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TOP 15
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Specifications
Under the hood is a Texas Instruments OMAP1510 ARM-compatible processor running at 144 MHz. The OMAP 1510 includes an integrated DSP (Digital Signal Processor) for audio decoding, meaning that the Tungsten T can play back genuine digital audio through either the enhanced speaker or the included headphone jack. The audio quality of the Tungsten T is better than that on any other Palm-branded device or the HandEra 330. It supports polyphonic tones and midi and wav file playback.
The processor also supports mp3 decoding, but the handheld does not ship with an mp3 player. Palm has stated that they are working with Real Media on an mp3 player for the Tungsten T that will be available as a free download sometime in the near future. The audio quality is not quite up to the newer Sony CLIE speakers, however, as the CLIEs include a dedicated FM synthesis circuit which the Tungsten T does not. Both through the on-board speaker and through headphones, the Tungsten T has a much better reverb and fullness to its sound, while the CLIEs have better audio fidelity and crispness, at least on midi-type audio. We cannot comment on their respective abilities at playing mp3s until an mp3 player is available for the Tungsten T.
The Tungsten T also packs 8 MB of ROM for the operating system and 16 MB of RAM, although only 14 MB is available to the user. The rest is taken up with the new expanded OS 5 system heap.
The device runs on a rechargeable Lithium-Polymer battery. Palm claims that under normal, non-Bluetooth usage the Tungsten T should get about the same battery life as a Palm m515. (The Bluetooth radio, of course, will draw more power.) To test that claim, we ran our standard battery burndown test, disabling auto-off and running AtomSmash from Red Mercury in demo mode until the device shut off. We ran the test with the backlight at full power in order to have a more accurate comparison, but as mentioned earlier the backlight is very bright and most users will not need to run it very high at all.
The Tungsten T lasted 2 hours 48 minutes before throwing its first battery warning, and finally shut off after 3 hours 24 minutes. It also automatically reduced the backlight to 33% when the battery started to run low, and we left it at its reduced level. Recharging took about an hour and a half to two hours, but was difficult to measure as there is no indication of when the device is fully charged. That is just about on-par with the Palm m515 in our earlier tests. Given that it has a faster processor, more RAM, and stronger backlight, that's an impressive feat. With the backlight at a more reasonable level the battery should last even longer, as the LCD backlight is generally the most power-hungry component in a handheld. There is a small LED on the top left that glows green when the handheld is charging, but unfortunately it does not change when the device is fully charged.
Palm includes the standard Palm Universal Cradle with the Tungsten T, complete with the adapter-on-plug power cord we've complained about before.
 | The Tungsten T also includes a headphone jack, voice recorder, telescopic stylus, and of course an SD slot.
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Software
The Tungsten T is the first Palm OS 5.0 device from Palm and the first to grace our labs. From a user perspective, at first glance Palm OS 5 looks a lot like Palm OS 4. And from a user-perspective, it is, albeit faster. Most of the important changes are under the hood where only some developers will need to worry about them.
The system does not offer true multi-tasking or multi-threading, at least not at a user-program level. Palm OS 5 also does not use the same internal system trap mechanism as earlier versions of the OS, so as predicted Hacks will not function at all, nor will programs that make use of the same low-level technique as Hacks. However, PalmSource has added additional hooks to the OS to allow many to most applications and utilities more formal ways to accomplish the same tasks. Developers will need to update their applications to support the new hooks.
The PalmSource High-Density screen API differs a great deal from the Sony HighRes API. It's slightly closer to the HandEra QVGA API, but still off on its own. Unlike the Sony API, the system automatically scales applications to the current screen size, that is, there is no "non-HighRes assist" mode.
Palm has included a new set of fonts designed to take advantage of the double-density screen, so letters look thicker on the Tungsten T than they would on a CLIE. That's because the Sony is using fonts designed to be one pixel wide while Palm is using a two-pixel font that looks like a much-smoothed low-res letter. The result is that nearly all lines are thicker and clearer on the Tungsten T than on a Sony HighRes device, but just as smooth and rounded. Which is better is a matter of personal preference.
One of the promises of ARM processors is faster performance, but as PalmSource has said before that will depend largely on the program. Programs designed to take advantage of the ARM directly will fare better, but all current programs will be slowed down by the Dragonball-to-ARM conversion layer.
The response time of the PIM applications is virtually instantaneous. AtomSmash, which does a lot of direct hardware access, ran at about the same speed on the Tungsten T as on a 33 MHz Sony CLIE PEG-N610c, a bit slower than on more recent 66 MHz devices, but was still perfectly playable. Zap! 2016 from AstraWare ran perfectly fine.
For a slightly more objective test, we installed WordSmith 2.2 from Blue Nomad on the Tungsten T, a CLIE N610c at 33 MHz, and a CLIE NR70v at 66 MHz. We then prepared a 5000 word document, free of spelling errors, and timed how long it took to run a spellcheck on all three devices. The N610c took 693 seconds to check the whole document. The NR70v took 389 seconds, and the Tungsten T 387 seconds, or 7.21, 12.85, and 12.91 words per second, respectively.
At least based on these tests we can confirm PalmSource's prediction, that the current generation of programs will just about keep pace on the first round of ARM devices. Applications that are developed specifically for the ARM processors will get the significant speed boost. For example, Palm claims that Kinoma is developing a version of their video player for the Tungsten T and the current beta version is capable of 30 frames per second and is still responsive. (Sadly, we were not able to get our hands on a copy to confirm that claim.) Until OS 5-targeted programs appear, though, users can expect high-end but not blazingly fast performance.
As is typical for Palm, only the OS, core PIM apps, and a few key utilities are included in the ROM. None of the PIM apps have received much of an update, but Palm has modifed them to take better advantage of the Navigator D-Pad. For instance, the Address Book has been enhanced with a Handspring Treo-inspired fast lookup feature, which allows the user to look up any contact, view the contact, and open a quick dialer, which lets the user select a given phone number to automatically dial via a Bluetooth-connected cellular phone or e-mail address to open in the included VersaMail e-mail client. The entire process requires only the Navigator D-Pad, which is the only control not covered by the clear clip-on case.
The other PIM applications are similarly Navigator-pad-enabled, though to a lesser degree. Our favorite is in the To Do app, where the Select button will check off the currently selected entry. Finally, some company has produced a one-handed way to check off a Shopping List.
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