Samsung's long-awaited new Palm OS phone is here. The SPH-i500 with CDMA and 1xRTT it promises to be a winner. And guess who has pictures of this latest flip-phone?
The number of Palm OS smartphones on the market is growing, with the latest addition the Samsung SPH-i500. The i500 is a clamshell-style CDMA 1xRTT digital smartphone running Palm OS.
 | The i500 is a clamshell phone with a split screen and Graffiti area
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The i500 sports a 160x240 pixel 16-bit color display on the upper half of its opened body, and a hard-button dial pad on the bottom half. The buttons are backlit for nighttime dialing. A Graffiti area is present on the bottom half, above the number pad, while four application buttons are on the bottom of the top half of the clamshell. The phone is a dual-band/tri-mode handset, weighing only 141 grams, and supports digital packet data over 1xRTT as well as digital voice over CDMA.
On the handheld side, the i500 runs Palm OS 4.1 on a 66 MHz Dragonball 68k processor, and sports 16 MB of RAM for user applications. Of course, it also includes the standard USB connector and infrared (IR) port. It ships with various wireless-enabled programs out of the box, including Handspring's Blazer web browser. The i500 is packaged with a CD-ROM containing Palm desktop software, PocketMirror conduit software for Microsoft Outlook, Palm Game Pack and phone off images. No release date or price has yet been announced.
The i500 joins the growing ranks of other Palm OS smartphones. Handspring has moved into the smartphone market with their Treo line of keyboard-based flip-phone smartphones, while Kyocera's CDMA-based 7135 just recently began shipping and Palm's Tungsten W is due out from carriers shortly. The i500 is Samsung's third Palm OS smartphone, succeeding the SPH-i300 and SPH-i330.
Samsung is not partial to Palm OS, however, and has a very similar product, currently designated the SPH-i600, coming out soon for the Pocket PC market.
A high-resolution image of the i500 is available on the next page.
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