Second Palm smartphone

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Palm Source, the new name for the section of Palm that develops the PDA’s operating system (OS), continued its attempts at 3GSM to push Palm as an OS for mobile phones. It had some success to for a second mobile phone that runs using Palm (the first, the Handspring Treo 600 launched in December) is heading for Europe and the UK in late spring.

Manufactured by Group Sense, which has a huge presence in the Asian mobile market, the G88 combines Palm personal organiser style facilities with a mobile phone in a candy bar style handset with a sliding keypad not dissimilar to the Samsung SGH-D410.

The phone, which runs via Palm Source’s 4.1.2 operating system, features an integrated digital camera, 2.2inch 65k colour screen, e-mail and Java. It boasts 16MB RAM, 16MB ROM and a 2MB internal flash memory card.

We really liked the Palm OS on the Treo, but are not yet convinced as to whether it will function on the G88’s smaller screen. More from here

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One thought on “Second Palm smartphone”

  • I bought the Pearl White edition of the phone a few weeks ago and am very happy with what I use it for. I had a Palm III PDA a long time ago and then switched to the ipaq, but then decided on the G88 for the form factor (i still think that the PPC PDA phones are a little too big).

    Pros:
    – Smallest full featured Phone PDA
    – PalmOS is very stable – better than my previous PocketPC
    – Good reception and speaker clarity
    – Excellent backlight, but screen still hard to read in sunlight
    – Good battery life
    – Bundled software enough to keep you going for a while(quickoffice, games, etc)

    Cons:
    – No bluetooth, although the IR worked well enough so I don’t have to carry my sync cable.
    – No expansion slot, which is no biggie to me. I have a 20GB iAudio player (which happens to be the smallest HD player right now :), and who watches movies on tiny screens anyway?
    – Tiny screen. Yes, because it is the smallest phone PDA, it also comes with a very small screen. After playing bejeweled on the G88 and then playing the same game on my girlfriends ipaq, I realized just how small the screen was. It is not too much of a problem for me but might be a problem for some people
    – Also screen can be hard to read in direct sunlight
    – Numeric keypad for dialing a little small
    – No proper today screen, although I downloaded a free software called whatzup which does the same thing but without fancy graphics.
    – No transcriber handwriting tool, although the built in handwriting tool is still pretty good.
    – A little hard to navigate between apps (just a feature of palmOS 4.1 I guess) Although G88 provides a back button that works for the most part
    – Synching with XP Outlook a little cumbersome with the bundled Intellisync lite. I had to download the full version of Intellisync (recommended) and now everything works fine
    – 33Mhz is nothing to write home about

    Overall I am very happy with my purchase and have become a palm reconvert again… (PPCs are just too bloated for my taste). I give it 4 out of 5 stars

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