Sony Clie N710c - It Shoulda Been a Contenda
Written: Aug 03 '01 (Updated Aug 03 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 320x320 screen, handles graphic-rich 160x160 applications well, jogdial
Cons: pixelated, MemorySticks small and expensive, terrible buttons, poor font support, no native Mac support
The Bottom Line: I was disappointed in this long awaited high resolution color Palm. It doesn't take advantage of the extra pixels and it's still pixelated. I'd get the HandEra 330 instead.
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| quasar's Full Review: Sony CLIE® PEG-N710C Handheld |
In theory the Sony Clie N710c could have been the best Palm OS device yet. In theory a higher resolution color screen should be free of the pixelation effects that plague other color Palms. In theory it should have been small but easy to hold and use. In theory the MemoryStick slot provides ample expansion. In theory an integrated MP3 player should be a huge selling point. In theory all Palm OS users should be stampeding the stores for these devices. In theory the world is flat and I can build a perpetual motion machine.
In practice the Clie N710c is a device that doesn't live up to its hype or its potential.
Basic Specs
The Sony Clie N710c runs a modified version of OS 3.5.2 on a 33MHz Dragonball VZ processor. It comes with 4MB of Flash and 8MB of RAM and a Lithium Polymer rechargeable battery.
It measures 4.67 inches x 2.80 inches x 0.66 inches (11.86cm x 7.11cm x 1.68cm) and weighs 5.65 oz (160.2g). It uses a 320x320 pixel reflective TFT screen and a USB hotsync connector.
Look and Feel
The N710c is a dull silver on all sides with a brighter chrome silver around the screen and chrome silver front buttons with navy labels and icons. It's very futuristic looking.
The grafitti area is gray with white square buttons with a contrast popup icon in the lower left corner below the Menu silkscreen button. Instead of the standard dots surrounded by ABC and 123, the Clie uses A and 1 to indicate keyboard popup locations.
In all honesty I am not terribly fond of the look, but I never let that deter me from a good feature set (function over form every time).
The Clie is heavier than many of the newer Palm OS devices but not horribly heavy. It's longer and thicker than the m505 but narrower. The back sides of the device are rounded, aiding in providing a comfortable feel. Like the original Clie, the N710c is a pleasure to hold.
The N710c has eight buttons: power, up/down, DateBook, Address, ToDo, Memo, escape, and the Jogdial. The power button is a long oval at the very bottom front of the device below the standard buttons spanning 3/4 of an inch in the middle. I like this placement; it's very convienent to have all of the commonly used buttons next to each other on the device.
The up/down button is two trapezoidal buttons pushed together to form an hourglass shaped rocker. Unfortunately these buttons are small and hard to press, a problem magnified by the shape of the buttons - they are very narrow near the center of the device in the area I tend to press them.
The front buttons are raised slightly from the device with a slight concavity. The are very hard to press with finger, but even harder with a stylus - the stylus slides around on buttons rather than pushing down on them.
The left side of the device has a headphone jack, a light blue jogdial, and a light blue back button in order going down from the top of the screen. The jogdial is very responsive and easy to rotate. Unlike the jogwheel in the HandEra 330, the jogdial rotates 360 degrees around.
The N710c comes with navy blue leather flip that exactly covers the device. It snaps in place with two clips on top. I had to tug quite a bit to get it out. There is a magnet in bottom of the lid so it snaps shut.
The stylus that comes with the device is very thin and light. It feels like cheap plastic, but it has a metal barrel. The silo is on the right side of the device.
The Screen
The screen is smallish, but not horribly small. I had remembered the screen as really tiny after the first time I saw it, but I think that was mostly illusion based on the narrowness of the device itself and the fact that I am now used to the large rectangular HandEra 330 screen.
As with all color Palms, the Clie screen is a disappointment. It is still pixelated even with the 320x320 pixel high resolution screen. The grid itself is less noticeable on the N710c than on any other color device except the m505 without the backlight on. However, the Clie has a slightly different but no less problematic screen effect - darker horizontal only lines every 10 or so pixels. I could not use this screen for any length of time because of this.
One thing Sony did right was giving users control over brightness. Unlike the m505 which is either on or off, Sony chose to retain the brightness slider control of older devices. At its brightness the Clie seems as bright as the Palm IIIc at its brightest.
Expansion
It's been over a year since the release of the first Clies in Japan, and almost a year since the original US release. There are still no MemoryStick devices, just memory.
Sony claims MemoryStick GPS and digital camera modules will be shipping by the end of 2001, with Bluetooth and others to follow shortly thereafter, but at this point I wouldn't count on it.
MemorySticks are more expensive than most of the other memory expansion options, and are only available in smaller sizes (64MB maximum at the moment), but if you have other devices that use the MemoryStick having it on your Palm would definitely be a plus.
HotSync Port and Accessories
The Clie N710c uses the same HotSync port as the Clie 300, the older monochrome device previously released in the US (see my review at http://quasar.epinions.com/content_12664802948).
There are some accessories for the Clie but not many. I've seen one or two cases made specifically for the N710c, but not many. There is a Stowaway for the Clies but few other hotsync port accessories. Most of the efforts to make Clie accessories seem to be in the area of MemoryStick devices even though there are no released devices.
Fonts
The Clie comes with three fonts roughly equivalent to the three standard Palm fonts. The smaller two fonts are small and thin but clear. The larger font, equivalent to the large bold font, is jagged and hard to read. This is inexcusable on a screen with so many pixels to work with.
The menus use a fourth font, probably one close to what the normal large font would look like had there been one. It is the nicest and easiest to read font of the bunch. I'm glad it was used in places where the user has no font control, but wish they had provided it in general.
Sony really dropped the ball with its font support. It didn't provide any extra fonts or take advantage of the extra pixels to make some really really smooth fonts of different sizes. Coming from the HandEra 330 which offers eight really nice fonts in all built-in applications, I really felt this lack.
Software Compatibility
The N710c has exactly four times as many pixels as most Palm OS devices. In order to run on the Clie, pixel doubling maps each pixel of an older app into a 2x2 square of Clie pixels. This should be straightforward, but some applications crash under this system. These are probably applications that hard code some locations on the screen.
Many applications did transfer well and look quite sharp (aside from the general screen effects described above). For instance, the card game Grouper (a black and white game) looks really crisp. On the HandEra 330 this game is playable but jagged in scale-to-fit mode and excellent but small in center mode (see my HandEra 330 review at http://quasar.epinions.com/content_33706249860 for an explanation of these modes).
Extra Software in ROM
The N710c includes several MemoryStick management applications as well as some other Clie-specific multimedia software.
MSGate is a simple file manager application that lets you move and copy files between RAM and the MemoryStick. It also lets you delete files in both locations. It has a fairly nice interface and is fairly easy to use.
MSAutorun lets you select one application on a MemoryStick to automatically copy and run on insertion. Other than this one application you will need to copy files to RAM manually before using them unless you buy a third party tool like MSMount.
The built-in AddressBook has been enhanced to include a spot for a picture. This is a popular enhancement that Sony made for the original Clies.
Audio Player is a stripped down version of MusicMatch Jukebox. It's very pretty but not very feature-rich (for instance, it doesn't support playlists).
gMovie, a simple movie player that uses a proprietary format, is also included. The movie I watched was a bit jerky but it is nice to have a movie player that integrates video and sound.
The last addition to ROM is the PictureGear Pocket image viewer. This lets you display high resolution images and run slideshows on the Clie. A Windows conduit for this application is included on the CD for easy syncing (if you use Windows).
MP3 Support
MP3s can only be played from the white (secure) MemorySticks and I didn't have one so I haven't used this functionality so I can't really speak to the quality of the sound, the ease of use of the MP3 controls, or the battery life when playing MP3s. I do know that playing MP3s drains the batteries much faster than any other activity you can do with the Clie. Also, MP3 playback is available only through headphones and not the internal Clie speaker.
The N710c comes with a set of headphones with some simple play controls attached so you can control the MP3 features without using the Clie directly.
Mac Support
Unfortunately, the CLIE does not support syncing to Macintosh desktops out of the box. However, Macintosh drivers were recently created by Mark/Space Softworks. Requiring a USB-enabled Mac running at least OS 8.6, The Missing Sync provides drivers for syncing the CLIE to the normal Palm Desktop. The Sony desktop application provides additional functionality such as storage of any photos attached to contact entries, but these features are not available with the The Missing Sync. Individual licenses cost $29.99.
The Sony Name
Another factor to consider with the Sony is the power of the Sony name. I have heard from several corporations that they won't buy devices from Palm, Handspring, or TRG because such small companies cannot provide the level of support they require from all of their vendors. In the past all of their Palms have come from IBM (IBM makes units identical to several Palm devices in every way). These companies are quite happy to deal with Sony so the CLIE offers them a color device with expansion capabilities.
Final Thoughts
I really wanted to like the Clie N710c. I hoped it's higher resolution screen would finally eliminate the problems with pixelation that have plagued all color Palms. It didn't. I hoped that the second try would produce a device with more usable buttons. It didn't. I liked the idea of an integrated MP3 player, but it isn't very integrated with the Palm. I had hoped that the introduction of more hardware would speed the arrival of MemoryStick devices. So far it hasn't. I had hoped that at least the basic Palm applications would take advantage of the increased resolution by using nicer fonts and providing more font choices. They don't. I wanted to like this device. I don't.
If you absolutely must have a color Palm, then go to BestBuy or another store and look at the Palm IIIc, Palm m505, Visor Prism, and Clie N710c and look at the screens. Get the one you like the best. If you don't have a real preference based on the screens or if you are one of the lucky ones who doesn't notice or doesn't have a problem with the pixelation, then I would lean toward a Clie.
If you can live without color, I strongly recommend considering the HandEra 330. It actually takes advantage of its high resolution screen, provides two expansion choices, and is compatible with the plethora of Palm III accessories.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 499
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