Two months ago I got my first glimpse of the HandEra 330 and fell in love. Seriously, irrevocably in love. I walked around with my head dipped low, unable to tear my eyes away from the amazing screen. I could hardly bear to put the device down. I has to clean off the drool at least twice a day. I had it bad. I still do.

Basic Specs

The HandEra 330 runs OS 3.5.2 by default on a 33MHz Dragonball VZ processor. HandEra has already released an OS update that upgrades devices to OS 3.5.3. It ships with 2MB of Flash ROM, all used by the OS, and 8MB of RAM. It has both Compact Flash and Secure Digital slots on the top of the device and uses the same HotSync port as the Pilots, PalmPilots, Palm III devices, and the TRGPro.

The device is 4.7 x 3.2 x 0.7 inches (121 x 81 x 17 mm) and weighs 5.9 ounces (167 grams) with 4 AAA batteries. Alternately you can power the device with an A/C adaptor or an upcoming rechargeable Lithium Ion pack. The screen is 2.2 x 2.9 inches (55 x 73 mm) with 240x320 resolution in 16-shade grayscale.

Look and Feel

The HandEra 330 is exactly the same size as a Palm III but weighs much less, even with 4 AAA batteries. In fact, the 330 weighs less than the Palm m505. It is very very light. It fits very comfortably in my hand and truly is a pleasure to use.

Many people have been complaining about the way the HandEra 330 looks. Personally, I think it looks quite nice. The back is black plastic. The front is plated silver metal over plastic with two dimpled recessed elliptical areas covering the Datebook and Address buttons and the Memo and ToDo buttons respectively. The area covering the Memo and ToDo also holds the speaker. All of the buttons are black. The up/down buttons are separate buttons and easy to press. The Datebook, Address, Memo, and ToDo buttons are ovals with the large axis vertical. They have recessed sections and are very easy to press with either fingers or a stylus. Rather than a straight row of buttons horizontal to the bottom of the device, these buttons go up diagonally from the center. It works.

The on/off button is on the top front of the device on the left side. It is a little smaller and harder to press with my fingers, but very easy to press with a stylus. The left top front corner has an LED light for silent alarms. It also doubles as a charging indicator. The left side has two additional buttons: an auxilliary button and a jogwheel (more on what they do later). Both are near the top and easy to access no matter which hand you hold the device with (but easier with the left hand).

The bulk of the back is filled with the battery door. Since the HandEra 330 uses four batteries instead of two it is understandably large. On the top right side of the back is the reset hole which is big enough that a stylus tip will reset the device. No more carrying a paperclip or unscrewing stylus tips when you need to reset. Speaking of stylii, the stylus silo lies down the left side of the back of the device. Curiously the bulk of the silo is open - the stylus is held in by a covered bottom and a strip of plastic across the top inch or so of the stylus.

The Screen

Glorious. That's the word that comes to mind when I think of the screen. Slightly larger than a Palm III screen, the 240x320 pixels add a depth of clarity to images and text that is startling. Within minutes of my first glance at the 330 screen it was physically painful to look at my Palm III. Part of this is the higher resolution, but much is the font substitution system implemented by HandEra. Rather than letting applications scale fonts by 1.5 which would lead to some jaggedness and lose much of the benefit of higher resolution, HandEra was able to substitute their own fonts in these applications. These fonts truly take advantage of the resolution and are a pleasure to look at. The 330 supports eight fonts; the larger four automatically map to the Palm normal, bold, large, and large bold fonts.

If the screen is glorious, the backlight is breathtaking. Simply stunning. If you've read some of my previous Palm reviews you know that I loathe the now common inverted backlights, finding them difficult to use in partial darkness conditions. The backlight on the 330 is the regular style used in the PalmPilot Professional and Palm III where the background pixels are lit and the foreground pixels remain black. However, unlike the previously mentioned devices, the HandEra backlight is a very vivid very bright indiglo blue. They managed to improve on the best backlights I'd previously seen.

Soft Grafitti Area

The most innovative feature of the screen is the soft grafitti area. All other Palms use a silkscreened grafitti area with four permanent buttons and an essentially empty area to write on. All of this is software driven on the 330. By default you will get a software grafitti area that matches the standard silkscreen with a few minor exceptions. If you map a different calculator to the calculator button its icon will appear instead of the icon for the standard calculator. A contrast icon appears in the upper left corner and a volume icon appears in the upper right. These launch sliders that control the contrast and volume. The last difference is an arrow on the top along the border separating the alphabetic and numeric sections of the writing area. This arrow lets you minimize the grafitti area.

When minimized the grafitti area becomes a 1/4 inch high bar along the bottom of the device. Small icons that activate the launcher and menus are along the left and an arrow to expand the grafitti area is on the right. If the application you are running is HandEra-aware, it will expand and use the space formerly occupied by the grafitti area. If it isn't, the space will remain empty.

All of this is just the default behavior. Because this is software driven, it is fairly easy for developers to modify the grafitti area. There is already a hack, SilkClock Hack, that adds date, time, battery level, and free memory to the grafitti area. HandEra recently released a keyboard application that includes two different keyboards to fill the soft grafitti area. One, the small keyboard, includes the standard buttons and a keyboard filling the standard writing area. The larger keyboard expands out further to each side, including smaller icons for the standard button functions rather than the normal buttons. Both keyboards provide a mechanism to write every possible character you can enter into the Palm and allow you to grafitti while the keyboard is active. The only problem with this is that you need to use a key on the keyboard to specify the punctuation shift and you must write the character in the same section as that key (alphabetic or numeric depending on the layout).

One feature of the soft grafitti area I do not like is the grafitti echo feature. Every stroke you make in the grafitti area is echoed on screen under where you made the stroke. It also requires the entire grafitti area to be redrawn every time you stroke, causing the keyboard or the text from SilkClock hack gets partially removed during this process. When writing quickly the grafitti area seems to pulse. Without the pulsing the echo is distracting, with it difficult to bear. Unfortunately the echo cannot be turned off, but I am sure some enterprising developer will release a hack for that.

The last and perhaps nicest feature the soft grafitti allows is a landscape mode. This is perfect for spreadsheets or other tabular data and convenient for reading ebooks. It also provides greater flexibility for games. There aren't that many applications that take advantage of the landscape mode yet, but those that do use it well.

HotSync Port and Accessories

Not only is the HandEra 330 the same size as the Palm III, it uses the same HotSync port. Although some have complained because this is a serial conenction and not USB, I for one think HandEra made the right choice. By using the same connection, users can upgrade from III-style devices and reuse their cradles, cables, keyboards, cameras, and other accessories that connect via the HotSync port.

I've only had problems with two of my III accessories. The PalmPix camera works, but the Palm software it uses as a viewfinder doesn't display on the 330 so you have to take the pictures blindly. The Palm GamePad isn't recognized at all - pressing any button initiates a hotsync. My GoType keyboard, FlashPlug, MemorySafe, and Datecs printer all work with the 330.

Because it is the same size as the III, most III cases will fit the 330. However, because the buttons are not in the same position, some playthru cases will not work. Most playthru cases will also block the side buttons, making the auxilliary button and and jogwheel unusable in the case. If you like playthru cases, you will need to get a new case (playthru cases for the HandEra 330 are starting to appear).

Palm III stylii will fit in the stylus silo of the HandEra 330 so these stylii can be reused as well. I actually like the default 330 stylus - it's comfortable and offers good grafitti recognition - so you may not feel the need for a third party stylus. Rest assured that if you do there are plenty that will fit the silo.

Expansion

Expansion is another area where the HandEra 330 really shines. Not only is the HotSync port compatible with existing devices, but the 330 comes with two expansion slots: Compact Flash (CF) and Secure Digital (SD). CF is the cheapest form of portable memory and also comes in much larger sizes than SD, Springboard modules, and MemorySticks. Since the CF slot supports type II CF, you can use MicroDrives in the 330 and thus add up to 1GB of storage space to the device. You can also find CF modems and other CF accessories. SD is smaller and more expensive, but as the format adopted by Palm, it is a format being actively developed. When SD devices start appearing 330 users will be ready.

You can also use SD for memory, although unless you want to use a CF modem at the same time or already own extra MultiMedia Cards (MMC, a non-secure format that works in SD slots) I can't see any reason you'd want to use it for memory. SD and MMC are only available in sizes up to 64MB and are significantly more expensive than CF. SD is also much much slower (by close to 10x by my limited testing).

Sound Capabilities

The TRGPro is well known for its exceptionally loud sound. The HandEra 330 is even louder. The two devices use the same speaker, but the 330 speaker is located on the front of the device rather than on the back which makes a big difference. You can easily play .wav files on the HandEra loudly enough that not only you but your neighbors in the next apartment can hear them (don't ask).

The sound output is nice, but certainly not revolutionary. That's where the voice recorder comes in. That's right, the 330 has a built-in voice recorder. Just hold in that auxilliary button on the side to start recording and let go when you are done. Alternately you can use VoicePad, an application that comes with the 330, for finer control over recording. VoicePad lets you chose a recording location - either RAM, CF, or SD. The auxilliary button automatically uses the location setting in VoicePad, RAM by default. The only limiting factor to the length of recordings is available memory.

The quality of the recording is quite good as long as there isn't a lot of background noise. One thing to note is that the backlight is automatically turned off when you record so that it doesn't add background noise.

The Jog Wheel

A small button that slides up and down along a circular path (but doesn't spin all the way around) or can be pressed in, by default the jog wheel pages up and down within forms and lists when turned and selects an item when pressed in. The jog wheel lets you scroll through the launcher at a fairly speedy pace then select your application of choice, making one handed operation possible. I find the jog wheel particularly nice for reading while standing on the train or bus.

Battery Life

Since the HandEra needs four AAA batteries instead of two it must be a real power hog, huh? Well, yes and no. If you use CF and SD contantly your batteries will drain quickly. Constant use of the backlight and serial port will also drain batteries quickly (as they have on other devices). The HandEra 330 didn't need four batteries, but they decided to include them for those people who use MicroDrives, CF modems, or other accessories that consume a lot of power. HandEra claims that you should be able to go about 1.5 times as long before changing batteries as on previous devices that used two AAA batteries. In all honestly I found the ratio closer to 1:1 until I upgraded to OS 3.5.3. Now that I've upgraded my battery life has noticeably improved.

Software Compatibility

All of these great features are useless if you can't run any software on the device. Sure, more and more developers are releasing high resolution applications that take advantage of the larger real estate, but many applications will never add this support. If you can't run these applications on the 330 you are significantly hampered in your software selection.

HandEra did an excellent job preserving application compatibility. There are three modes for running applications: scale-to-fit, center, and upper left. Scale-to-fit makes the application fit in the full screen when the graffiti area is expanded. Center fits the application into the center 160x160 pixels, leaving a 40 pixel blank border on every side. Upper left uses the first 160x160 pixels of the screen, leaving 80 pixels free below and 80 pixels free to the right. Almost every title I've tried (over 500) works in one of these three modes. Some hacks that get activated by a specific stroke in the grafitti area no longer work with the soft grafitti area but many do. Most of the hacks that don't work have either been updated for explicit 330 support or are in the process of being upgraded.

Applications use scale-to-fit by default. Over 90% of applications run without any problems in this mode. In this mode every pixel is stretched to 1.5 pixels on the HandEra. With the font substitution discussed above text generally looks nicer in these applications than it does on other 160x160 Palms. Graphics can get a bit jagged in this mode, but usually not to the extent that they are hard to look at. Almost all text-heavy application run with no problems in scale-to-fit. Graphic intensive applications and games don't look as nice but most are quite useable.

Some applications just won't work in scale-to-fit mode. Try them in center mode next. Almost all will be fine. Unfortunately the text in this mode is quite small and hard to read, so unless you are playing a graphic laden game, center mode can be difficult to use. For instance, Bejeweled won't run in scale-to-fit mode but works perfectly in center mode. The graphics are crisp and clear and a true pleasure to look at. Entering high scores is difficult because of the size of the text, but since such a small portion of time is spent in these screens it is manageable.

Every so often application make explicit assumptions about having a 160x160 pixel screen and must be run in the upper left corner of the device. I have only found one application that requires this mode, which is good because I find it much more difficult to deal with than center mode. My eyes automatically focus on the center of the screen and I really have to adjust when the center of the screen is the lower right corner of an application.

Unfortunately there are a few applications that simply will not work on the HandEra 330. Other than some hacks that use strokes in the grafitti area, all other applications that don't work at all are games including Shisensho, Mah Jongg, and Puzzles in Motion. All of my conduits have worked on both my Windows machine and my Mac, although Backup Buddy randomly stops at some point before it is done backing up all of my applications.

Included Software

The HandEra 330 comes with several utilities to manage files on expansion cards. CardPro lets you move files between CF, SD, and RAM (yes, you can move files from CF to SD and vice versa). This is a fast useful utility, but it is lacking a few useful functions including the ability to move a file from one directory to another on the same card.

AutoCF and the new (now in public beta) AutoCard allow you to run applications from CF and SD cards. Applications from an expansion card are seemlessly integrated with applications in RAM in the Launcher but are denoted by a dot. This allows you to use files on the expansion cards without explicitly copying it into RAM. One thing to remember is that you cannot write data using AutoCF or AutoCard, only view read-only files. Any associated data files that an application modifies must be kept in RAM. If you want to modify data directly on an expansion card you must do so using an application with VFS support built in.

The last and most impressive expansion utility is Backup. Backup is a backup and restore utility that lets you backup RAM to either CF or SD then perform full or incremental restores at a later date. Backup is incredibly fast - it takes 12 seconds to backup 7.4MB to CF and 38 seconds to fully restore the same data. Backing up and restoring from SD is significantly slower because SD is slower in general.

The device also comes with a full version of QuickOffice including QuickWord (formerly SmartDoc), QuickSheet, and QuickChart. QuickWord and QuickSheet have both been enhanced to support the high resolution screens including support for all eight fonts and for landscape mode. QuickOffice integrates with Microsoft Office on Windows desktops (but not on the Mac) so if you are a Windows user you can read and edit Word and Excel documents on the 330 then sync them back to your desktop. QuickOffice is a nice addition for the business user and definitely adds extra value to the 330.

One Handed Navigation

HandEra has stated that their goal with the 330 was to make a device that can successfully used with only one hand. I don't know that they've met that goal, but they certainly come close. With the jogwheel for paging up and down and selecting items and the auxilliary button to escape and control the voice recording you can do quite a lot with just the hand you use to hold the device - pretty much everything but text entry.

Summing Up

HandEra has thought of just about everything with this device, designing it the right way. It is backwards compatible with their previous device (the TRGPro, see my review at http://quasar.epinions.com/cmd-review-701-391D6862-3A4F9BB1-prod5) and with the most popular series of Palm devices, the Palm III. It offers a removeable rechargeable battery, the option to use AAA if you prefer or in case of emergency, and the ability to plug your Palm into the wall for power. It offers eight fonts, four smaller fonts that allow you to fit an amazing amount of text onto a screen and four larger fonts that match the existing Palm fonts. All eight are crisp and very easy to read.

It offers two expansion options, one that provides cheap memory and one that provides forward compatibility with Palm branded devices. They actually listened when people told them they preferred the old-style backlight, and provided a crisp beautiful high resolution screen. They provide application scaling so most 160x160 applications can run in the 240x240 square screen, and compatibility modes that let you run just about all other application in smaller 160x160 windows on the device. All this and it's only $350.

Some people will complain because this is a monochrome device, but I have yet to see a color screen I like. Give me this high quality monochrome screen over a poor color screen anyday. My hat is off to HandEra for creating perhaps the perfect Palm.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 350