Larry Garfield looks at Palm's summer "refresher" model for its Tungsten line, and tries to keep the Schwarzenegger references to a minimum.
The Palm Tungsten T was the first Palm OS 5 model from Palm, and the first look at Palm's new business direction. Although not a year old yet, The Tungsten T is back with modest improvements, mostly borrowed from Palm's more recent handhelds.
Design
Physically, the Tungsten T2 is almost identical to its predecessor. It still has a metal case with collapsing bottom to cover the handwriting area, the Palm 5-way Navigator we like so much, and it still specs out at 101 x 77 x 15 mm when closed and 121 mm long opened, and a noticeable 158 grams. The only differences are that the casing is now a light sliver rather than the original grayish tan, and the sliding case seems stiffer than on the original.
 | The T2 is physically almost identical to the T1
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The T2's screen is the same first-rate design as on the Palm Zire 71 and Tungsten C, and is visible both indoors and out. Even at the lowest brightness setting, it is still quite readable. Unfortunately it still does not have a virtual graffiti area, and the graffiti area is not back lit.
The T2 uses the same telescoping stylus as its predecessor, as well as the same button and port layout. The top of the device includes the SDIO-capable Secure Digital slot, low-range IR port, and power button. A button for the voice recorder and a stereo headphone jack are high on the left side. There is also a mono speaker on the front face that can be quite loud.
For a cover, Palm includes the same clear plastic clip on face as with the Tungsten T. The cover clips to the back of the device for easy storage, but being detached is still easy to lose. We haven't tried it yet, but we suspect that it scratches just as easily as the original.
Connectivity
Connectivity options are also identical to the Tungsten T. At the bottom of the case is the usual Palm Universal Connector. It also includes a Bluetooth radio for connecting to other Bluetooth devices. Unfortunately, the software support for it has not evolved much since the Tungsten T, so it is still primarily useful only for connecting to a mobile phone.
Specifications
While the T2 uses the same 144 MHz TI OMAP processor that Palm has been using for a while, the memory system has been beefed up. The T2 sports 32 MB of RAM, of which 29 MB is available to the user. Although not as roomy as the 54 MB available space on the Tungsten C, it's still a very welcome improvement.
The T2 also includes the usual Lithium-Ion Polymer rechargeable battery. In our standard torture test, running Atom Smash continually until the device died, the T2 gave its first battery warning at 4 hours, 30 minutes, and quickly gave an extremely low warning at 4 hours, 33 minutes. It didn't finally shut off until 4 hours, 50 minutes. That's actually considerably better than the Tungsten T. We kept the Bluetooth radio on as well, as we suspect most users will have it on most of the time.
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