Special Report - PalmOne announces new color handhelds

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April 28, 2004 INSIDE THIS ISSUE PalmOne's new color handhelds This week's news

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PRODUCT FIRST LOOK
Spring forward with palmOne's new color handhelds
By David Gewirtz

At 12:01am Eastern Standard Time today, palmOne announced their latest introductions to their line of handheld computers, the Zire 31 and the Zire 72. The Zire 31 is a color PalmOS handheld coming in at an aggressive price of $149, while the Zire 72 is the company's replacement for their quite popular Zire 71, introduced in April of last year. While we haven't yet had time to put these little jewels through their paces, this article will give you an overview of what's new -- and whether you should care.

Zire 31: entry-level color with trade-offs
The Zire 31, shown in Figure A, has low-cost color as its most notable feature.

FIGURE A

Now you can get a color machine for $149. Click picture for a larger image.

At a suggested retail price in the U.S. of $149, it comes in at a full $50 less than the previous color price/performance leaders, the Dell Axim X3, shown in Figure B or the palmOne Tungsten E.

FIGURE B

The Dell Axim X3 is a Pocket PC at a very aggressive price. Click picture for a larger image.

The Zire 31, which was known within palmOne by the code name "Bengal," has 16MB of on-board memory (of which 14MB is available for use), a 160x160 pixel display, an SD card slot, and a jack for headphones, allowing it to double as an MP3 player.

According to palmOne, the company sold more than one million Zire products in the first seven months of sales. More than 70% of buyers of earlier Zire models were new to handhelds, and more than 50% of the buyers were women.

Should you consider a Zire 31 or Zire 72? Tap your mouse here for the tough love that answers this question.

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COMPUTING UNPLUGGED NEWS CENTER
This week's news
Want to get the very latest mobile and wireless news? The Computing Unplugged News Center is updated every day with news of product releases, industry info, tips, techniques, and pointers to great mobile and wireless resources on the Web. Here's this week's news:

Treo 610 confirmed
A recent research note written by Detwiler Mitchell & Co. covers palmOne's plans to change parts suppliers for the CDMA modems used in some of its models following the Treo 600 and 610. See the full story on Brighthand for more complete information.

Daxian Pocket PC phone
A Chinese wireless service provider announced earlier this week that it will soon begin carrying a new cellular-wireless Pocket PC designed by Daxian Telecom. Brighthand has more information on the rumors surrounding the Daxian Pocket PC.

In-Flight Broadband
Korean Air said that it has agreed to install broadband access provided by Connexion by Boeing. The Korean airline joins Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines System, Japan Airlines, ANA, Singapore Airlines and China Airlines in providing in-flight broadband access to its customers.

Symbian in the lead
The Symbian operating system, controlled by a group of cell phone handset makers, is likely to dominate the market for high-end Smartphones for the rest of the decade, according to a study by ABI Research. While the system's lead is unlikely to be immediately threatened by competition such as Windows CE, the Palm OS or Linux, ABI said Nokia's tightening grip on Symbian could lead other handset makers to shun the software.

Samsungs new LCDs
Samsung has introduced several new high-end LCD displays. The new models sport such features as bezel displays, MagicTune and Magic Bright technologies, built-in TV tuner, picture-in-picture functionality, and dual analog and digital inputs.

LPGA Mobile Channel
Sybase and the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) have teamed up to deliver golf tournament news updates, schedules, course information and player statistics to PDAs and smartphones. This new channel provides mobile access to LPGA.com and is available to the more than ten million registered subscribers of the free AvantGo mobile Internet service.

Netsky-Z hits education
Three education portals remain the focus of the latest Netsky variant, which targets the sites for a distributed denial-of-service attack in early May. Antivirus experts are baffled as to why the three sites, located in Florida, Switzerland and Germany are the target of the worm writer.

Tungsten E JAVOSkin
JAVOSkin, made of high-quality, flexible and durable silicone, is a case that protects and covers all edges, buttons and d-pad from any scratches on your Palm Tungsten E. The JAVOSkin has cutouts for easy access to stylus, charging/synchronization socket, IR port, reset button, speaker, memory card slot and headphone jack.

Theoretical Data Speed Limit
Scientists say they've discovered an apparent speed limit that will restrict how quickly data can be written onto disks and then retrieved. This limit is about 1,000 times faster than today's state-of-the-art data storage devices.

Octiv launches Volume Logic
Octiv announced the availability of Volume Logic for Windows and an upgraded version for Mac, the audio digital re-mastering plug-in for the Apple iTunes player. Now available for Windows, Volume Logic was first released for the Macintosh in January 2004.

WiFile for Palm
Hands High Software announced the release of WiFile for Palm-powered handhelds and smartphones. With WiFile and a Palm device that is connected to a local area network or the Internet, users can directly access applications, databases, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, MP3 music files, digital photos, and more, all located on their personal computers or corporate servers.

OptiSize for the Palm
Creative Algorithms announced the latest release of their OptiSize software for the Palm OS, an electronic version of a Photo-Mechanical Transfer whiz-wheel. This program is a calculator for resizing, scaling and reproducing photographs, images, documents, or any two-dimensional object.

This is the dumbest device we've ever seen
This has got to be the dumbest device we've ever seen. For those light-at-heart and animal lovers out there, Solid Alliance (Japan) has released a new i-Duck USB Memory Storage device. The i-Duck uses a USB 1.1 interface and has a maximum storage capacity of 256MB. When plugged into your computer's USB port, the i-Duck will light up. Six different colors are available: pink, yellow, blue. Tangerine, Army, and Heart. A Six color set is also available.

NS Basic Contest results
NS BASIC Corporation has announced the results of the Fifth NS Basic for Palm Programming Contest.

TikiMac shipping LavaWire, Lava USB
TikiMac announced today that it is now shipping its LavaWire, Lava USB, and its line of premium data cables in volume. The colorful cables have low-power, colored LEDs that indicate if a data port is working properly and helps locate specific cables in dark areas. LavaWire and Lava USB cables come in a variety of colors including red, while, blue, orange, green, and purple.

Cultural etiquette goes mobile
Executive Planet announced the release of Executive Planet for Palm OS, the first international business culture and etiquette guide for Palm Powered handhelds.

Mobile phones on planes
According to one industry observer, it isn't the airlines that have a problem with cell phone use on planes; it's the wireless carriers. In the air, a cell phone attempts to connect to a carrier's network using hundreds of different cell towers on the ground, making it more difficult for service providers to manage their networks.

Zire 72, Zire 31 Preorder
According to the latest speculations and rumors, palmOne will unveil the new Zire 72 and Zire 31 handheld computers on April 28. Although there is almost a week till the official announcement, the PDAs can already be preordered from a US online store.

CD-R Lifetime
Are we putting too much faith in the CD-R? An investigation by a Dutch personal computer magazine, PC Active, has shown that some CD-Rs are unreadable in as little as two years, because the dyes in the CD's recording layer fade.

Organized crime using DDoS
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) extortion is growing as an Internet crime, making mitigation against such attacks almost mandatory.

RIM licenses to Motorola
Motorola has inked a licensing deal with Research In Motion, giving the phone maker the option to enable specific handsets to connect to BlackBerry services, such as BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Web Client.

Sanyo 3G spatializer phone
Sanyo's new A5505SA 3G mobile phone will feature Spatializer Audio Laboratories' Spatializer ((environ)) technology. Spatializer ((environ)) creates an enveloping sound stage from ring tones or Internet music for low-power, mobile applications.

The Octopus robot
Researchers at the Lausanne Polytechnic University in Switzerland have developed a mechanical octopus. Moving much like an octopus skims the sea floor, the Octopus rolls along on eight wheels with infrared sensors embedded in each one to detect obstacles.

Windows SSL flaw
Exploits have begun popping up for a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) flaw that affects Windows. Security experts say the SSL Bomb exploit code could lead to widespread denial-of-service attacks by blocking SSL connections on machines running Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Spike in email phishing
Two new research reports find that email spoofing attacks are on a steep rise. One of those reports says that businesses in the financial services sector appear to be most vulnerable to having their corporate identities hijacked.

No more white-collar OT
Democrats are challenging the Bush administration's overtime pay overhaul, saying many white-collar workers will lose premium pay despite election-year promises that the effects will be minimal.

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