Back with the Palm brand-name (again), the company formerly known as palmOne churns out its latest Palm OS handheld, the highly connected TX; Larry Garfield takes a closer look.
Review summary of the Palm TX:
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 Palm’s TX represents the current state of the art for Palm OS handhelds, but no more. Its feature set is complete and well-rounded, and it compares very well against competitors in the same price range - yet is by no means groundbreaking. A broad range of software functionality is hampered by a crippled audio player and we miss the seemingly-forgotten vibrating alarm and LED indicator, but the the TX still holds its own against Windows Mobile devices. At the price point, the TX is a good, solid, but in no way earth-shattering device. Release: October 2005. Price: $300.
Pros: Dual wireless connectivity; spacious memory; competitively priced
Cons: No vibrating alarm; audio player limited; lack of novel features
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Full Palm TX Review:
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Hopefully at long last sorting out its identity crisis, the newly-name-restored Palm, Inc. has dropped the Tungsten and Zire names in order to focus on the obvious brand name of "Palm". Its latest device in the category formerly known as Tungsten and now represented by the letter 'T' takes another cue from Arnold Schwarzenegger's movies, carrying the simple moniker TX.
Is it just me, or did you get a feeling of deja vu?
The TX uses the same physical design as the Tungsten E, E2, and T5, with a comfortable traditional tablet design and slightly tapered sides, but sports a new matte almost-black finish that gives it a more sci-fi look. At 121 x 78 x 15 mm and 148 grams, it's exactly the same size as the T5 but a slight bit heavier, though still comfortable. All of the buttons are in the same place, along with the square directional pad, SDIO slot and headphone jack on top, and metal barrel stylus in a slightly-exposed silo on the right. A simple flip cover attaches on the right. In all, nothing unusual.
What is different is the button selection. Although positioned in a fashion identical to predecessors, the four application buttons now map to Home, Calendar, Contacts, and Browser, respectively. The high-res screen is also slightly different, sporting the same 320 x 480 16-bit color design with virtual handwriting area and screen rotation as on the company's LifeDrive, much to our pleasure.
We speak to everyone
Palm admits that it let its Wi-Fi support languish for too long after the luke-warm reception the Tungsten C received when it first launched, but is trying to make up for lost time. The TX supports both Bluetooth 1.1 and 802.11b Wi-Fi, the former with Palm's previously-seen first-rate configuration wizard and the latter with a new and much-improved Wi-Fi control panel. Thankfully, Wi-Fi support now includes both WEP and WPA-PSK for the security-conscious.
Of course, the standard IR port, SDIO-capable SD card slot, and Palm's new Multi-Connector port for charging and synchronization are all still present in their usual locations.
It's what's inside that counts
The TX is powered by a 312 MHz Intel XScale processor; slower than its T5 predecessor but still fast enough to give the device a healthy clip. It's backed by 128 MB of non-volatile memory, 114 MB of which is user-accessible. While not record-setting, it's still very roomy. That is all main memory, however, unlike on the T5 and LifeDrive where a split pseudo-card storage area is present - yet to be honest, we don't mind the omission in a non-gigabyte device.
As usual, the non-volatile memory improves battery life as well as protecting against data loss when the battery runs down. In our standard rock-'till-you-drop music burndown test using the included Pocket Tunes audio player, the TX lasted a shade under 9 hours before refusing to play more, even though it still had about 12% battery power remaining. While not jaw-dropping like some of the company's other models, it's still pleasantly above average. Regular use of the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios, of course, will reduce that lifespan.
Missing "little details" include a charging LED indicator, vibrating alarm, and voice recorder, which different users will miss to a lesser or greater extent.
Familiarity breeds repetition
The software stack on the TX is nothing surprising given Palm's recent devices. Built atop Palm's heavily-customized Palm OS Garnet 5.4.9, it includes the company's enhanced PIM suite, Favorites-based launcher, Media player for photos and videos, and a sadly feature-limited edition of NormSoft's Pocket Tunes for audio playback. All are familiar from earlier models, but we like them enough to be glad to see them again.
Connectivity software includes the familiar SMS client, the company's solid mail client, VersaMail, and the familiar Palm Blazer web browser. Productivity software comes in the form of Documents To Go 7, which again ties into VersaMail nicely for good native office format attachment support.
Of note, however, is the removal of the Home icon from the TX's on-screen toolbar to make room for the Wi-Fi applet. Instead, the left-most button can only be tied to either the Launcher or Favorites (default), and pressing it again toggles between them. While not a bad design per se given the focus on wireless connectivity, it could cause problems for some 3rd party applications that use the hard buttons for internal functions (such as some games). We'd much rather Palm just gave us more hard buttons in the first place, as it did with the Treo 650.
The Wi-Fi applet itself as we mentioned, however, is very simple and straightforward, and optimized for detecting networks on the fly. Given that it is a mobile device, that makes a fair bit of sense.
Availability
The Palm TX is at the time of press available in Europe and North America for $299 USD.
Price and availability
The Palm TX will start selling for $300 () in October 2005.
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