Sony Japan has uncovered the CLIE PEG-UX50 - the first Palm OS device to support both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth out of the box, also packing a landscape display and digital camera.
Sony has taken another first in the Palm OS market with the release today in Japan of the CLIE PEG-UX50, the first Palm OS device to include both the Bluetooth and 802.11b (Wi-Fi) networking standards. It also features a new rotated screen as part of a new clamshell design, a keyboard, and other Sony extras.
The PEG-UX50 is a "landscape clamshell", with a 480 x 320 pixel screen that runs width-wise rather than vertically, as on nearly every other Palm OS handheld to date. It does, however, use the same "Twist and Rotate" flip design as Sony's previous portrait-oriented handhelds. That leaves room for a new, larger keyboard as well. The entire devices measures 103 x 87 x 18 mm when closed, and weighs in at 175 grams.
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In addition to the new design, Sony is including most of their familiar extras, including an integrated 0,3 megapixel digital camera, MP3 playback, video playback software and more. Not surprisingly, the PEG-UX50 is powered by Palm OS 5.2 on an all-new ARM926-based CXD2230GA processor. The CXD2230GA appears to have been developed by Sony exclusively for mobile devices, and includes an on-board DSP and 8 MB of RAM on-chip. That lets the handheld play MPEG video at up to 30 frames per second, faster than almost any other handheld in existance. The device includes 32 MB of system RAM, of which only 16 MB is available to the user. The included applications, of which there are many, are stored in 22 MB of ROM.
Sony has also beefed up the battery to power all of the PEG-UX50's new features, but acknowledges that it may still drain rather quickly. As a result, they've also added an automatic backup-to-card feature so that should the battery run down, the handheld's last gasping breath will be to backup the contents of RAM to a Memory Stick. Sony will also be selling "expansion batteries" that attach to the underside of the unit to provide extra life, and both the device itself and the expansion battery sled can be charged simultaneously. Naturally, it has a Sony Memory Stick Pro slot, but lacks the Compact Flash slot of some of Sony's other recent models.
The PEG-UX50 will be available in Japan starting 9 August, and based on past experience should be available in the US and Europe shortly thereafter. It will sell in Japan for 70,000 JPY, or about $590 USD.
Additional hi-res pictures of the Sony CLIE PEG-UX50 are available on the following pages.
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