palmOne's top Zire model has received a face-lift: Larry Garfield looks at the new and colourful Bluetooth-sporting, megapixel-taking, audio-playing Zire 72.
palmOne has been focusing increasingly on multimedia of late, and its latest entrant to that market is no slouch. The new top of the Zire line, the Zire 72, combines a first rate camera with MP3 support, not to mention the best Bluetooth setup we've seen yet on a Palm OS device.
 | The Zire 72 has the most complete Bluetooth of any Palm
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Design
The Zire 71 breaks slightly from the previous Zire design. It's still a tablet-style handheld, but instead of the swooping curves of other Zires it has a more traditional rounded-rectangle design measuring 116 x 75 x 17 mm and weighing 136 grams. The back is silver, including a large speaker/camera area, while the front is silver with a blue trim. The blue trim is a hard rubberized substance, but feels nice in the hand.
The screen is the usual high-quality 320 x 320 16-bit color TFT that palmOne has been using for a while now. Colors are not quite as rich as on the Tungsten T3, but it's still a very attractive screen. The brightness is adjustable but except at the lowest level (which is still quite viewable), there isn't much of a difference.
Below the usual fixed handwriting area, palmOne has reorganized their buttons again. The Zire 72 sports a decently-designed square 5-way navigator, with four comfortable application buttons arranged in a 2 x 2 grid around it rather than in a line. Eschewing the Tasks and Memo applications, they default to Calendar, Contacts, Media/Camera, and the RealOne audio player. More on those later.
The left side of the handheld is bare save for a voice recorder button, while the right side holds the included cheap plastic stylus in an exposed silo. Unfortunately that means lefties will have bare edges against their right palm while using it, but it's only moderately uncomfortable. The top of the device, slightly sunken from the front, includes a small and mildly annoying power button, headphone jack, and Secure Digital card slot, including the hinged door on the card slot that we liked so much on the T3. The card is deeply sunken, which makes it difficult to insert and remove but also difficult to pop out accidentally.
The top back of the Zire 72 includes an uncovered 1.2 megapixel camera surrounded by a raised grill. The grill includes both the built-in speaker and the microphone for the voice recorder and movie recorder. The reset hole has also been enlarged to fit the stylus tip, as on the Tungsten T line. A single LED on the top left indicates AC power or charging, but not charge status.
Connectivity
palmOne appears to be abandoning the Universal Connector for the Zire line, as the Zire 72 now includes only separate mini-USB and AC adapter ports on the bottom. While more travel friendly, that does exclude some accessories. The SD slot is SDIO capable, however.
The Zire 72 is also the first Zire to include Bluetooth 1.1 out of the box. The radio itself is standard for such radios, but palmOne has finally beefed up the software stack supporting it. More on that later.
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