Palm’s newest iteration of their world famous PDAs, the TX is easily the most complete and versatile of currently available handhelds. Palm has had some challenging times in the past few years; strong competition from hardware vendors like Sony, operating system competition from the likes of Microsoft, and various business transitions have forced the mighty Palm to innovate and expand. Now who can complain about innovation? One area in which Palm is doing very well is what I call the “chunky mobile phone market”. Just about every mobile phone carrier has a Palm-powered phone with a tiny keyboard, Wi-Fi, data manager, camera, etc.
Now, I have heard people say the PDA is going to go the way of the wagon wheel with all this convergence of technology into the cell phone, but the fact is, the little cell phones, while certainly cool, do not have the muscle or ease of use as most high-end PDAs – miniscule screens, lower battery capacity, and the inherently lower-lifespan of the cell phone (80% of people do not keep their cell phones longer than 2 years, people drop the phones in the washer, the kids get a hold of it, etc.) mean that all-in-one cell phones aren’t for everybody. So the PDA is sticking around. The TX would actually be the next in Palm’s “Tungsten” line, except that they have dropped the tungsten. Is that at all like “Don’t drop the soap?”…”Don’t drop the tungsten.”…I’m sure there’s a really great joke in there, but perhaps only if you’re a metallurgical engineer. Moving on…
- 320×480 pixel touch-screen displaying 16 bit color, which can also be rotated 90 degrees for wide-screen viewing
- 312 MHz Intel XScale (PXA270 family) processor, which is Intel’s version of the ARM series of processors, incidentally, their XScale division has just been sold off to Marvell
- Palm OS version 5.4.9
- 128MB of flash memory, 100MB is user accessible for storage, 4MB is used as dynamic heap memory – that is the portion that is actually used as the RAM for applications
- One SD/SDIO/MMC expansion slot
- Wireless – both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11b)
- One speaker on the back of the unit, and one headphone jack
- One non-user serviceable 1250 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery (you could probably replace it if you needed to, but you would have to unscrew the unit, which would void your warranty)
The user interface is relatively straight forward, especially if you have used previous Palm operating systems. You can solely use the touch screen if you choose to, or you can use the various buttons for quick-launching applications. There is a four-way “d-pad” for cursor/menu movement, a selection button in the middle, and four buttons for “home,” “calendar,” “contacts,” and “web.” These are also programmable if you need them for other uses.
The display itself is crisp and bright. You can change the brightness level via a slider on the display. Sound on the single speaker is OK. For the little system beeps and alarms the single rear speaker is adequate. Plugging in a set of headphones is a must for MP3 listening or extended video viewing. The sound then changes from adequate to very nice. One minor complaint is that setting up different volume levels can be difficult: for the system sounds you can only choose off, low, medium, and high. But this does not affect the volume for MP3, nor for video, which both have separate slider controls for volume. For example, when you choose “mute” from the primary sound screen, if you play a video, and did not set the volume to mute there too, you will get sound. This was very shocking the first time I noticed it. There should really be an easily accessible Master Volume Control.
The TX is a very good size, and fits in your hand very comfortably. It is also thin enough so that it can easily fit in your pocket, but not so narrow that it is difficult to manipulate. To show size comparison is a Garmin iQue 3600, and a Tapwave Zodiac2 (my previous favorite PDA).
Navigation through the system is a snap. The icons are easily distinguishable, look exactly like what they represent, and are also named. You can use the Home feature to select various categories such as documents, games, and media, etc., or you can go directly to all applications. Best of all you can extensively customize your menus, colors, and even change your background to a different picture using your own photos. Very personal. The stylus fits in a little slot on the side, is metal with a shiny silver finish, has a good weight, and feels quite nice.
With 100MB of memory, you probably won’t run out of space for your files either. If you do, there is a slot for SD/MMC cards, which come in sizes all the way up to 4GB these days, so no worries. Another nice point for alleviating memory fears is that the TX uses flash memory. What this means is that even if your battery drains to complete zero, your information will not be lost. This battery has lasted the past four days on one single charge with pretty regular use, listening to some music, watching part of a movie, and surfing the web. Battery life is good.
Installed software is everything a mobile business person needs. First and foremost is DataViz’s “Documents To Go.” This program handles Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents natively, and is very easy to use. You don’t have to store the files in any secret, hidden folders, or “install” them through physical syncing with the computer. You can simply copy to your SD card, beam the docs, or anything else you can think of. DataViz’s application is even easier for me to work with than the office functions on PocketPCs running WindowsMobile. Other applications are Calculator, Calendar, Contacts, Memos, and several others. There are also literally thousands of Palm programs, many of which are free, and it is very simple to install them to the TX.
Wireless bliss. I have never had such an easy time getting up and running with Wi-Fi as I did with the TX. I pushed the quick-launch button for web browsing, the Wi-Fi initialization started immediately, scanned the available networks, I entered the pass key for my secured home network, and was browsing the web in under 30 seconds. No crazy programming, no screwing with a bajillion options that only electrical engineers with PhD’s can understand. It just works right out of the box. The built-in browser, Blazer, downloads quickly, renders images quickly, has wide-screen mode, and you can make the text small, allowing you to see whole pages without constantly scrolling right and left. Again, the best mobile browser I have ever used. The TX also has an infra-red port to beam data, which works as all IR ports should. It also has Bluetooth. Personally, I hate Bluetooth, but I do use it to HotSync wirelessly to my PC. With the TX you can connect via Bluetooth to any other Bluetooth device…maybe it will work…maybe it won’t…eh, Bluetooth does what it feels like. If you like self-punishment, you can even browse the web with Bluetooth.
Let’s talk about games for a minute. The TX comes with solitaire installed – it’s fun, it’s solitaire. Now there are just a ton of high quality games designed for Palm OS 5. Some are free, the really good ones you can try as a demo, and then buy them. The TX’s central control pad works very well for games. The five buttons (two buttons on either side of the pad, plus the center button) although somewhat close together are still conveniently placed. Let us also talk about emulators for Palm. There are a ton of them, and depending on who you ask, their legal status is shaky or solid. Well, the TX can play them, but there is a catch. Most emulators need a fair amount of accessible heap memory. Remember that the TX only allocates 4 MB of its total memory for this, but for some emulators that is just not enough. To solve this, you can purchase an ingenious little program called Unlimited Dynamic Memory Hack (UDMH), which frees up a ton of memory to be used as heap memory, and makes your emulator experience heavenly.
You might wonder what the difference is between the TX and the Tungsten|5. They look practically identical, but the TX is black plastic instead of metal (but it is very tough plastic, weighs less, and receives less wear), has less memory (but again, 128 MB is plenty for most people, and you can purchase an extra SD memory card very inexpensively), the TX has Wi-Fi, and according to reports the T|5 has some stability issues – I have not had any stability issues even after very extensive use. You may also wonder, “What about the PalmOne LifeDrive?” My answer, unfortunately is that the LifeDrive, while a cool idea, is utterly unacceptable. It is slow, slow, slow! It uses a very tiny hard disk for its memory and storage, and has severe time lag for starting applications – the hard disk just cannot compare speed wise with flash memory. Just go check out the LifeDrive at Best Buy, Staples, CompUSA, or Circuit City and you will see what I mean. If you really feel that you need 4GB of storage space for your PDA, go buy a 4GB SD memory card for the TX, and all will be well. And for those of you thinking, “But the Palm OS can only handle up to 2GB SD cards,” the TX can indeed handle the 4GB SD cards, and can utilize the entire card.
There are a few more issues I would like to mention that really surprise me, and seem to have just been poorly thought out by the folks who designed the TX. First, there is no LED anywhere on the unit. I can’t tell when it is charging! On every other PDA I’ve owned there was a little green light to let me know the energy was flowing, but now I just can’t be sure. Without an LED I can’t set the TX to give a silent alarm (it doesn’t vibrate either) to remind me of scheduled events. Nor is there a handy way to get low battery warnings when the indicator is not visible. Seriously, LEDs are so cheap, and so easy to incorporate into the design, there is no reason the TX should be without. By no means is this a deal-breaker, but it is disappointing.
Second, there is no way to turn the back light completely off. This does not affect most people, but I have been in settings with my other PDAs where the light was just right, and I didn’t need the back light on at all. The ability to turn it off saves energy, prolonging battery life. It is a small thing, but it would also have been nice. Thirdly, and this goes for PocketPCs too, there needs to be built-in printer support for high level PDAs. There are third-party applications that let you print…kinda, but native support has been too long coming.
All in all, this has been one of the very nicest PDA designs I have ever encountered, and certainly the best in terms of wireless ability and document handling. The interface is just superb, and not once have I become frustrated with trying to find my way around. I have also not had to do any resets. I have actually reset it once, just to see how long it took to reboot – it was about fifteen seconds. Bottom line, if you are looking for a fantastic PDA with excellent utility, multi-media ability, and entertainment value, put the Palm TX at the top of your list.