Larry Garfield has played with palmOne's newest flagship handheld, and comes back with mostly positive views of palmOne's new ideas and old standbys. Mostly.
Click here to read infoSync World's review of the palmOne Tungsten T5.
palmOne has a reputation for doing only a little bit at a time, but generally getting that little bit right, making for a slow but steadily positive improvement in its product lines across the board. Their latest incarnation, the Tungsten T5, is no exception. It introduces a few new concepts and features while pulling successes from the company's previous handhelds to create a new design that is both new and familiar. But how is the whole package?
Despite the "T" moniker, the T5 is based off of the design of the Tungsten E, according to NPD data the top-selling handheld in the United States. It's slightly longer than the Tungsten E at 121 x 96.5 x 15.5 mm and 144 grams and has a darker gun-metal plastic casing, too. That also means the slider of the previous T-series devices is gone, but the T5 does include a virtual handwriting area that is nearly identical to the one on the Tungsten T3 that we liked so much. The screen is the same bright and crisp high-res design palmOne has been using for over a year.
The other major hardware change is the memory system. All palmOne and most Palm OS handhelds to date have had a fixed RAM area for programs, minus a small "scratch space" memory. The T5, on the other hand, has a whopping 256 MB of total memory but in an unconventional arrangement. The user-accessible RAM, what most users are used to, is 55 MB, slightly more than the T3. Then there is 160 MB of user-accessible Flash ROM that functions like an internal flash drive and can survive a power loss. Unfortunately that means programs can't run directly from the storage ROM but have to be copied to RAM, but the ROM can hold any file type, not just Palm databases. The other 41 MB is system-reserved ROM for the OS and built-in applications, of which there are many. The processor is a 416 MHz Intel XScale, a slight improvement on the T3.
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Because the flash "drive" can store any file type, palmOne has also included the ability to use the T5 as a standard USB drive (with directory support) on any computer that supports the standard USB mass storage drivers (which includes any modern OS). While only some Palm OS applications can read certain desktop files, that still gives the user a 160 MB flash drive they can use anywhere they have their sync cable.
Which brings us to the next major change of the T5, palmOne's newest connector. Doing away with the "Universal Connector" of the past few years (which the company has shied away from anyway on some models), palmOne has with the T5 introduced the Multi-Connector, the main difference of which is that power and data are now two separate connectors, allowing users to just take the charger cable with them on a trip instead of the entire cradle. That's very welcome, but as there is no mini-USB connector the sync cable will still be necessary for connecting to a PC and using the flash drive capabilities. The battery has been beefed up as well to 1300 mAh compared to the T3's not quite adequate 950 mAh.
Software-wise, the T5 contains most of palmOne's familiar software with a few new extras. The enhanced multimedia suite from the Zire 72 is present, as is the new messaging application for SMS and MMS and the improved Bluetooth wizards as well. Documents To Go and VersaMail are both present, now pre-installed in ROM with support for native Microsoft Office files. The palmOne improved PIM suite is included as well. The launcher application has also been revised with a new "favorites"-style view by default, although the traditional view is still available. There is also a basic file manager for managing files in the ROM store, including the ability to direct-launch applications by selecting the appropriate file. The associations are not user-editable, however, a developer API should be available shortly.
Absent from the T5 is Palm OS 6 Cobalt, which many users have been expecting to appear on handhelds soon. Also missing is the voice recorder button of previous T-series models. Bluetooth support is included, but not Wi-Fi. palmOne claims that the palmOne Wi-Fi card will work with the T5 after a driver update, coming soon.
In all, the T5 offers a union of palmOne's recent developments on other handhelds and several new and welcome features. While it doesn't offer as much of a swiss-army-knife-esque feature set as recent models from HP and Dell, it pulls off palmOne's usual polish and integration, the company's main claim to fame.
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