider seems a bit strange to me, though I suppose it still gains you ultimate portability and allows you to quickly pull the device out of your pocket to check upcoming appointments without needing to extend the slider. Support for landscape also comes as a surprise, especially seeing as this design includes a now oblong D-Pad. Wouldn't it have made more sense to keep this round, especially now that you'll be using it in portrait mode some of the time and in landscape mode at other times? An oblong D-Pad can't be optimized for both usage patterns. Finally, the Tungsten T2 hasn't even been released yet, so how is it that the Tungsten T3 is already in the pipeline?
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| Apparently, this new Tungsten supports both Landscape and Portrait modes. |
Nevertheless, it's hard to argue with realistic looking photos, and these photos certainly look real. In order to fake this, it would seem to me that they would have had to manufacturer a phony bottom slider and dismantle an expensive Sony CLIE with High-Res+ screen in order to pull this off. So, if it's real, I think a lot of geeks could be quite happy. But how much will it cost? The release of TapWave's high-end, low-cost device isn't that far off.
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