Before Palm, there was Psion--a British PDA in the form of a miniature laptop. It went through a series of models, most of which I at some point owned and used. Being hinged along the long edge plus some very good design--perhaps combined with a little black magic--gave a keyboard on which it was possible to touch type, at least if you left out your little finger.
Psion lost out in its competition with Palm, abandoned the consumer market, and I switched to a Sony Clié. It was an elegant palm style (and Palm OS) pda, but in important ways inferior to its predecessor. Typing on the Psion was easier than writing by hand, typing on the Clié harder.
Somewhat over a year ago, Nokia announced two new smart phones, the 9300 and 9500. Like my old Psion, they are in the shape of miniature laptops. Like it, they run on the Symbion operating system. Unlike it they are cell phones as well as PDA’s, capable not only of making phone calls but of browsing the web on a 600x200 pixel screen.
Both were triband phones in the European frequencies. Eventually a U.S. version of the (smaller) 9300 became available and I got one.
It is better than my Clie and more useful than any other cell phone I have seen. It is significantly smaller than the smallest Psion. But ....
Being smaller means a smaller keyboard. Whatever the magic spell Psion used to make its little keyboards work, Nokia has not licensed it. It is a very nice machine, but less useful as a portable word processor than the machine Psion brought out seven years ago.
So if anyone from Nokia is reading this, what I want next is ...
Enough increased size to make a keyboard I can (just barely) use for real typing. A 600x400 screen, about equivalent to the smallest size of ordinary computer screen. I am willing to live with something a little bigger than most cell phones. It would still be a lot smaller than a laptop.
Surely I can't be the only one.
Psion lost out in its competition with Palm, abandoned the consumer market, and I switched to a Sony Clié. It was an elegant palm style (and Palm OS) pda, but in important ways inferior to its predecessor. Typing on the Psion was easier than writing by hand, typing on the Clié harder.
Somewhat over a year ago, Nokia announced two new smart phones, the 9300 and 9500. Like my old Psion, they are in the shape of miniature laptops. Like it, they run on the Symbion operating system. Unlike it they are cell phones as well as PDA’s, capable not only of making phone calls but of browsing the web on a 600x200 pixel screen.
Both were triband phones in the European frequencies. Eventually a U.S. version of the (smaller) 9300 became available and I got one.
It is better than my Clie and more useful than any other cell phone I have seen. It is significantly smaller than the smallest Psion. But ....
Being smaller means a smaller keyboard. Whatever the magic spell Psion used to make its little keyboards work, Nokia has not licensed it. It is a very nice machine, but less useful as a portable word processor than the machine Psion brought out seven years ago.
So if anyone from Nokia is reading this, what I want next is ...
Enough increased size to make a keyboard I can (just barely) use for real typing. A 600x400 screen, about equivalent to the smallest size of ordinary computer screen. I am willing to live with something a little bigger than most cell phones. It would still be a lot smaller than a laptop.
Surely I can't be the only one.
12 comments:
The closest thing I've seen is the NEC MobilePro "palmtop" computer with a 640 x 240 resolution and a full (but small) keyboard.
http://www.necsam.com/mobilesolutions/products/MobilePro/900/
http://www.necsam.com/mobilesolutions/products/MobilePro/900/
The NEC doesn't sound like what I want. It weighs 1.8 lbs--more than half the weight of the lightest laptops and more than three times the weight of hte Psion Revo.
And it isn't a cell phone, so can't browse the web.
DDF—
Doesn't your son work for google? Therefore, doesn't that mean that he can snap his fingers and call forth new technology into existence?
Time to remind him of your extensive, excruciating toils in the diaper-changing business and call in a favor. (By now, he'll know enough to appreciate your troubles...)
Time to remind him of your extensive, excruciating toils in the diaper-changing business and call in a favor. (By now, he'll know enough to appreciate your troubles...)
The problem with that assertion is that he has something more immediate to compel him - I think one of his responsibilities is getting some stuff to work on a Treo 650 - a device he already owns himself.
Cool toy.
Also, if anyone is listening, this is what I want:
A single email-like inbox on my phone, that in a glance shows me, all my missed calls, voicemails, emails, and other messages.
I've never seen a cell phone that you can look at and see a list of voicemails, who called and when.
Why?
I long ago settled on a phone being a communication device. Therefore, no word-processing, gaming, or any of that other stuff. Did the Blackberry, then HP's pocket PC phone (awful), then the Seimen's pocket PC phone (was better), then finally settled on the Treo 650 and I love it.
...But, only because we have Exchange Server at the office and use Good Technologies (www.good.com) for total, complete, and flawless wireless real-time synchronization of all email, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes.
It's cool, for instance to go to Best Buy and Circuit City and Fry's investigating the latest in flat screen HDTV models, taking notes on the treo. Get home, open Outlook, and there are your notes, ready to go Googling and such.
I also just got one of those Sony TX series notebooks. 3 lbs with the battery. 6 hrs. in addition to WLAN, it has cingular's WWAN with Edge technology built in, so I can get full-on internet almost anywhere at a speed that's only slightly less fast in practical terms as an average DSL.
To the other guy who mentioned this, I also got a new, light case and don't carry a spare battery.
The Palm portable keyboards are really pretty good. They can interface with Palms through IR or (I think) bluetooth, and they're light (coat pocket rather than jeans pocket, but so are the combo PDA phones and you have two jacket pockets - this also gives you a full size keyboard). I imagine there are equivalents for your Symbian device.
I think that you're not "the only one", but that the market segment you represent is small - I think that the reason that the early Palms dominated (over Newton, Psion, etc.) is that Palm realized that most of the market wanted a tool to suplement their laptop, not replace it.
Disclaimers: no association with Palm or any other company in the industry - just a humble prognosticator.
I've read your specifications, and I think HTC Universal might be just what you need. 640x480 screen and a plethora of other nice features. It's not that big either. Note: I don't own one (though I'd love to) so I'm not speaking from expirience. Find more about it here.
Šimun Selak suggests HTC Universal.
It does look nice, although I can't tell how usable the keyboard is from a picture. But it's apparently not available in either the U.S. 3G frequency or EDGE or 850, which means it doesn't make much sense in the U.S. yet.
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