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| Tapwave's Gaming Device Almost Here |
by Scott Raulinaitis, Editor - 9/5/2003 - 12:25pm EST
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| The Tapwave Zodiac has not one, but two SDIO expansion slots |
I've been meaning to write up something about the upcoming Tapwave Zodiac Palm OS gaming PDA for a while now, and now that pictures of the actual device are available and official specs are set in stone, now seems as good a time as any. CNET has a great little video interview showing the device in action. It's smaller than I thought it would be and looks professional enough so as to not raise eyebrows in business meetings.
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| Based on the known 3.8" screen size, I estimate that the Zodiac should be approximately 5.6" high x 3.3" wide (that's very close to the iPaq 5000-series) |
On the downside, rumors of it making use of palmOne's Universal Connector (which would have afforded it compatibility with a large number of existing accessories) appear to either have been false, or perhaps the deal simply fell through. Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if palmOne decided not to license the UC for fear that the Tapwave would steal too much of the marketshare of their own upcoming PDAs. Also, despite having a total battery capacity of a whopping 1540mAh (huge for a PDA, though it remains to be seen whether this will be good enough for extended game-playing), the batteries are not replaceable. Finally, the device will initially only be available for sale directly from Tapwave.
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| The OS and core application suite has been optimized for the landscape display... |
Disappointments aside, this looks to be a great PDA. Tapwave looks to capture the market of older gamers who have graduated from the Nintendo Gameboy, wanting a more capable gaming platform as well as some business functionality. I suspect that there will be plenty of people buying this device for whom gaming will be an afterthought, which could hurt Tapwave if their business plan is based on revenues from Zodiac-specific gaming sales.
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| ...but still supports portrait mode. |
Why would anyone choose this as a non-gaming PDA? Well, it runs Palm OS 5.2 on an MX1 Motorola ARM9 Processor. It has a large 3.8" 480x320 resolution transflective screen that, while optimized for landscape usage, is still fully compatible with the traditional Palm OS portrait mode. It features Bluetooth and dual SDIO memory/expansion slots. As stated above, while the battery is not replaceable, I believe that it may be the largest battery available on any Palm OS PDA. Yet at 6.3 ounces and 0.6" thick (other dimensions still unknown), the device is still quite small. At $299 for the 32MB model and $399 for the 128MB model, it competes very well with other PDAs.
If you do want to use it for playing games, you'll be interested to know that the Zodiac uses an ATI Imageon graphics accelerator combined with the Fathammer X-Forge 3D Game Engine as well as a Yamaha audio chip. The analog directional "nub" and hard buttons are better suited for gaming than other PDAs (though, they still don't look ideal to me). There are two additional "triggers" on the front/side and the device offers "rumble effects." Finally, the Bluetooth functionality will be made use of for multiplayer gaming. Screenshots of the games look impressive and the CNET video offered a better teaser of how fluid the animation will be, but it's still hard to form a final judgement on this until better videos are shown (or someone writes an actual review).
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| Stillshots of the games look impressive, but we'll have to wait for the real thing to see how well they really play |
The bundled application suite is still unclear. Aside from the obvious Palm OS PIM applications, Blue Nomad's Wordsmith word processor is confirmed and an MP3 player is likely.
Tapwave will begin taking pre-orders for the Zodiac in mid-September and it's slated to ship in October.
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