Solid as a Tungsten yet light as a feather
Written: Mar 12 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small, light, good stylus, bright and clear display, Bluetooth
Cons: The slider looks like it could break anytime
The Bottom Line: Go buy it if you want to be a true mobile warrior and make use of bluetooth
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| ntech's Full Review: palmOne Tungsten T Handheld |
Oh golly gosh! The Palm Tungsten T. The next PDA model to be released by Palm with the new Tungsten branding and of course, not forgeting, the next big step of Palm OS with Palm OS 5. Let me clarify myself before beginning my review, as a long time Sony CLIE supporter, I'm trying to be as non-bias to any brand and this review will not be supporting any particular brand as I don't get paid by those companies (Palm, do you hear that ... please send me more money ... *ahem ahem*)
After attending the Palm Tungsten launch which happened sometime in the end of 2002, I was having great doubt about the quality and ability of the Tungsten T. Not to mention that the Tungsten T unit at the launch was heavily plaqued with bugs and had gone through many hard-reset sessions even with the base-application that came in the ROM. I pushed all those thoughts aside and decided to get the Tungsten T from my favourite PDA shop one lovely Tuesday (just before the Chinese New Year).
Rushed back to my office, plugged the unit in for charging and had everything running in the evening. The things that come in the newly designed (futuristic looking) Tunsgten T box includes:
- the Tungsten T unit
- Hotsync cradle
- charger adapter
- manuals and software
- plastic protective cover
The packaging looks impressive. I advise agaisn't using the protective cover that comes with the Tungsten. Not only it's pathetic looking and doesn't allow you to open the Tungsten T while the cover is on, it also scratches your new baby. For clarification, you can ask deesee to see what the cover did to his Tungsten.
Turning on the unit for the first time brings you to the familiar Welcome application and digitizer. Palm OS 5 brings about the new Preference screen which categorize the settings into 4 major categories just for simplicity sake. However, I don't feel that it makes any much difference.
First, I will cover the usability and speed of the new Palm OS 5 and the new underlaying OMAP architecture from Texus Intruments. You can really feel the speed difference when changing applications and loading intensive files or database. I tried loading a QuickOffice presentation in the Tungsten T and on my NR70V, and it was definately faster on the TT. The icons in Palm OS 5 are more "3D-like" however they are more of a cosmetics change and there isn't really any noticable difference between Palm OS 4 and Palm OS 5.
The Tungsten itself have a very solid feel. It's very light and small and fit nicely in my palm (wonder why they call themself Palm). The stylus is extendable from the stylud silo to be pulled out (like the Compaq iPAQ style). The stylus is solid metal and is very hardy as well. I find that the voice memo record button looks too much like "plastic" and doesn't look right on the Tungsten. Perhaps they should think of making it from a more chrome like material to make it more solid and more like the other buttons on the Tungsten.
The hotsync cradle is the typical Palm cradle (same as the one with the Palm m5xx series). This is because the Tungsten T uses the similar universal Palm connector and should be compatible with all the accessories that was available for the previous Palm units.
So far, I had no problems with my Bluetooth connection between the Tungsten T and my Sony Ericsson T68i. There had been reports of the unit hanging and required a soft-reset as reported in the KVPUG forum however, knock on wood, I had not experienced any of these problems. So far I had only needed to reset the unit once and it has not hung on me yet. I think it very stable and there wasn't any problems with the voice memo software (no hard-resets yet).
The speaker is built right on the front top of the unit. The speaker clarity is excellent although I don't understand why the alarm in the Tungsten do not support poly-phonic alarms (such as on the Sony CLIE) even when the speaker was built to support it. Palm... what are you thinking ?
There are headphone jacks for the more personal enjoyment of MP3 playback (although there isn't any official software for MP3 playback, you can get Aeroplayer which is a 3rd party MP3 player for the TT). I do not have any MMC/SD card so I cannot comment on the MP3 playback.
The screen is HiRes with 320x320 support and it very clear indeed. From the photos below, one can see that the Tungsten and the iPAQ seem to have a yellowish glow while the Sony CLIE has a more bright white background although I can't complain much since the screen is absolutely fabulous.
The battery life averages at roughly 12-15 hours of normal usage at 30% brightness. With bluetooth and IR recieve on, though, it reduces the battery life to about 9-10 hours. Not really a big problem with me since I charge my PDA at every chance I get and if the battery goes dead, I can still switch over to my trusty Sony CLIE ;)
The built-in bluetooth does what it's suppose to do. I managed to connect to the internet via the provided software and phone drivers (found on the Palm CDs) and everything was rather straight-forward. There might be a few hiccups setting up the bluetooth between the TT and your bluetooth enable phone, but you can always check in the KVPUG forum to solve your problems.
All in all, this is one great unit and if you have any bluetooth devices, you can add more radiation to your body. In overall, it does what it has set out to do and doing it in the smallest way possible.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 299
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Epinions.com ID:
ntech
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Member: Soo Kah Kiong
Location: Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 4 members
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