BargainPDA : First Thoughts on Tungsten T5

BargainPDA has some original pictures of their palmOne Tungsten T5 review unit. Looks nice. I love the idea of returning to the Palm m5xx form factor but I sure wish palmOne had thought of another design rather than reusing a design that was first released on a budget model (Tungsten E).

I also wish they kept the slider but hei, if people (based on palmOne's market research) do not want a slider then fine by me.

While the 416Mhz Intel X-Scale PXA27x processor sounds slow when compared to some of the beast founs on Pocket PCs I think it does not matter. This Palm runs on PalmOS 5.4 which is pretty fast. Even my Hewlett-Packard iPAQ h4150 with its 400Mhz processor feels slow when compared to my similarly spec'ed T3 so while Pocket PC needs all the clock speed it can get, I doubt any (current) Palms would need one over 500Mhz.

And finally the death of Palm's Universal Connector! Hurrah! While I wish palmOne remove the serial connector all together it seems many people still wish for one. So a new serial connector. Personally I don't care as I try not to invest in serial connector accessories for my PDAs and mobile phones.

One thing I will miss (if I get this) is the spring loaded stylus that first came with the Palm Tungsten T. It was a classic and in my opinion the best stylus ever created. However the stylus here is the same size as those on the m5xx and V series and I have a Cross Micro stylus that can fit in this!!!

There are roughly 215Mb of space accessable to users. 55Mb of which acts as normal RAM. palmOne has stated that the RAM would not lose its content when power is cut even for months. Could the T5 be running magnetic RAM? Who knows? PDA manufacturers are always reluctant to publish detailed specifications on their products.

Personally I think palmOne has a winner here. It will debut at the same price as the T3 a year ago and will have some improvements - namely the bigger battery, newer OS, faster processor and bigger RAM/ROM space. The bigger space might temp someone who wanted a mp3 player (out of the box) and a PDA.

To me WiFi is useless and pointless in this day and age where people are always connected through their mobile phone. Not to mention WiFi has yet to mature enough to handle seamless re-connection. I hate it when walking around London and have to connect to a different Access Point every other minute. And what free WiFi? There are almost no free WiFi access in London.

But if you really need WiFi, you can always buy an add-on SDIO WiFi card that palmOne is also selling.