Bigger, better, faster, and connected. That's the goal behind Palm's new Tungsten C, which takes the cake as the most powerful Palm OS handheld to date.
Palm's new Tungsten C sets a new bar for the Palm OS in terms of speed, space, and flat out power. Palm is targeting "campus cruiser" business users with its new high-end unit, and it looks like they've hit the mark. We're a bit disappointed that Palm didn't go just a little bit father, though, as it would have then made the Tungsten C a killer end-user handheld, too.
Design
The Tungsten C is almost identical in form factor to the GSM/GPRS-based Tungsten W. It measures the same 12.1 x 7.79 x 1.65 cm, and weighs a bit less at 178 grams. The all-plastic case is a bit lighter in color than the Tungsten W, a light sliver-brown, and the external antenna of the Tungsten W is absent.
 | The Tungsten C looks the same as the Tungsten W, but it's what's inside that counts
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The screen is the same standard size as the Tungsten W and Zire 71, and also uses the same eye-popping new screen technology as the Zire 71 for the brightest and richest display we've ever seen.
Like the Tungsten W, The Tungsten C skips a Graffiti area in favor of an integrated QWERTY thumbboard. All of the keys are hard plastic with very good tactile feel and good key travel (the amount that a key presses). The keys are oval-shaped and angled to the right in "RIM-style". We've never been impressed with the slanted keys, preferring straight round ones instead, but they work.
The thumbboard includes a one-press Home button, Shortcut/Menu button, spacebar, Caps/Find key, and a Blue Fn key. The Fn key offers access to numbers as a shift from the top row as well as various other symbol and punctuation characters on almost every letter. While there is only a single shift/caps lock key, it is "sticky". That is, pressing the key once will make the next character capitalized, even if the Caps key is not being held. That's an improvement over the Sony CLIE thumbboards, which are not sticky.
Below the thumbboard are the same standard application keys as the Tungsten W. (Notice a pattern emerging?) That includes Date Book, Address Book, VersaMail, and Web Browser, with the same mini-D-Pad 5-Way Navigator in the middle. We much prefer the D-Pad design to the pointing stick on the Zire 71, as it is much easier to use. Each app button has only a single function, unlike the normal and Fn-app of the Treo thumbboard/keys.
The silo for the metal-barrel stylus is on the right side of the device and partially exposed, while the left side of the handheld has a slot to attach the included leather flip cover. On top of the device, where they belong, are an Infrared port, SD slot, charging LED, and the expected Secure Digital slot. The LED is a very bright, piercing green that fortunately is only lit when the device is on AC power. There is also a bi-directional mono audio port, although it is not the standard eight-inch jack that most headphones user. It's the slightly smaller type used by many cellular phones for hands-free sets, designed to support the built-in voice recorder. Unfortunately, the Tungsten C does not come with such a headset.
Both the speaker on the Tungsten C and the audio port are mono. While audio players such as the RealOne player, Pocket Tunes, and AeroPlayer will run, the audio output from them is only mono. We're rather disappointed with the audio system on the Tungsten C. If it had a stereo out jack, it would function as an audio player as well as a superb gaming device, which would make it an excellent consumer unit as well as an excellent business unit.
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